Subha Das Mallick

Mother Teresa: The Saint and Her Nation, authored by Gezim Alpion, is one more addition to a plethora of publications on Mother, three of which being by the same author. However, the uniqueness of this book is that, here the author posits Mother first as an Albanian and then as a missionary and traces the landmark decisions taken by her in her illustrious life, to her Albanian roots. For Indian readers and admirers of Mother, this is something new and puts the reverred Mother in a more humane frame. 

Gezim Alpione, a sociologist at the University of Birmingham, takes a dispassionate, academic, almost clinical approach to the story of the tormented teenager Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu living in the city Skopje to her canonization as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.Alpione connects momentous events in world history to events in the lives of ordinary people. On the first page of the first chapter, the reader will find a para:

Of the estimated forty million casualties of the First World War, of which almost half were deaths, atleast two and a half million fatalities were recorded in the Balkans. These figures do not include the silent victims of ethnic cleansing policies pursued by several Balkan countries against some ethnic groups and nationalities from the start of the twentieth century. 

Why does this statistics find its place in a biography of Mother Teresa?  

Because Albanians were often at the receiving end of ethnic cleansing and the tiny country Albania at the receiving end of territorial ambitions of Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. 

Why is the existential threat faced by the Albanian nation important in the narrative?

The first page of Chapter 7 provides an answer;

Mother Teresa’s parents hailed from Kosova. Both of them were born in the region. The origin of the nun’s grandparents is more complex. While the four of them were ethnic Albanians, there are reasons to believe that they originated at some point from Mirdita, a region in northern Albania.  

The book is as much about the troubled history of the Albanian nation as it is about this citizen of the nation who decided to turn her back to her motherland and move to an alien land to serve her Jesus. 

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the Albanian history, Part 2 deals with Mother’s Albanian roots and Part 3 is about her life in India and rise to sainthood.

Mother Teresa was born on the eve of the Albanian independence from the Ottomans, which was proclaimed on the 28th of November, 1912. She was named Gonxhe. Later she was given the baptismal name Agnes. The author goes into a lengthy explanation on why naming their daughter Gonxhe was an act of defiance on the part of her parents and why Agnes was chosen as her baptismal name. He even quotes a letter written by a Parish priest in Skopje, where he addresses her as Gonxhe atleast four times. 

If anything, this is indicative of the depth of research undertaken by the author and the diverse records and documents he has delved into to thread thread the story of the saint and her nation. The author repeatedly refers to the phrase ‘dark night of the soul’ that he found in Mother’s private writings released released after the year 2000. This phrase is a euphemism for doubt in God’s existence. Alpione uses the term spiritual aridity to explain Mother’s state of mind. At one place he writes that in Mother’s heart there played a duality between unflinching love for Jesus and doubt about God. 

In 1922 Mother Teresa told her mother that she wanted to become a nun. She referred to this as a ‘first call’ from God. Alpione argues that this prescient moment should not be seen exclusively through a religious lens. He argues that behind the teenager’s decision lay the tragic, violent and untimely death of her father. She found in Jesus a Father who would never abandon her. Her decision to leave for India sprang from violence and discrimination she experienced in Skopje:

The ongoing discrimination and victimization of ethnic Albanians in Skopje by Yugoslav authorities during her first eighteen years, could not have escaped the attention of this sensitive young woman. Nor could she have failed to notice the ongoing persecution of Albanian Catholic priests that intensified in the late 1920s.  

For Gonxhe Agnes, going away was a must. Her very survival depended on breaking free. 

In India, discrimination did not leave her. She was discriminated against by the Irish Loreto nuns – as revealed in her private writings made public after 2000; she was not given teaching assignments in the prestigious Loreto schools or Loreto College. Instead, she was assigned to St. Mary’s School in one corner of the sprawling campus of Loreto Entally. In this school Indian nuns taught in Bengali. The students constituted grils from poor homes, many of them from the slums in the neighbourhood of Loreto Entally. 

Sister Teresa got her second calling in 1946, when she was 38 years old. This was a calling to start her own order of nuns, Missionaries of Charity. In the last chapter of the book ‘Skanderberg and Mother Teresa: Two Unlikely Albanian Heroes’, the author draws parallels between Mother and a fifteenth century Albanian military man. The chapter begins with a quote from Mother’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1979, where she said ‘by blood and origin I am all Albanian’. The author writes:

Before this moment she is not known to have mentioned in public that she was Albanian. She also never reiterated this aspect of her identity thereafter.

Having written this, the author foregrounds Mother’s Albanian roots, first by comparing her with the Albanian hero Skanderbeg and then by recounting Mother’s visit to Albania in 1989, when Albania was still under Communist regime and later her subsequent visits to her motherland. After the 1979 Nobel Prize, the Albanians started taking pride in Mother’s Albanian roots and started projecting her as a national hero, like Skanderberg. The author informs us that the Albanian Govt even wanted to bring Mother’s remains back to her motherland, but the Govt of India vehemently opposed. 

Mother’s missionary activities in India are not the subject of this book. But what the book offers is a detailed history of the Albanian nation – something that has fallen off the radar of world historians. Indian readers are barely aware of Mother’s Albanian roots because Mother never reminded us of her roots. But this book forcefully establishes Mother’s Albanian identity and persuades its readers to view Mother in a very different light. Gezim Alpion steers clear of journalistic sensationalization or hagiographic deification. His academic objectivity and arguments based on irrefutable evidence deserves applause and the book deserves a close reading and reading between the lines by Mother’s admirers and critics alike.