Mother Teresa is an extraordinary choice for Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat to deliver a lesson on how to devalue social service. By linking her mission of “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor” as a motivated intervention for conversion to the Catholic faith, Bhagwat has rekindled the controversy on the “freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion” defended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week.
After Modi said: Mine will be a government that gives equal respect to all religions: the deliberate provocation by Bhagwat, in his choice of target, appears to be a summons to the wavering faithful to defend the Hindu Rashtra.
The issue is, against whom? Surely not the small and frail sari clad Bharat Ratna, a naturalised Indian and one who provided selfless service to the dying, destitute, sick and orphans, rescued from the streets, without first checking what their religion was.
It seems that the RSS chief is trying to use an icon: Mother Teresa: to hammer home a point. The question is why? Is there a message for international audiences embedded in the choice? Or is Bhagwat declaring Hindus as superior in selfless service? Or is it a call to all voters not to follow the example of those who strayed away from the Bharatiya Janata Party in the New Delhi elections?
The wilful aggravation may also be a bad cop act after Modi played the good cop and broke his silence over the attack on churches in New Delhi, the failed-foiled conversion - Ghar Wapsi and delivered a message of upholding India’s Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom to domestic as well as international audiences.