Licence application of Missionaries of Charity is rejected on Christmas day amid a wave of anti-Christian sentiment
\n New Delhi
\nThe Indian government has blocked Mother Teresa\u2019s charity from receiving funds from abroad, just days after it faced a police investigation for \u201churting religious sentiments of Hindus\u201d amid rising intolerance towards Christians in India.
\nThe Missionaries of Charity, which was started by Mother Teresa in 1950 and runs a network of shelters across India led by nuns to help the poor, was denied the licence to continue to receive funds from abroad, cutting the charity off from vital resources.
\nThe home ministry, which made the decision on Christmas Day, said it had come across \u201cadverse inputs\u201d when considering the application.
\nThe rejection of the application comes less than two weeks after Hindu hardliners accused the charity of carrying out forced conversions of Hindus to Christianity in a home for girls it runs in Vadodara in the state of Gujarat.
\nThe accusations, which the charity fiercely denies, were that the charity was \u201cluring\u201d poor young Hindu women into becoming Christian by forcing them to read Christian texts and take part in Christian prayer.
\n\u201cThe institution has been involved in activities to hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus intentionally and with bitterness,\u201d a report filed to the police alleged.
\n\u201cThe girls inside the Home for Girls are being lured to adopt Christianity by making them wear the cross around their neck and also placing the Bible on the table of the storeroom used by the girls, in order to compel them to read the Bible \u2026 It is an attempted crime to force religious conversion upon the girls.\u201d
\nA spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity rejected all the allegations as unfounded. \u201cWe have not converted anyone or forced anyone to marry into Christian faith,\u201d he said.
\nThe accusation come amid a wave of anti-Christian intolerance and violence that has been spreading across India, with rightwing Hindu nationalist groups accusing Christians of forcing Hindus to convert against their will, or through bribes.
\nChristian pastors have been attacked and church services violently disrupted in recent months as anti-Christian hysteria has grown, and over Christmas there was an unprecedented spate of attacks against the Christian community, including the vandalising of a statue of Jesus Christ.
\nThe refusal by the government, which is ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), to grant a new licence to Mother Teresa\u2019s charity has been seen by many as indicative of a growing hostility towards Christian organisations operating in India.
\nIn recent years, the BJP government, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has put a tight rein on NGOs receiving foreign funding, particularly those that have been critical of the government, and both Greenpeace and Amnesty International are among those who have had their accounts frozen by the government.
\nIn a statement on Monday, the Missionaries of Charity confirmed that its renewal application had been denied, and that it would not operate any foreign funding accounts \u201cuntil the matter is resolved\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Licence application of Missionaries of Charity is rejected on Christmas day amid a wave of anti-Christian sentiment New Delhi The Indian government has blocked Mother Teresa\u2019s charity from receiving funds from abroad, just days after it faced a police investigation for \u201churting religious sentiments of Hindus\u201d amid rising intolerance towards Christians in India. The Missionaries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1085,337,2282,195,2283],"class_list":{"0":"post-235540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-abroad","9":"tag-ban","10":"tag-charity","11":"tag-india","12":"tag-mother-teresa"},"yoast_head":"\n