Mother Teresa: a biography

THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN
The India that Mother Teresa came to was no longer the bright and
glittering jewel in the British Empire’s crown. By 1929, the British had
been in India for a little over three centuries and had governed it exclu-
sively for over 70 years. Now in the early years of the twentieth century, a
growing unrest among Indian natives for self-government was increasing
and British control over its largest colony was waning.
The British presence in India is a long and dramatic story. Beginning in
the late fifteenth century with the early sea voyages of Portuguese ex-
plorer Vasco da Gama, India became a prized possession eagerly sought by
many European countries. The Portuguese were the first to claim India,
her people, and her natural resources for their own. Over the next two
centuries, the Dutch, British, and French challenged the Portuguese for
the Indian trade.
Of all the European nations to lay claim to India, Britain eventually
won and stayed. Beginning in 1600, with the creation of the British East
India Company, the British established trading posts in the key cities of
Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. Despite an encroaching French presence,
the English held fast. By 1757, the British had established a strong
foothold in the country.
What began as a trading empire gradually grew into political rule. That
the conquest came about as the result of a private trading company en-
gaging in conflict chiefly through the use of native Indian soldiers, known
as Sepoys, seemed to matter little. By 1849, the rule of the British East
India Company was extended over virtually the whole of the subconti-
nent by conquest or treaties.
Despite the use of natives as soldiers, the British took a rather high-
handed approach to their new possession. Missionaries introduced Chris-
tianity and English customs, but not all Indians were eager to give up their
traditional ways. As a result, a great wave of unrest began building, and
exploded in 1857, when a rumor was circulated among the company’s In-
dian soldiers that the rifle cartridge-papers they had to tear with their
teeth were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. The cow is sacred to Hin-
dus, and the pig is abhorred by Muslims. The rumor provoked the great
Sepoy Revolt, or Indian Mutiny, of 1857 in which hundreds of British
were killed. By the time the mutiny was quelled, the East India Company
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M O T H E R T E R E S A

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no longer controlled British India, and a year later, the British Crown
took over the administration. Almost two decades later, in 1876, Parlia-
ment ruled that India should be designated part of the British empire; the
following year Queen Victoria was crowned empress of India.