Mother Teresa: a biography

THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Nonviolent resistance to the British in India continued to grow. By
1939, anti-British feelings intensified as the Indian people watched
Britain once more plunge into hostilities with the Germans. The Parlia-
ment, as it had during World War I, declared a state of war with Germany
on behalf of the Indian people without consulting them.
The consequences of British actions were horrendous in India, result-
ing in the Great Famine of 1942–1943. The transportation system was
now taken over by the British military; even the small river crafts used to
deliver rice to Calcutta from the paddies of Bengal were pressed into ser-
vice. Burmese rice, which accounted for 10 percent of the staple food for
Bengal, was cut off, causing a shortage. The Indian government, preoccu-
pied by the war, saw the problem as one that needed to be solved locally.
Prices started to rise and both black marketers and money lenders pros-
pered. Poor families in the rural areas, depleted of their meager savings,
sold their land. With no food to eat, thousands fled the region for Cal-
cutta, flocking to the city’s already overburdened soup kitchens. Housing
for the poor was already overstretched, and thousands of people died in
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the streets everyday. Adding to the overcrowding and chaos were the
swarms of refuges fleeing the Japanese. The noise of the streets was si-
lenced only when people sought shelter from Japanese bombs. In the end,
the Great Famine claimed the lives of at least two million, though some
figures put the number of deaths closer to four or five million. The death
toll was so high, that the traditional funeral pyres lit for the dead, known
as
ghats,
never stopped burning in some areas.
The nuns at Entally felt the war’s effects, too. The number of war ba-
bies or small infants left at the doorsteps of Loreto multiplied. At one
point, Mother Teresa was faced with the problem of how to feed 24 babies
by bottle. Orphans fleeing the Japanese came to the convent and school
looking for refuge. The convent also opened its doors to other Catholic
missionaries escaping from the Japanese.
In time, the British requisitioned the Entally convent and school as a
British military hospital; the dormitories, which once housed orphans,
were now taken over by sick, wounded, and dying British soldiers. The
Sisters of Loreto evacuated, taking with them their students and other or-
phans, and relocated to hotels in Darjeeling, Shillong, and Lucknow.
Mother Teresa stayed in Calcutta in a building located on Convent Road.
There she continued to teach and care for her young charges.