Does Mother Teresa deserve her reputation as the kindest, purest person of all time, or was she history's most over-rated phenomenon?

Media built her up no doubt, but the author alleges that that she herself was the source of much of the misinformation surrounding her. He documents that Mother Teresa used spurious statistics and made exaggerated and unfounded claims throughout her life, including in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

An entrenched hatred of artificial contraception and abortion (for any reason, including rape, child-abuse and incest) was her psychological driving force. She used the poor as pawns in her ambition, much of it being political, and driven by the Vatican. She has been called a lover of poverty, rather than the poor. She glorified poverty and suffering, but for others. She herself received the best medical care possible; in Calcutta she used the exclusive Woodlands Clinic and Birla Heart Institute. But residents at her home for the dying in Calcutta received neither treatment nor dignity.

Mother Teresa maintained an obsessive secrecy about her accounts and declined to publish them, possibly because most of her money was spent on religious rather than charitable activities. She wrote a letter to an American judge to exonerate Charles Keating, the biggest documented fraudster in US history. Keating gave her millions and also lent her his private jet.

The author says that Mother Teresa harmed Calcutta irreparably and seriously damaged the city's economic prospects. The city's dent in reputation through her association is not compensated by the modest level of charity she performed there. Chatterjee maintains that a large section of Indians, especially the rich and powerful was enthralled by and connived with her. Indians generally, still burdened with psychological colonialism, capitulated before her. Calcuttans did not protest at their city's calumny because of the Indian pusillanimity before the white man, and the fear of ruffling Western feathers.

Although professing to be tolerant towards other religions, she has been captured on video (at the Scripps Clinic, California) gloating about secretive conversion of dying people.

This book reveals the REAL Teresa. It is also a vivid account of the power of the media, of East-West interaction - to do with the syndrome of the white man's burden and Eastern vulnerability and insecurity.

Aroup Chatterjee now lives and works in England. He has lived in Calcutta most of his life. He is an atheist.

He has worked on this book for over eight years.

Contains vivid photographs. About 425 pages.