India bars foreign donations to group founded by Mother Teresa

In a sign of what Indian Christians see as growing harassment, foreign donations to a charity started by Mother Teresa have been banned.

Mother Teresa and Princess Diana in the Bronx in 1997

India’s government said it would bar donations from foreign donors to a Christian missionary group founded by the late Mother Teresa, threatening an important source of funding for the group’s programs to help impoverished Indians.

India’s Ministry of Home Affairs said it delivered the rejection on Christmas Day.

Authorities said they found unspecified “adverse inputs” when renewing the Missionaries of Charity’s application, and said the group no longer met eligibility requirements under the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act.

The decision came amid what some Christian leaders call an increasingly hostile environment for their religion in the majority-Hindu country now governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which has deep Hindu nationalist roots.

Bishop M. Jagjivan said last week that harassment of Christians had been on the rise and that the government increasingly rejected what were once routine foreign-funding approvals for Christian groups, forcing institutions, including church-run orphanages, to shut.

“They are thinking that opposing Christianity is patriotism,” said the bishop, who is a moderator of the National Christian Council, an organisation representing India’s Christian community. “This is not a healthy atmosphere.”

BJP spokesman Gaurav Bhatia declined to comment.

The Foreign Contribution Regulation Act became law in 2011 and was designed to regulate foreign donations to organisations operating in India.

The aim was to prevent foreign-funded groups from engaging in activities detrimental to what India’s government deems its national interests.

Amnesty International shut its India operations last year after it said the government froze the non-governmental organisation’s bank accounts. Greenpeace shut two of its offices in 2019 for the same reason.

Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, was born in Macedonia but became an Indian citizen and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her work in the slums of Kolkata.

She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. It has branches running hospices and orphanages around the world.

Mother Teresa was canonised by Pope Francis in 2016.

Sister M. Prema, Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, said the charity’s FCRA renewal application had not been approved and that it would stop operating any bank accounts with foreign contributions “until the matter is resolved”.

The Wall Street Journal