Issues - Nation (NL January 16-31,'22 )

By A.J. Philip

Missionaries of Charity About-turn by government

When the Christians of Kandhamal in Odisha were persecuted, I visited the district and many Christian, especially Catholic, institutions. There, I met a nun who belonged to the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Saint Teresa of Kolkata. She and another sister were managing a health centre in a forest area in the same district.
It was only a few weeks since she returned from Baghdad in Iraq where she was posted. Naturally enough, my questions were more about her stay in the Iraqi Capital. I wanted to know how the Iraqi government and the ordinary Iraqis treated the sisters.
Their centre was not very far from the city centre and their job was to look after infants below the age of 3. Most of the children were orphans, as their parents were killed in the war. Once they attained the age of 3, they would be shifted to a government facility. The Iraqi government did not pay them anything for their services. Then, how did they manage to run the centre?
As the sister told me, if there was any problem, it was a problem of plenty. On Fridays, when all offices were closed, many Iraqis, including Army and police officers, would visit the Centre. They never came empty-handed. They brought all the items they needed like grains, pulses, sanitary and stationery items. If they were short of anything, they would supply the same.
What’s more, the Iraqi people gave them a lot of love and respect. They never forgot to thank the sisters for looking after the babies. The sisters saw in every child the image of the child born in a manger in Bethlehem two millennia earlier. She rated her posting at Baghdad as one of the most happiest, though she would often hear sounds of bomb blasts and shooting.
Now, back in India, the Missionaries of Charity are facing an existential crisis. The Sangh Parivar has never reconciled itself to Mahatma Gandhi’s stature but it cannot do much about it as statesmen after statesmen welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi to their country as the “leader of Gandhi’s India.”
Of course, they let Sants and Sanyasins to denigrate Gandhi in public. Modi has successfully converted him into a symbol of toilets. The Prime Minister does not know that cleanliness of the heart mattered more to Gandhi than cleanliness of the environment.
Gandhi knew that if the heart was clean, everything else would fall in place. Saint Teresa’s popularity outside of India is second only to that of Gandhi. This is something which the Parivar has not been able to reconcile itself to. It has never missed an opportunity to show the Saint in a poor light.
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had once said that whatever Mother Teresa did was to convert her beneficiaries into Christians.
But such allegations were dismissed by most people because no one else can do what her nuns alone could do. Once when the then Chief Minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu praised her in public, a party member questioned him.
What Basu said while answering the comrade is valid even today: “When my party colleagues are able to look after the destitute and the dying like the Mother and her sisters, I will stop praising them.” That silenced his party colleague once and for all.
Sangh Parivar journals like the Organiser and the Panchjanya frequently carry articles to denigrate her and her work. When she died, she was accorded a state funeral. It was IK Gujral who was the Prime Minister at that time.
One of the most beautiful moments of my life was when I stood on the terrace of the Vatican, watched and photographed Pope Francis canonising Saint Teresa of Kolkata. From the vantage position, I could see the late Union Minister Sushama Swaraj representing the Government of India in the VIP enclosure.
A few years ago, they tried to harass the sisters for an unfortunate incident that happened in one of their centres in Jharkhand. A woman associated with the centre had an unholy business deal and the government used it to drive the sisters to a corner. Today, the BJP is not in power in the state.
What the government did was to cancel its bank account under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). Only those NGOs or persons who have an FCRA account can receive funds from foreign sources. A few years ago, I was invited to give a sermon at the Mar Thoma Church in Houston, Texas, USA.
As is its practice, the church gave me a cheque for $100. I wanted the cheque to be in the name of an organisation of which I was the Chief Executive. I deposited the cheque in my account.
No, it was not credited into my account. In fact, the cheque was returned to me saying that an individual could have given me a gift but not an institution like the church. When I returned the cheque to the Houston church, it sent a bigger cheque for $150 in the name of my organisation which had an FCRA account.
When we open bank accounts, they are meant to last the account holder’s lifetime. The FCRA account was like those accounts. It was for perpetuity, unless it was cancelled for violations. After Modi returned to power in 2019, it has made it mandatory for the FCRA account holders to apply for renewal of their accounts from time to time.
Not only that, it has also imposed new conditions. For instance, every NGO in the country has to open an FCRA account at the Parliament Street Branch of the State Bank of India. The rules for utilization of foreign funds have also been drastically changed.
In the case of the Missionaries of Charity, their FCRA account which was valid till October 31, 2021, and which was extended to December 31, 2021, had become invalid as it was not renewed. That is why the bishop of Kolkata described the cancellation as the Modi government’s new year gift to the Missionaries of Charity.
Till the time of writing, the government has not clarified why the FCRA licence was not renewed. It says the cancellation was on the basis of some “input” received. What was the input? Who gave the input? What has been the MC’s response to the input? None of these questions has been answered. Nor will ever be answered.
It was the same strategy that was employed when Jesuit Stan Swamy was arrested and “killed” in custody. Now it is well-known that some evidence was created in his laptop to take him into custody. One report said that about 22,000 persons taken care of by the sisters would be badly affected.
I have seen a video of some government officials conducting a raid on a children’s home run by the Missionaries of Charity in Gujarat. The raiders were asking the stunned nuns why the Bible was kept there. They have been accused of converting the “inmates.” Was this the “input” that went against the congregation?
You and I may be worried about the 22,000 persons but the government is not. Priyank Kanungo was re-appointed chairman of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). This gentleman is a former RSS functionary.
Last year, he issued a controversial order asking for the closing down of all the children’s homes in the country within one year. The homes were started to take care of children who did not have anyone to take care of them. Kanungo’s argument is that it is not the state’s responsibility to look after children. It is their parents who should look after them. The gentleman does not understand that if the homes are closed, thousands of children will be left on the roads like the cows wandering on the roads in Delhi.
For reasons I refrain from elaborating for want of space, the Modi government does not like NGOs, except those which are affiliated to the Sangh Parivar in one way or another.
It treats them as enemies. Missionaries of Charity is not the only one which had lost its FCRA account. In fact, there are thousands like Oxfam which are on the hit list.
Any NGO or whose functionary spoke against the government is on the hit list. I do not claim that all the NGOs are good. Even so the fact remains that there are tens of thousands of people who have received or are receiving benefits of their services. During last year’s Covid, the NGOs did greater service than the government.
The government wants the world to believe that it can look after the needs of its people and no NGOs are needed. Facts do not support such a claim. For instance, in 2017, the US was the top giver among 30 countries, including Germany, Britain and Japan.
In that year, the single largest recipient of foreign assistance was India. It received $4.2 billion, against $4.1 billion Turkey received. What a tragedy, the same government that receives so much foreign money wanted the Missionaries of Charity to close down all its operations for want of money!
Fortunately, the government’s decision shocked the common people. The Odisha Chief Minister was bold enough to open his purse strings to ensure that Saint Teresa’s orphanages and other centres would not suffer for want of money. People from abroad who used to contribute also began asking the government inconvenient questions.
All this forced the government to renew the Missionaries of Charity’s FCRA licence till December 31, 2026. As the saying goes, all’s well that ends well!