NEW DELHI (Web Desk) – The head of a prominent Hindu organisation came under criticism on Tuesday for remarks he made about Mother Teresa, in which he said the Nobel Peace laureate’s service to the poor had been motivated by a desire to convert them to Christianity.
Mohan Bhagwat, head of the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, made the televised remarks Monday at an inaugural ceremony for an orphanage and a home for impoverished women in the state of Rajasthan.
“There are no services like Mother Teresa’s here,” Bhagwat said, adding of the nun’s work that “there was a motive behind it — that those who are rendered the service should become Christian.”
“It is their question if somebody wants to convert and make someone Christian or not,” Bhagwat said. “But if that is done under the garb of service, then that service is devalued.”
Mother Teresa, an Albanian Roman Catholic nun, died in 1997 after spending most of her life ministering to the poor and sick in Calcutta, now called Kolkata. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her “work in bringing help to suffering humanity.”
Bhagwat’s remarks came less than a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a speech condemning religious violence, amid a growing sense of insecurity among India’s Catholics and other religious minorities.
Modi and his governing party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, have longstanding ties to Bhagwat’s organization, an offshoot of which was recently reported to have converted Muslims to Hinduism.
Opposition politicians criticized Bhagwat on Tuesday for his remarks. The new chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party, wrote on Twitter that he had briefly worked with Mother Teresa at an ashram in Kolkata. “She was a noble soul,” he wrote, adding, “Please spare her” (abbreviating the word “please”).
The Indian news media reported that opposition lawmakers had brought up Bhagwat’s statements in Parliament.
Sunita Kumar, a spokeswoman for Mother Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity, told the Indian news channel NDTV that Bhagwat was “ill-informed.”
“Bhagwat, her only motive was to serve the poor and give them love and care,” Ms Kumar said of Mother Teresa. She said the nun had received criticism for her work in India at a time when Christian missionary work was rapidly decreasing.
“For several years there was criticism, and her only reaction used to be, ‘Let’s pray for them,’ ” Ms Kumar said.
Bhagwat’s organization wrote on Twitter that his remarks had been in response to another person’s comment that Mother Teresa had done “seva,” or service to others, with conversion as her motive. Bhagwat replied, “let Mother Teresa know her motive for seva, we do seva without expecting any returns,” according to his organization.
Missionary work has long been a matter of controversy in India, even the work of Mother Teresa, who also faced criticism for making Kolkata famous for its poverty. Her Nobel prize was awarded after a period in which political leaders had taken measures to curb missionary work in the country and the number of missionaries had dwindled.
