Mother Teresa's canonisation: Why must India pay to have ministers holiday?

On Sunday, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, known to the world as its most iconic nun Mother Teresa, formally becomes recognised as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

It's the inevitable, and one should be surprised that it took nearly two decades since her passing that the passage into sainthood is finally here. As the Missionaries of Charity said on the day she died, Mother Teresa was already a saint in life.

I have strong personal opinions about Mother Teresa.

To my mind, she was the poster girl of poverty porn. A woman who greased the miserable final passage of the wretched, saving almost nobody despite having the means to. Famously described by iconoclast journalist Christopher Hitchens as 'a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud', Mother Teresa rode a decades long wave of unquestioning Indian - and global - adoration, her bent frame easing her transformation to the unmistakable soft-glow face of mercy and compassion we know so well.

But these are my personal opinions of Mother Teresa. I have no wish to impose them on anyone. Hitchens was cursed and attacked through his life for having the effrontery to speak out against a personality a global citizenry had somehow agreed was hands-off for criticism. A charismatic little woman who used the worst of Indian misery to attain global renown suited a country used to the shallow sentimentalism of 'helping the poor' without actually doing anything for them.

Also read: What Mother Teresa taught me about life and other lessons

For the world, Mother Teresa was the perfect guilt-fix against having to think of Calcutta's most miserable. For Mother Teresa, poverty was a gift that wouldn't stop giving. Her austerity and shrinking, self-effacing method brilliantly emphasised the enormous power she wielded on world leaders.

The reason I mention them now is because I don't see a fraction as much debate as there probably should be, not on Mother Teresa herself - though that's welcome - but the manner in which India has decided to splurge public money on her sainthood event.

India Today reports the delegation led by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, will include ten others prominent persons, including Union food processing minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, four other MPs, a judge of the Supreme Court, eminent lawyer Harish Salve, a senior cleric from the Catholic Bishops' conference and a BJP leader. I imagine each of these people travel with staff. In addition to this, chief ministers Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal will lead state delegations to the Vatican to witness the ceremony.

Let's be clear. Mother Teresa's sainthood is an important event. And it is only appropriate that India attend. In my mind, a perfectly appropriate "delegation" would have been Swaraj and her team. I cannot fathom why Harsimrat Kaur Badal or any of the others going on public money need to be there.

The chief minister of West Bengal going to the Vatican, again, is appropriate at some level, but anyone other than didi flying on taxpayer money ought not to be.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is headed to the Vatican too. One cannot imagine reasons other than political ones for his decision to go. His looming fight in Goa probably has everything to do with it.

But let's now fault politicians for being politicians. They exist to politick, rule, win elections and do everything that's necessary to keep that sacred wheel turning. My far less lofty point is one of propriety and sheer wastefulness. Should the Indian citizen really be made to foot the bill for what is, in effect, a European holiday?

Murmurs have begun expectedly from fringe groups of the Sangh Parivar about the sainthood event this Sunday. Their anger over what they see as the government's overkill is predicated on their traditional view of Mother Teresa as a conversion machine who only helped those who submitted themselves to Jesus. This is a contested claim, and I have no wish to dwell on it. In my mind, if Mother Teresa indulged in proselytisation, it wouldn't be an enormous surprise. She was, after all, principally a religious figure, not a social worker.

Also read: Mother Teresa on conversions, Catholic church and other things

The debate over Mother Teresa is a timeless one. As she becomes Saint Teresa of Calcutta on Sunday, it would be very welcome for that debate to continue and broaden. But other than India's external affairs minister and her team, I hope each of those flying to the Vatican this weekend, will choose not to have Indian citizens pay for it.