Washington Post: Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic missionary who became an international icon for her charitable work, has been dropped into modern India’s religious debate after the head of the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) criticized the intentions behind her work.
“It’s good to work for a cause with selfless intentions. But Mother Teresa’s work had ulterior motive, which was to convert the person who was being served to Christianity,” RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said at the opening of an orphanage in Rajasthan state on Monday, the Times of India reports. “In the name of service, religious conversions were made. This was followed by other institutes, too.”
Bhagwat’s comments caused a storm among opposition politicians, angered by the implication that a woman who won a Nobel Peace Prize for her work in India would have had ulterior motives. Congress party official Rajiv Shukla demanded an apology while the newly elected Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, said Teresa was a “noble soul” and asked RSS to spare her.
This controversy about Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, is far from her first. Her saintly reputation (she is quite literally on the path to sainthood – she was beatified in 2003) was gained for aiding Calcutta’s poorest of the poor, yet it was undercut by persistent allegations of misuse of funds, poor medical treatments and religious evangelicalism in the institutions she founded.
Categories: Asia, Behaviour, Belief, Bible, Catholic Church, Catholicism, Church, Double Standard, India
When the Government of Arunachal Preadesh enacted Religious conversion Regulation Act- all conversion must be intimated to the local Revenue Officer and get no objection certificate -minor could not convert his/her religion – Therasa had become furious.She met Prime Minister Mr.Moraji Desai and said that No conversion No Missionary work and she boldly closed all her Instituion all over Arunachal Pradesh.Service as a trap to increase the membership to Calothic church is no service, But business.
So R.S.S. chief is quite correct.