Aroup Chatterjee

Aroup Chatterjee (born 23 June 1958) is a British Indian author and physician. He was born in Calcutta, and moved to the United Kingdom in 1985. He is the author of the book Mother Teresa: The Untold Story (originally published as Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict), a work which challenges the widespread regard of Mother Teresa as a symbol of philanthropy and selflessness.

Chatterjee's criticism inspired the documentary Hell's Angel that was shown on Channel 4, a British television channel. The documentary was written by a well-known critic of Mother Teresa, Christopher Hitchens, who co-produced it with journalist and filmmaker Tariq Ali. Chatterjee and Hitchens were the two Devil's advocates, or hostile witnesses to Catholic Church procedures for the beatification of Mother Teresa in 2003. and raised in the city of Calcutta, West Bengal, India, before moving to the United Kingdom in 1985. In the 1970s and 1980s while studying at Calcutta Medical College he worked part-time for a left-wing political party campaigning against poverty and later worked at a hospital where he regularly treated patients from the oldest and poorest districts of the city as well as refugees from the civil war with what is now Bangladesh. However it was this image at odds with his own experience as a doctor in Calcutta that caused him to look more closely at her work and reputation.I was mystified and perturbed. So I wanted to look into it ... still I thought she was a superb lady who was not faultless, but somehow, this image of Calcutta had permeated the world imagery. I thought it was probably a kind of offshoot or a corollary of her image and it was not her doing. In February 1993, Chatterjee sent a proposal for a short documentary to Vanya Del Borgo, associate producer of Bandung Productions which was owned by Tariq Ali. The proposal was passed to a Channel 4 commissioner who approved it, and Del Borgo with Chatterjee's proposal began work, approaching journalist and author Christopher Hitchens to write and present it. Chatterjee found the documentary "too sensationalist" and Hitchens went on to write his book The Missionary Position. Chatterjee spent the next year travelling and interviewing people who had worked closely with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity and began to campaign against the conditions in Nirmal Hriday, also known as the Kalighat Home for the Dying in Calcutta. the absence of any pain medication and the frequent reuse of hypodermic needles. Chatterjee says in addition to the hours of interviews, "I started in pre Internet days and I spent months in libraries in London. I also travelled the world researching it. I followed slum dwellers, beggars, destitute children with a video camera. I interviewed hundreds of people. I stood with video camera outside Teresa's home for hours."

Following the publication of his book, Chatterjee continued to speak out against what he calls the "bogus and fantastic figure" of Mother Teresa, the non-consensual death bed baptisms of Hindus and Muslims, the pathetic hygienic practices in the homes run by her, her very limited connections with Kolkata and the masses and the vast amount of financial donations given to the charity but not spent at Nirmal Hriday. He covers her Nobel Peace Prize and the speech in which she claimed to have saved tens of thousands of destitute people; Chatterjee estimates in his book the real number was 700. along with her personal crusade against abortion and contraception. A review by Tim Challies praised the extensive documentation in the book, consisting of multitude of examples, though noting the shoddy organizing, as a result of being self-published. The far-left Socialist Review favourably received it as "a valuable contribution to unmasking the real Teresa".

The Telegraph praised the 2016 reprint as a brutally honest and relentlessly scathing read which gives readers an impartial point of view. A review in The Quint described it as a disconcerting book that had exhaustive details and consisted of laborious arguments though parts of it did appear to be inarticulate rants and failed to be objective. In order to begin the requirements of beatification, the first step on the way to sainthood, the Catholic Church was required to announce a first miracle ascribed to Mother Teresa, which it did on 1 December 2002, the alleged miraculous cure of Monica Besra of a cyst caused by tuberculosis. Initially both Besra as did Prabir Ghosh from the Kolkata Humanist Association, who runs a programme raising awareness of holy men who dupe ordinary Indians into paying for supposed miracle cures. During the process, the Catholic Church allows consultation with doubters where the miracle is contested. In his book, Chatterjee details his deposition to the committee, his correspondence with the official postulator Brian Kolodiejchuk, and the transcripts of his questions and answers.