The order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa has moved to defend itself from “false news” and “baseless innuendos” after the government yesterday ordered all the country’s states to inspect all childcare homes run by the Kolkata-based order.
The women and child development minister, Maneka Gandhi, made the announcement on Monday as criticism of the nuns has intensified following the arrest on 5 July of an MoC nun and a staff member on suspicion of child trafficking. The two, Sister Concelia and Anima Indwar, worked at a home run by the order in Ranchi in eastern Jharkhand state. They were arrested following a complaint to police by the Ranchi unit of the government Child Welfare Committee. The superior of the MoC house, Sister Marie Deanne, was also detained by police, but was released after questioning the next day.
In a statement signed by the Superior General, Sister M Prema, and released today (17 July), the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) condemned the women’s alleged actions, and said the order was “fully cooperating with the investigations”.
Senior police officials on Sunday announced the last of four babies allegedly sold from the home for unwed mothers had been found. According to The Guardian, the alleged sale of the fourth baby had not been completed.
However Sister Prema’s statement criticised the response of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), which she said had, on the day of the arrests, demanded that the 11 mothers, one baby and one guardian in the home, Nirmal Hriday, leave immediately. Sister Prema regretted that the mothers “were subjected to the utmost humiliation and public embarrassment by the officials as they were carried [out] in full view of the media”. She also accused police of “raiding” a MoC home in nearby Hinoo and endangering the health of a baby who was among the 22 children there they took into the custody of CWC.
She also suggested that the sisters might have been able to ascertain that a baby born in their care had not been delivered to the CWC as arranged, if the CWC had had a practice of giving an acknowledgement to the home after obtaining custody of a child.
There are concerns that the scandal is being used to discredit the order and by extension, Christians in India at a time when non-Hindus are complaining of worsening discrimination and marginalisation. Speaking after the two arrests, Mamata Bannerjee, chief minister of West Bengal state, in whose capital Kolkata the order has its headquarters, accused Hindu nationalists of exploiting the allegations to “malign the name” of the order.
Bannerjee accused BJP politicians of using the actions of individuals to target the whole order, which she added was “highly condemnable”.
When asked to comment on the allegations against the nuns, she said: “If any individual committed some mistake you can take action, but you [BJP] cannot say Missionaries of Charity is bad,” the Times of India reported her as saying.
Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary-general of the Catholic bishops’ conference of India, told World Watch Monitor that when he visited the MoC convert in Ranchi last week, a sister there told him that Sr Concelia had been forced to sign on a blank [sheet of] paper, raising fears that police interrogators could extract a confession from her to present before a judge. Mascarenhas, a former auxiliary bishop in Ranchi, also said the Church had not been provided with the precise allegations against her.
The Republic, a major news channel sympathetic to the BJP, alleged that the number of babies missing from homes run by the order could be as many as 280, because that was the number of infants for whom it could not provide birth certificates, and branded the sisters a “multi-million corporation”. However, three days later, on Saturday, the channel abandoned its speculation and reported instead “three babies sold”.
Meanwhile, the Church has voiced concern that a video clip in which Sister Concelia apparently confesses to selling two babies, may have been made under duress. Although Jharkand police have denied leaking it to the media, the clip has gone viral.
The sisters ended their adoption work in India in 2015 after government reforms made it easier for single, divorced or separated people to adopt children.
There are an estimated 30 million orphans in India, but adopting is a lengthy and complicated process, and some couples opt to make use of the illegal adoption market.
Last year West Bengal police arrested the head of a Kolkata adoption agency on suspicion of selling 17 children to couples from Europe, America and Asia for between US$12,000 and US$23,000. Investigators said the children, aged between six months and 14 years, were taken out of the country, AFP reported.
The RSS, a Hindu nationalist umbrella organisation, asked the Indian government on 12 July to revoke the prestigious “Bharat Ratna” (Jewel of India) – India’s highest honour – which was conferred on Mother Teresa in 1980. Known as “saint of the gutters” she was awarded it a year after she was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize for her service to the poorest of the poor. Canonised in 2016, she is now revered by Catholics as St Teresa of Calcutta.
Asked for a response to the RSS’s demand, Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, replied: “What has this to do with Mother Teresa and the Bharat Ratna?”
After the arrests earlier this month, the order issued a brief statement which said: “We are shocked at such news, which totally goes against the value and ethics espoused by the Missionaries of Charity, the nuns and its founder. The MoC is looking into the allegations against the accused employees in Jharkhand with all seriousness.”
Bishop Mascarenhas added: “There has been a lapse at the MoC home. It should have never happened. The MoCs have admitted it.”
Nonetheless the head of the police in BJP-ruled Jharkhand has written to the federal home secretary Rajiv Gauba calling for the bank accounts of the order’s four homes in Jharkand to be frozen, UCAN reported on Friday.
The state police chief D.K. Pandey called for the accounts to be frozen in order to apparently make it easier for officials to investigate suspected irregularities regarding foreign donations.
The bishop, speaking on his return from a fact-finding mission to Ranchi, said he believed the intervention by the RSS revealed a “conspiracy behind blowing up the isolated case in the MoC home to discredit the MoCs and Christians”. He added that the reaction to the scandal “cannot be seen in isolation from the several incidents in which the BJP government has been hostile to the Christian community”.
Last month, the abduction and gang rape of five women due to perform a play to a Catholic secondary school in central Jharkhand led to the arrest of “an innocent Jesuit school principal” rather than the man who apparently co-ordinated the attack, he said. Fr. Alphonse Aind is behind bars, accused of abetting the attackers, whom he failed to stop, but none of the perpetrators have been arrested.
The bishop also recalled that in August 2017, the state government in Jharkhand had carried a malicious advertisement against the Church in the local daily newspapers before passing an anti-conversion law.
The bishop, speaking on his return from a fact-finding mission to Ranchi, said the intervention by the RSS revealed a “conspiracy behind blowing up the isolated case in the MoC home to discredit the MoCs and Christians”. He added that the reaction to the scandal “cannot be seen in isolation from the several incidents in which the BJP government has been hostile to the Christian community”.
Last month, the abduction and gang rape of five women due to perform a play to a Catholic secondary school in central Jharkhand led to the arrest of “an innocent Jesuit school principal” rather than the man who apparently co-ordinated the attack, he said. Fr. Alphonse Aind is behind bars, accused of abetting the attackers, whom he failed to stop, but none of the perpetrators has been arrested.
The bishop also recalled that in August 2017, the state government in Jharkhand had carried a malicious advertisement against the Church in the local daily newspapers before passing an anti-conversion law.
On Sunday (15 July) about 10,000 mostly indigenous Christians in Jharkhand formed a 20-kilometre (12-mile) human chain to protest at what they see as targeted attacks on them, inspired by the state government.
“Catholic nuns, priests, pastors are attacked and jailed. Their institutions are searched. They are accused of every wrong that takes place in the state,” said organiser Prabhakar Tirkey, president of ecumenical Christian forum Rashtriya Isai Mahasangh.
He linked the arrest of Sister Concelia with that of Fr. Aind. “It is part of an organised to plan to keep ordinary people away from Christian institutions and missionaries,” Tirkey said.
Christians in Jharkhand, already angry at the arrest of Sr Concelia, have accused the state government of developing policies that exclude converts to Christianity from a range of economic benefits designed to alleviate poverty.
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