It is Teachers’ Day once again! Significantly, the day also marks the Feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta (still lovingly called Mother Teresa). In 2012, the United Nations, as a fitting tribute to her, declared this day the International Day of Charity. A day pregnant with meaning—one that we must celebrate as meaningfully as possible.
Teachers’ Day is special! It is the birth anniversary of our late President Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975). Dr. Radhakrishnan was a great academic, philosopher, and statesman who was convinced that inclusive, pluralistic, and holistic education was the key to India’s meaningful development. He was a true visionary who transcended the pettiness, exclusivism, and hate in which our country is steeped today. An erudite scholar, his profound writings testify to his vision for India. Dr. Radhakrishnan would easily put most politicians of today to shame, for many of them seem to carry hate and violence in their very DNA.
Teachers, sadly, make the news today for all the wrong reasons. Recently in Ahmedabad, a schoolboy fatally stabbed another just outside the school premises after class hours. Evidence shows that the school management did all they could to save the wounded boy, but tragically they could not. What followed was disgraceful: a fundamentalist mob vented its anger on the school management and teachers, ransacking the school and beating the staff. They failed to realize that the primary duty of nurturing children lies with parents. This is not an isolated case but part of a disturbing pattern that shows how teachers today no longer command the respect they once did.
Education in India is in the doldrums. We no longer educate children to become men and women for others, to develop social responsibility, and above all, to become enlightened citizens of the country. A clear indicator of this decay is the huge rush of students going abroad for higher education—even to countries with mediocre education systems. In most parts of India, government education leaves much to be desired. The so-called National Education Policy (NEP) is manipulatively designed to cater to a particular section of society, leaving the poor and marginalized at the mercy of a system that prefers them half-educated and condemned to a life of servitude.
As education becomes increasingly commercialized, with value reduced to numerical achievements like “90% plus,” the very ethos of what education should mean to a child has been torn apart. The teacher’s role as guide, mentor, motivator, and inspirer has been greatly diminished. Today, teachers are no longer educators in the complete sense of the word. They are burdened with endless administrative responsibilities: survey work, data collection, election duties, and other government tasks that have little to do with their primary role of educating. This is unacceptable. Many teachers conveniently abandon their mission for more lucrative assignments, while countless students—especially those who can afford it—flock to expensive tuition classes after school. It has become an official racket of profiteers.
Mother Teresa was a teacher par excellence. Her first major responsibility in 1931, after joining the Loretto Congregation, was teaching at St. Mary’s Bengali Medium School for girls in Kolkata. She undertook this assignment with great love and dedication until 1948, when she left the Loretto Sisters to found the Missionaries of Charity.
From then on, there was no looking back. In word and witness, she proved herself a true teacher. She believed the poor children of the slums needed the 3Rs—reading, writing, and arithmetic—but more importantly, she taught the world the values of Jesus, her Master Teacher. Above all, she embodied Compassion. She lived it to the fullest—it was the one lesson she gave the world.
Mother Teresa’s defining characteristic was compassion. She radiated it as few humans could—her love for the marginalized and vulnerable, the excluded and exploited, the orphan and widow, the sick and aged, and especially the poorest of the poor and the dying destitute, was boundless. She gave without counting the cost. Her compassion drove her to found the Missionaries of Charity, and she often reminded the world of the need to love “the least of our sisters and brothers.”
She defined love as the willingness to “give until it hurts” and taught that compassion and service lie in small, everyday acts—like a smile. For her, true love meant empathy and connection, starting with family and extending to everyone. She insisted that the greatest poverty is the feeling of being unloved. Love, she said, is a fruit always in season—accessible to all—and it begins with small kindnesses that ripple outward. Compassion was her hallmark, her forte. As she once said: “In this life we cannot do great things; we can only do small things with great love.”
Today, we live in a world plagued by hate and violence, wars and conflicts, and the consistent demonization and discrimination of minorities and vulnerable groups. Lynchings, rapes, and murders have become the “new normal.” Our world desperately needs compassion—a compassion that reaches the unloved, the ostracized, the marginalized, and the vulnerable. A compassion that stands with the poor, the victims of injustice, refugees, and the displaced. A compassion that counters hate, racism, communalism, xenophobia, and exclusivism. In India today, we need the compassion Mother Teresa lived and taught more than ever before.
On 10 December 1979, in her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Mother Teresa said:
“I am sure this award is going to bring an understanding love between the rich and the poor. And this is what Jesus has insisted so much, that is why Jesus came to earth, to proclaim the good news to the poor. And through this award and through all of us gathered here together, we are wanting to proclaim the good news to the poor that God loves them, that we love them, that they are somebody to us, that they too have been created by the same loving hand of God, to love and to be loved. Our poor people are great people, very lovable people, they don’t need our pity and sympathy, they need our understanding love. They need our respect; they need that we treat them with dignity.”
On 4 September 2016, Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa as a saint at St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican. In his homily, he reminded the world of the importance of compassion:
“May this tireless worker of mercy help us to increasingly understand that our only criterion for action is gratuitous love, free from every ideology and all obligations, offered freely to everyone without distinction of language, culture, race, or religion. Mother Teresa loved to say, ‘Perhaps I don’t speak their language, but I can smile.’ Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer. In this way, we will open up opportunities of joy and hope for our many brothers and sisters who are discouraged and who stand in need of understanding and tenderness.”
Let us remember her words:
“Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own home. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next-door neighbor… Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting!”
Today, as we celebrate Saint Teresa of Calcutta, let us pray especially for all teachers and educators—and indeed for all citizens of our country. Mother Teresa was a teacher who truly lived and taught compassion. Do we have the courage to emulate her? From this moment on, let us do all we can to overwhelm our country and our world with compassion!
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(Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ is a human rights, reconciliation, and peace activist/writer
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