ICC Note:

Hindu nationalists in India have renewed their smear campaign against the work of Mother Teresa. For many in India, Mother Teresa remains the “Saint of the Gutter” for the services she provided to the poorest of the poor. In June, a BJP leader claimed that Mother Teresa was a part of a conspiracy for the “Christianization of India” and that her work led to separatist movements across India’s northeast. False accusations against Mother Teresa are common from India’s Hindu nationalists who see her work for the people of India as a foreign influence that needs to be rejected. Unfortunately, within the BJP’s ruling government, this negative view of Mother Teresa and Christianity generally is widely held. 

8/2/2016 India (National Catholic Register) – The Church in India has ignored fresh attempts by Hindu fundamentalists to rake up a row by alleging that conversion was the “motive” behind Mother Teresa’s service to the “poorest of the poor.”

“They are known for making such baseless statements. This is nothing new,” Bishop Theodore Masceranhas, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, told the Register July 15 about the false reports about the “Saint of the Gutters” who founded the Missionaries of Charity.

Bishop Masceranhas was reacting to statements from key Hindu nationalist leaders calling into question the motive of Mother Teresa’s dedicated service to the needy and destitute as her Sept. 4 canonization draws near.

Yogi Adityanath, a senior member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the Indian Parliament, told a Hindu gathering on June 18, “Mother Teresa was part of a conspiracy for the Christianization of India.”

“Christianization has led to separatist movement in parts of northeast India, including the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland,” added Adityanath in his address in Uttar Pradesh state.

Another Bharatiya leader, Subramanian Swamy, endorsed Adityanath’s stance by saying such views were not “isolated.”

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