In between the revocation and the subsequent restoration of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration of the Missionaries of Charity (MoC), the foreign paid stooges in the media and the civil society groups used up all negative adjectives to define what they believe is a fascist government in Bharat. The best thing about putting allegations against the government is that it can be devoid of reason, merit and logic but can still sound convincing. This stems from the fact that many believe that the government is prima facie oppressive.
This was also the case when there was a hue and cry around the revocation of FCRA registration of MoC. It is an open secret that foreign-funded NGOs are often used for spreading propaganda or are involved in activities, which are averse to national interest. Many NGO licences have been revoked in the last seven years due to the lack of transparency on their part. However, the revocation of FCRA registration stands on a different ground. The government in an official statement mentioned that it cancelled the FCRA licence of Missionaries of Charity after receiving some “adverse inputs”.
According to media reports, the ‘adverse input’ was flagged due to discrepancy in land purchase audit. However, the main issue was a criminal case registered against its Ranchi shelter home ‘Nirmal Hriday’ accusing staff members of selling babies to childless couples. Later, Sister Consalia, a nun of ‘Nirmal Hriday’, confessed to selling three children for money and giving away the fourth child.
But this was not an incident in silo. In December 2021, an institute run by Missionaries of Charity in Makarpura, Vadodara was booked for forcibly converting young girls of the institute. The Missionaries of Charity have often been accused of actually being Missionaries of Conversion, which promotes conversion under the disguise of charity. In 2019, BJP MLA Nishikant Dubey, while demanding a CBI probe in the matter, accused Missionaries of Charity of running a conversion machinery in Jharkhand and illegally sending children abroad for adoption. Even earlier in 2015, the RSS Sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat, cautioned against the practices by the Missionaries of Charity. All these incidents highlight their gloomy track record. But the hue and cry that followed after the revocation of FCRA licence of Missionaries of Charity was a perfect example of how a perpetrator can play a victim card. Hired paid stooges wrote verbose articles about how Christianity was in danger by the Hindutva forces while turning a blind eye to blatant facts. The core of the article revolved around two major themes namely ‘Mother Teresa’s NGO’ and ‘nuns not being able to help the poor’. The aim was to leverage the global fame of ‘Mother Teresa’ and the charity done by her NGO. Let’s explore a little more about Mother Teresa and the work of Christian missions and missionaries in Bharat.
Mother Teresa was acclaimed for being the mascot of humanity. She is widely regarded as the messiah who valued human life over and above everything else. The garlanding of her character with best adjectives is put forth in major school textbooks across Bharat. That is all there in the open. Let’s understand some of the hidden aspects of her life. Christopher Hitchens, a well renowned British author and columnist defined Mother Teresa as a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud. He further said she was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. Hitchens while exposing the duplicity of Teresa focussed on her friendship with the elite dictators and fraudsters. He cited her friendship with shady people from the business and political community like ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, Charles Keating and Robert Maxwell. He also highlighted the anti-abortion stand of Mother Teresa and wrote, “She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money”. These aspects of Mother Teresa’s life are never highlighted. We need to also assess these facets of her life while building her image. Questions need to be raised on whether she was actually the saint she was made out to be or is it more whitewashing her image to hide all the wrong associated with her and the controversial principles of Christianity. Also, what remains unnoticed is that Mother Teresa was a missionary in Bharat who founded the missionaries of Charity as a Roman Catholic religious congregation. To understand more, let’s look at how missionaries function and what is their end goal.
Christian missionaries are the most prolific missionaries in the world. Their sole agenda is to convert and bring people to Christian faith. Christian missionaries cite a passage from the Book of Matthew in the Bible in which Jesus asks his followers to “make disciples of all nations”. Not only this the Bible has multiple such verses on promotion of conversion like in Acts 2:38, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” or Mark 16:16 “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned”.
According to David Hollinger, retired professor emeritus at the University of California “Evangelicals are still proselytising [trying to convert], but they’re now also building hospitals and schools.” According to the data of the church its missionaries baptised 233,729 new converts in 2017. The aim and agenda of Christian missionaries is the same in Bharat. Chakali Chandra Sekhar in his article In Search of a Touchable Body: Christian Mission and Dalit Conversions, while praising the emancipation received by Dalits after conversion mentioned that “It needs to be remembered that the missionaries’ aim was not to abolish caste but to develop Christianity”. Kawashima Koji while studying the Missionary activities during the British Raj mentions that ‘Missionaries were certainly sensitive to the attitudes of the Hindus, especially those of the higher castes. This was because the higher castes were the important target of their proselytising activities”.
Christian conversion practices were very rampant even in the colonial era. The Goa inquisition by the Portuguese is one the bloodiest chapters in the Bharat’s history where individuals were burnt, their limbs were cut, by missionaries through a religious decree under the order of the Church. The Christian Missionaries are exclusivist in nature and have utter disregard for other faiths and practices. Contemporary Bharatiya Christian missionaries take up conversion as the main goal as they believe Christianity is the only salvific faith and it is their duty to convert people to this faith who will otherwise be condemned to eternal damnation. Bharat is still an ‘unfinished task’ for the evangelical churches the world over and the organisations such as Missionaries of Charity are focused on conversion in Bharat. Thus, we cannot look at organisations such as Missionaries of Charity independent of the purpose they are meant to serve. Christian missions and missionaries aim to convert people to Christianity. The ways and means can be noble but there is no deniability of the end goal which focuses on bringing people to Christian faith.
The intellectual stooges hide these facts from the public eye and focus on the narrative of ‘nuns not being able to serve the poor’ if organisations such as Missionaries of Charity are not registered under FCRA. The truth is far from this as the goal is to convert. Also, they continuously equate a ban on Missionaries of Charity as an attempt to hurt Christian sentiments. This is far from the truth. Banning Missionaries of Charity in no way affects the peace loving Christians of Bharat who are involved in their daily chores and working hard to make a living. It is in fact a direct hit on the foreign forces who want to change the demography of Bharat through their proselytizing agenda. The fact remains that Missionaries of Charity work under the missionary vision of the Church. Bharat is a nation where Sewa or selfless service for humanity is revered and respected for decades. The same Sangh Parivar, which is often unnecessarily criticised by the paid stooges, does year round Sewa. A picture of it was also visible during the height of the pandemic. Lakhs of Swayamsewaks were on ground helping the needy with a spirit of Sewa. Sewa is their primary Dharma. They don’t aim or expect conversion in return. Running conversion machinery under the disguise of charity does in no way help the poor and destitute and in no way can be termed as Sewa. It in fact focuses on converting people through food and shelter. This is not called charity, this is called proselytization.
<strong>The author is executive CCO Vishwa Samvad Kendra, Mumbai, and Advisor, VESIM Literati Festival Mumbai, Khajuraho Literature Festival & Prabuddha Bharat Belagavi. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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