The Indian government has barred the Missionaries of Charity from receiving foreign funding in the next step of a longstanding campaign against Christian and Islamic charitable groups by supporters of the ruling Hindu Nationalist movement. Members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) have accused the Missionaries, founded by Mother Teresa in 1950, of disguising proselytism amongst the countries poor as charitable works.
India’s Home ministry announced on Monday that it refused to renew the Missionaries of Charity’s registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act on Christmas Day, due to what the government termed “adverse inputs” in the relevant accounts. The Missionaries, who draw millions of pounds of foreign donations, will lose the right to funds held in foreign bank accounts on December 31 this year.
Contrary to initial reports by some opposition groups and Church figures, the Missionaries’ bank accounts were not frozen after the decision. Earlier this month, the religious order faced accusations that residents of a home for girls it runs in the state of Gujarat had been forced to convert to Christianity. Originally made by local members of the BJP, the complaint, passed to police, was vehemently denied by the Missionaries, who insisted they had never attempted forcible conversions.
The campaign against the Missionaries of Charity is the latest attack on religious minorities in India, where persecution has intensified dramatically since the election of a BJP administration in 2014. A combination of mob violence, vilification, police inaction, and what critics see as increasingly aggressive legislation targeting non-Hindus has led to Christian charities designating India as a global hotspot of anti-Christian attacks.
Several Christmas celebrations over the weekend were disrupted by Hindu nationalist activists, and in one incident an effigy of Santa Claus was set alight in a protest outside a church. The protest, held in Varanasi, PM Modi’s home constituency and the holiest city in Hinduism, concluded peacefully, unlike another protest, in Eastern Assam, where nationalist protestors forced their way inside a local church. Hindu nationalists are concerned about the spread of Christianity and Islam within India, especially through marriage, with several BJP-controlled states having passed or strongly considering laws against so-called “love jihad”, an alleged policy on the part of some Indian Muslims of forcible conversion via marriage.
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