For 65 years the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, have worked in India with the poorest of the poor. Now their work on adoption is threatened by new guidelines in a row that embraces matters of faith, nationalism and politic For many people in India, Christian or not, to criticise the Missionaries of Charity (MC) is to tread on sacred ground. The international approbation of the order is encapsulated in the conferring of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, and India’s highest honour, the Bharat Ratna in 1980, on the woman who founded the order in 1950, Mother Teresa. Such accolades bring resentment, and over the years the MC have had to contend, in a country of 1.25 billion people that is 80 per cent Hindu, with accusations of proselytising. Particularly shocking, howe