For the first time in the history of the Sangh Parivar Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a former RSS pracharak, yesterday praised the piety of Mother Teresa a week before she is to be canonised at the Vatican and declared a saint.

"As Indians we have to feel proud about the canonisation of Bharat Ratna Mother Teresa. She had dedicated her life for the upliftment of the poor. She was an Albanian, and English language was not her mother tongue and yet she adopted it as her language and served the poor. A delegation under Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj will attend the canonisation ceremony and pay respects to her," Modi said in his Mann Ki Baat, to the astonishment of surprised RSS and Hindutva workers of the Sangh Parivar.

RSS BELIEVES MOTHER TERESA'S MOTIVE WAS CONVERSION

The RSS and its allied bodies have always believed that Christian missionary workers work for the poor only with a view to converting the non-Christians amongst them to Christianity. They have held Mother Teresa too in the same category. Even RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had said while inaugurating an orphanage in Bharatpur in Rajasthan in February 2015, that Mother Teresa's service to the poor was good but her motive was conversion.

"There will be no such thing in this orphanage," he had said.

Interestingly, in 1990s when Mother Teresa visited Ahmedabad the then city municipal commissioner KS Varma, who later joined the World Bank at a senior position, hosted her at his home but BJP leaders were missing from the function.

However, during her missionary work in India Mother Teresa also left some uncommon examples. For example in the 1980s when a Lepers home opened by her with charity from local businessmen in the jungles near Ranchi didn't attract lepers who preferred to go to another home run by a staunch Hindu organisation, Bharat Sewa Ashram Sangh (BSMA) in its vicinity, she didn't flinch in handing over the reigns of her Lepers home to BSMA.

It will be interesting to see how the deep saffron bodies react to Modi's stand on Mother Teresa.

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