Remarks on Mother Teresa spark outrage

Published Feb 24, 2015

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New Delhi -

A Hindu leader's remarks that the main aim of Mother Teresa's charity work was converting the poor to Christianity triggered outrage in India on Tuesday.

Mohan Bhagwat, is the chief of the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of Premier Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.

“Mother Teresa's service would have been good. But it used to have one objective: to convert the person who was being helped, into a Christian,” Bhagwat said at a function on Monday.

“The question is not about conversion but if it's done in the name of service, then that service gets devalued,” he added.

Opposition politicians criticised the controversial comments in the parliament on Tuesday while Indians took to social media to protest.

“These comments have been made against an individual who is not just the country's but the world's legacy. No amount of condemnation can be enough,” Jyotiraditya Scindia, a leader from the Indian National Congress, said amid lawmakers crying “shame”.

The Congress demanded the BJP must apologise for the RSS but senior ministers said the government had nothing to do with the statement.

The remarks come days after Modi vowed to protect religious freedoms in India, following a string on attacks on Christian institutions in Delhi.

Mother Teresa, who was beatified in 2003, founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950, that runs hospitals, shelters and orphanages in many countries.

She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was given India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna.

“I worked with Mother Teresa for a few months in Kolkata. She was a noble soul. Pl spare her,” Delhi's chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said in a tweet.

“Mother Teresa's only motive was to serve the poor. Through all my years with her, I have not experienced or seen any kind of conversion. I am a Sikh,” Sunita Kumar, a spokeswoman for the Missionaries of Charity who started working with Mother Teresa in 1965, told broadcaster NDTV.

Sapa-dpa

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