ICC Note:

In a speech yesterday, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, praised the work of soon to be canonized Mother Teresa in India. This praise came as a shock to many of Modi’s Hindu nationalist followers who believe Mother Teresa was a part of a conspiracy to convert Hindus to Christianity. Hindu nationalists across India have long criticized and demonized the work of Christian NGOs in India. Often, these nationalists claim that Christians are not seeking to do work among the poor, but are trading services for conversions. This claim was even laid at Mother Teresa’s door during her work in Calcutta.  

8/29/2016 India (India Today) – For the first time in the history of the Sangh Parivar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a former RSS pracharak, yesterday praised the piety of Mother Teresa a week before she is to be canonized at the Vatican and declared a saint.

“As Indians we have to feel proud about the canonization of Bharat Ratna Mother Teresa. She had dedicated her life for the upliftment of the poor. She was an Albanian, and English language was not her mother tongue and yet she adopted it as her language and served the poor. A delegation under Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj will attend the canonization ceremony and pay respects to her,” Modi said in his Mann Ki Baat, to the astonishment of surprised RSS and Hindutva workers of the Sangh Parivar.

The RSS and its allied bodies have always believed that Christian missionary workers work for the poor only with a view to converting the non-Christians amongst them to Christianity. They have held Mother Teresa too in the same category. Even RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had said while inaugurating an orphanage in Bharatpur in Rajasthan in February 2015 that Mother Teresa’s service to the poor was good but her motive was conversion.

…