The missionary of charity

Sister Nirmala Joshi, who succeeded Mother Teresa as the head of the Missionaries of Charity founded by the Nobel laureate, died in Kolkata on Tuesday morning. She was 81. Born in Doranda, Ranchi in 1934 to a Brahmin soldier who moved to India from Nepal, Nirmala Joshi joined the Missionaries of Charity order at the age of 17 after converting to Christianity.

A Time profile said, when Nirmala Joshi’s parents, high-caste Hindu Brahmins from Nepal, put their daughter into a Catholic missionary school in the 1940s, their intention was just for her to pick up some English and arithmetic. For that privilege, Nirmala’s father, a devout Hindu, was willing to have her participate in Christian prayer sessions and Bible study.

What he had not expected was that his daughter would convert to Catholicism and dedicate her life to the service of the poor and the sick.

She was educated by Christian missionaries in Patna and had a master’s degree in political science and also trained as a lawyer before joining Mother Teresa’s order. A defining experience, she told Time, was the Partition of 1947, when colonial India was bifurcated, Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other by the tens of thousands, and millions of refugees were left homeless and dying.“There was so much killing,” Nirmala said to Time. “Everybody was just going mad. There was little compassion anywhere.”

She headed off to Calcutta, which was then packed with refugees from East Bengal. There, two Carmelite sisters directed her to Mother Teresa, who was spending her days tending to the poor and begging for funds to buy food and medicine for her mission. At 24, she was baptized by none other than Mother Teresa.“They did not want it but after 10 years, they came to know I was happy here. By that time, my younger sister also became a Catholic sister – she joined the Apostolic Carmel,” Sister Nirmala said in an interview.

The Mission

“She wanted me to help the poor. I had always wanted to study law before I received the faith. I never even told Mother but she knew,” Sister Nirmala added.

Sister Nirmala was one of the first sisters from the order to head a foreign mission in Panama. She later headed missions in Europe and in Washington DC in the United States. She became the first assistant to mother and head of the contemplative wing that was founded in 1979, according an Indian Express report, and remained as the head of the contemplative order till 1997, when she replaced Mother Teresa as the Superior General of the missionary. She was elected almost unanimously in a General Chapter. “Now I am happy,” Mother Teresa had said after her successor was announced in March 1997. She had been asking for years to be relieved of her duties of the charity mission she founded, according to a CNN World News report.

Casting doubts

“Mother Teresa can never be replaced. She is gifted with rare charisma that can never be acquired in one’s lifetime,” she had said.

Many had doubted that the missionary would survive after Mother Teresa’s death in 1997, but Sister Nirmala proved them wrong. The Charity grew stronger and is today active in 133 countries. Sister Nirmala had mentioned in an interview that it had been a challenge to take over from Mother Teresa.

“It is difficult if I look at myself – you know. The vastness of the responsibility, vastness of the work – it is difficult. Then I look at God. He gives me the strength. But we need challenges, don’t we?” she said.

The missionary was often under fire over allegations of proselytisation. But Sister Nirmala made it clear that the charity served everyone, irrespective of caste or religion and there were no forced conversions to Christianity. Sister Nirmala was bestowed with Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian award, on 26 January, 2009, for her services to the nation.

On 25 March, 2009, her term as Superior General of the order ended and she was succeeded by German-born Sister, Mary Prema Pierick.Journalists once asked Mother Teresa what made Sister Nirmala so exceptional, she had replied, “She is a Missionary of Charity.”

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