“THE MOST OBEDIENT WOMAN IN THE CHURCH” 125flattering, portraying her as demanding and egotistical. This was only por-
tent of what lay ahead.HELL’S ANGEL
On November 8, 1994, the switchboard operator at the British tele-
vision station Channel Four was bombarded by over 200 calls. Many of
the callers were irate viewers who had just finished watching a half-hour
film called Hell’s Angel,produced by Pakistani-born Tariq Ali, a noted and
controversial author and broadcaster. The angel was Mother Teresa, and
the tempest surrounding the film, already generating controversy in pre-
views, showed no sign of cooling down soon.
The film, which featured journalist Christopher Hitchens, made some
accusations, many of which had been noted earlier by the British-born
Hitchens in his writings for such well-known publications as Vanity Fair
and the ultraliberal news magazine Nation.Among the many inflamma-
tory statements Hitchens made was that “Mother Teresa has an easy way
with thrones, dominions and powers,” and operated “as the roving ambas-
sador of [the] highly politicized papacy”^1 of Pope John Paul II. In addition,
Hitchens charged that Mother Teresa
lends spiritual solace to dictators and to wealthy exploiters,
which is scarcely the essence of simplicity, and she preaches
surrender and prostration to the poor, which a truly humble
person would barely have the nerve to do.... In a godless and
cynical age it may be inevitable that people will seek to praise
the self-effacing, the altruistic and the pure in heart. But only
a complete collapse of our critical faculties can explain the il-
lusion that such a person is manifested in the shape of a dema-
gogue, an obscurantist and a servant of earthly powers.^2The source of the film was actually Dr. Aroup Chatterjee, a Bengali physi-
cian living in London. Dr. Chatterjee, who was born and raised in Cal-
cutta, was dismayed at the discrepancy between Mother Teresa’s work and
the growing cult-like adulation of her in the West. In a letter written to
the production company Bandung, Dr. Chatterjee also stated that Mother
Teresa’s assets totaled more than those of many Third-World govern-
ments; and that in Calcutta, unlike the West, she was regarded as some-
thing of a nonentity. Chatterjee’s greatest objection, though, was in how
closely intertwined Mother Teresa’s work and identity were with Cal-
cutta, another misconception on the part of the West. Chatterjee pointed