Mumbai: Abraham Mathai, the former vice chairman of the Minorities Commission, has condemned Yogi Adityanath’s accusations on Nobel Laureate Mother Teresa and said the title yogi (ascetic) is misfit for the parliamentarian.

Mathai said Mother Teresa came from overseas to work among the poorest of the poor in India.

“Where were the yogis at that time? Have they served, have they done what Mother Teresa and her people have been doing. If Mother Teresa converted people into Christianity by her work, why hasn’t the population of Christians increased in the country?” asked Mathai on June 22, a day after the parliamentarian alleged that the nun was part of a conspiracy to Christianize India.

“Even today it is 2.5 percent, when we got independence we were on 2.4,” he added.

The former vice-chairman of the Minorities Commission accused the BJP MP of lying.

Where is the kind of conversion that these fellows are saying? They are lying. This is not the first time Yogi Adityanath has been spewing venom. The title yogi is total misfit for him; I don’t see any spirituality in this man,” he said.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy, however, came out in support to his party colleague and said the views are not isolated, as there have been books published in this regard.

“You see the issue of Yogi Adityanath expressing his view is not an isolated view. It is a view which has been reduced to books, there is a writer Christopher Hitchens, who has written a best seller book and if you go to Google you would get a lots of books about her,” Swamy told ANI.

The Gorakhpur MP stirred a controversy earlier on Saturday with his remark that Mother Teresa was part of a “conspiracy for Christianization of India”.

“Teresa was part of a conspiracy for Christianization of India. Incidents of Christianization had led to separatist movements in parts of North-East, including Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland,” he said.

Yogi Adityanath, who was addressing a ‘Ram Katha’ programme in Basti, Uttar Pradesh, said Dalits were specifically chosen for conversion and that Hindus should not glorify Christianity.

“Dalits are our brothers, but some of us do not embrace them like brothers. But when they go away and become Christians, some of us take pride in associating with them. This should stop,” he said. (Source: ANI)