First came a note issued by Mother Superior Prema which said, inter alia, “We would like to clarify that the FCRA registration has been neither suspended nor cancelled. We have been informed that our FCRA renewal application has not been approved. Therefore, as a measure to ensure that there is no lapse, we have asked our centres not to operate any of the FCRA accounts until the matter is resolved.” The Press Information Bureau of the central government issued a statement saying the “State Bank of India informed that the Missionaries of Charity itself sent a request to SBI to freeze its accounts. No request / revision application has been received from Missionaries of Charity for review of refusal of renewal.” It does not take the brains of an Einstein to see how the two statements play out. TMC leader O’Brien was quite right in dismissing the government statement as a damage control exercise. This refusal of the government to renew the FCRA citing “adverse remarks” stigmatises not just the institutions of the Missionaries of Charity but the name of Mother St Teresa, who is revered not just by Catholics, but by vast numbers of people from all religious communities, and even the Communists of her home state of West Bengal. The Mother had anyway been a target of vilification by the Sangh Parivar, the ideological parent of the Bharatiya Janata party which is in power in India with Narendra Modi as Prime minister. Even in the past, police and central organisations had tried to arrest Missionaries of Charity sisters on such charges as trafficking in children. All charges were false. The government and the ruling party are also seemingly sending a message to the Christian community. Christians have made common cause with civil society and with the Muslims, who are the principal victims of government and political pressure on violations if civil liberties, freedom of expression and freedom of religion. On its own issues, the community succeeded in gathering civil society to make strong protests against the anti-conversion law being brought in the Karnataka. The Vajpayee and Modi governments at the centre and BJP governments in the states have long wanted the church to stop all social outreach work that empowers the people, specially the poor and the Adivasis. The Adivasis resist their natural resources including the firsts where they dwell to be sold off to corporations. And what did these ‘adverse reports’ presumably by the Intelligence Bureau, also under the MHA, and the Enforcement Directorate under Finance ministry, have to say? Did they discover anti national activities, acts of treason or conspiracies to go assassinate someone? Mother Teresa’s Sister pose no threat to anyone in India or the world. The tiny Christian community, just 2.3 per cent of the population, also poses no threat to anyone. The Nuns and MC Brothers do not run plush schools or private universities that earn in the millions of dollars. Nor are not funded by the government or its agencies. They run homes for new-born infants abandoned and left on the streets and garbage dumps by our own young women and men. They run homes for afflicted young that no government or charitable orphanage would willingly care. And they nurse the destitute and dying, lending some dignity to their passage. The Nuns and brothers get no salary, but they do have staff members — driver and cooks and others — who need to be paid a salary, and there are medicines and foodstuff to be bought. This FCRA ban is tantamount to starving them, and torturing the children and old in their care, to bring them to submission. And yet they have been targeted often. In Jharkhand, the Missionaries of Charity had faced persecution, and now another state is hounding two sisters on charges of conversion of some such trumped up allegation. Sisters faced physical violence in the Kandhamal district of the state of Orissa in 2008 during the anti-Christian mass violence in which over 390 churches and 5,600 houses or more were destroyed. Fortunately, no sister was injured though several Catholic and protestant priests were killed.
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