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Times of India, SUNDAY, MARCH 31, 2002
12:09:33 AM
Overseas booty, inland discord
RASHMEE Z AHMED
LONDON: Fittingly, for a patriotism without passports, the
nationalist outpourings increasingly take the shape of e-mails,
chain letters for or against a notion.
"I’m receiving dozens every day," says C.B. Patel,
editor of London’s Gujarat Samachar, "and they all say
the same thing — they protest against the provocative Muslim
propaganda."
The alleged propaganda, of course, is all about Godhra and the
chain of events before, after and still continuing, remains hotly
disputed by expatriate Hindus and Muslims.
Zafar Sareshwala, prominent Yorkshire Muslim businessman from
Ahmedabad, admits it is harder to calm the fears of those
condemned to live afar.
"People, say Pakistanis, come into the mosques and ask, what
are you Indian Muslims doing about defence back in India? We shut
them up because we tell our people, it is not Hindus who are
communal, it is the Sangh Parivar."
Adds Hasmukh Shah of the VHP UK, "Those Hindus who live
outside India are more sentimental about Ayodhya and other issues
because they have the economic comfort zone."
So, passionate and pained as they are, does the expat really do
little more than feel the anguish of his countrymen, export his
feelings of rage and goad a reaction back home?
Unsurprisingly, no one will admit to any more than feeling the
pain. Not least, they say, because three Bradford Hindu families
lost loved ones in the Godhra train carnage and four Muslim
families nearby lost sons in the subsequent riots.
Shah says he and Gujarati Muslim leaders in Bradford, north-west
England, have started to meet and discuss the "madness"
and the "inevitability of instability unless the sentiments
of Hindus are respected".
Sareshwala adds that he is speaking to meeting after meeting of
fearful Muslims, counselling courage and faith in India’s
laws. "Eighty per cent of the Hindus are secular, I tell
them."
If it all sounds unthreateningly like John Lennon’s peace
anthem Imagine, there is the flip side. Dark rumours about the monetary
and moral support that travels overseas to India from the
wealthy, mainly Gujarati Hindu community.
Why else, asks Sareshwala, did L.K. Advani promise the
NRIs a real Hindu government would fulfil their dreams? And why
did the VHP’s international general secretary Praveen
Togadia say the Ram Temple must be built because "overseas
Hindus" expected it? Shah of the VHP insists any money sent
to India goes "individually, not officially through the
VHP".
Who then is sending what and to whom? Shamsuddin Agha, of the
predominantly Gujarati, Indian Muslim Federation, alleges that
two businessmen in his own east London area have each sent
100,000 pounds to the Sangh Parivar for temple construction.
Others suggest other players and equally large sums. No one
offers any hard evidence. But the seriousness of the
claims has led to calls in the British House of Lords for a ban
on the VHP as a "terrorist organisation".
No one seriously expects it to happen, but overseas funding and
support for communal doomsayers of every sort may become yet more
impenetrable a loop.
PakNews.com, Updated on 2002-08-30 16:08:31
U.S. Based Hindus Funding
Indian Terrorism - A Report
A Special Report Courtesy The Information Times
Publisher: Daily Times Wednesday, 31 July 2002
INDIAN DIASPORA FUNDING HINDU EXTREMISM
"In the United States, where substantial funds are
raised for Hindu extremist agendas, the U.S. Government must act
to ensure that organizations that broker terror should not
continue to enjoy their non-profit status within the USA."
by ANGANA CHATTERJI
It is now no secret that the Sangh Parivar, the collective name
given to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu
Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal and other Hindu extremist
organizations, is exploiting religion (Hindutva) to foment
communal violence in India. To this end they are organizing the
ultra-right, non-secular and undemocratic forces in India. What
is less known is how these forces of injustice and bigotry are
funded, especially by the Indian-Hindu communities living abroad.
These [terrorist and extremist Indian-Hindu] organizations
receive substantial contributions from Hindus in the United
States and elsewhere. The Indian magazine, "Outlook,"
in its July 22, 2002, issue published an article by A. K. Sen,
titled, 'Deflections to the Right'. The piece highlighted a
component of the chain of funding that sustains Hindu extremism.
The article states that the India Development and Relief Fund
(IDRF) is one of the more conspicuous charity organizations that
raises funds in the United States to support the RSS battalions
in India. IDRF lists Sewa International and its counterpart in
India. Sewa International and the various organizations it
oversees receive over two-thirds of the IDRF funding.
Incidentally, Sewa International, in its mission to transform
India, states on its website in a section on 'Experiments and
Results' with 'Social Harmony' that social consolidation can be
achieved through social cohesion. Among other things, the website
quotes Manya H. V. Sehadarji, Sarkaryawah of the RSS, as saying:
"The ultimate object of all these endeavours is Hindu
Sangathan- consolidation and strengthening of the Hindu
society."
Hindu extremism, like other xenophobic movements, functions
through carefully fashioned exclusionary principles whereby all
non-Hindus and dissenting Hindus, identified as Hindu traitors,
become second-class citizens. In addition, justification of caste
inequities, subordination of Dalits ('lower' caste communities),
women, adivasis (tribal) and other minorities, and the
consolidation of a cohesive middle-class base are critical to its
momentum.
In the United States, where substantial funds are raised for
Hindu extremist agendas, the U.S. Government must act to ensure
that organizations that broker terror should not continue to
enjoy their non-profit status within the USA. It is interesting
that in 1999, the VHP failed to gain recognition at the United
Nations as 'a cultural organization' because of its philosophical
underpinnings. However, the VHP of America is an independent
charity registered in the United States in the 1970s, where it
has, and continues to, receive funds from a variety of
individuals and organizations.
Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and Americans of Indian descent must
examine the politics of hate encouraged by extremist Hindu
organizations in the name of charity and social work. Indians,
one of the most financially successful groups in the United
States, must take seriously their moral obligation to ensure that
their dollars are not funding malice and scrutinize the
organizations that are on the receiving end in India. The issue
is not whether these organizations are undertaking charitable
work, but whether they are doing so to promote separatist and
non-secular ideals. Param Vaibhav Ke Path Par (On The Road To
Great Glory), written by Sadanand Damodar Sapre, and published in
1997 by Suruchi Prakashan, Jhandewalan, New Delhi, the central
publication house of the RSS, lists the 40-plus organizations
maintained by the RSS in India for its multivariate programs.
In addition, the VHP and other Parivar outfits aim at the
communalization of education through the 'Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram'
and 'Ekal Vidyalas' (schools). One strategy is to Hinduize
adivasi communities, exploit divisions among the marginalized and
indoctrinate the youth, in order to both turn them against one
another and use them as foot soldiers in the larger cause of
religious nationalism. Such inculcation has had serious
repercussions in Gujarat, India, this year where tribals were
manipulated into attacking Muslims during the carnage in February
and March 2002.
While Hindu fundamentalists do not have a monopoly on religious
intolerance in India, their actions are holding the country
hostage. Well-organized, widespread and acting in the name of
[Hinduism] the majority religion in India, Hindu extremism is
positioned to silence diversity through force and terror, the
rhetoric of Hindu supremacy and the positioning of minority
groups as depraved enemies who must be punished.
Indians at home and abroad must oppose the deep infiltration of
the Hindutva brigade into the press, as well as other
institutions -- political, military, bureaucratic, civic,
business, educational and law and order -- of India. Such
infiltration is creating a nation where religious fundamentalists
violate the Constitution of India and the state tolerates such
violation. While the present BJP regime at the center has overt
and close links to organizations within the Sangh Parivar,
citizens are assured that secularism and democracy are sacred and
secure. The reality is different. The Indian government's
handling of communal violence and sanctioning of communal
discourse is clear to the observers and threatens to jeopardize
India's capacity to function as a nation.
The VHP, in its meeting with Muslim leaders in New Delhi on July
15, 2002, stated that if Muslims agreed to resettle Hindus in
Jammu and Kashmir, Muslims in Gujarat would be rehabilitated. The
Hindus must understand that issues connected to the
democratization of Pakistan, ethical resolutions to Kashmir, or
gender reforms within Islam are separate from India's commitment
to upholding the rights of minorities or to reforms within
Hinduism.
Hindu extremism against Muslims and other minorities in India
collapses distinctions that must be made to honour human rights
in India. Also, Hindutva's discourse of history posits Hindus and
Hinduism as being under siege and preposterously asserts the idea
of India as a Hindu Nation. Such revisionist history
strategically and hideously poses that a vengeful justice can be
found for the crimes of history committed by non-Hindu rulers.
Retribution is sought by attacking contemporary Muslims,
Christians, Sikhs and others in India.
Hinduism is critical to the fabric of India, as are all the other
cultures and religions that inhabit it and frame the imagination
of the Indian nations. It will require considerable effort on the
part of progressive Indians to conceive a secular nation where
religion is indeed separate from the integrity of the state and
where pluralism guarantees rights and respect to the religious
and non-religious alike. Every Hindu, and every citizen, must
denounce that to be Indian is to be Hindu, challenge assertions
that a secular Constitution is anti-Hindu and refute the call for
a Hindu Nation in India as anti-national. Patriotism and
nationalism demand that all social, political and religious
groups work for an India free of disenfranchisement,
institutionalized violence, corruption and rampant inequities.
The Indians cannot permit India's secular and democratic fabric
to be irreparably compromised.
[Angana Chatterji is a professor of Social and Cultural
Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies.]
Times of India, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20,
2002 10:52:45 PM
Where do RSS funds come from?
NEW DELHI: For the last 13 years, the India Development and
Relief Fund (IDRF), a US-based charity has reportedly misused
American corporate philanthropy to fund RSS-affiliated
organisations here. For instance, the IDRF obtained vast sums
from CISCO, a leading technology company in the US with a
substantial number of NRIs on its rolls by saying its activities
are "secular" since company rules explicitly prohibit
donations to organisations of a "religious" nature.
These are some of the findings presented in a 91-page report by
The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (TCTSFH), a coalition of
professionals, students, workers, artists and intellectuals. In
the first phase of its campaign, "Project Saffron
Dollar", the TCTSFH plans to write to large American
corporates to guard against funding the IDRF, Biju Mathew, a
spokesman for the TCTSFH said.
The report, explaining the dynamics of IDRF's corporate funding,
says that as professional Indian migration to the US boomed over
the last decade, especially in the software sector, Sangh
operatives in large hi-tech firms with liberal giving policies
worked to put IDRF on the corporations' list of grantees. They
then pushed IDRF as the best and only way to provide funding for
development and relief work in India, resulting in other
unsuspecting employees, as well as the corporation itself to fund
the Sangh in India.
RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav, when contacted, said: "There is
no specific organisation which collects funds for the RSS.
However, certain projects run by RSS-affiliated organisations do
get money from NRIs for specific projects such as the Ekal
Vidyalaya scheme (one-teacher schools run in tribal areas). This
organisation (that you have mentioned) may have given some money,
too. I have not heard much about it."
The TCTSFH report says that though the IDRF claims to be a
non-sectarian, non-political charity that funds development and
relief work in India, the IDRF filed a tax document (at its
inception in 1989) with the Internal Revenue Service of the US
Federal government, identifying nine organisations as a
representative sample of organisations it would support. All nine
were Sangh organisations.
The report also says that 82 per cent of IDRF's funds go to Sangh
organisations. It documents the fact that 70 per cent of the
monies are used for "hinduisation/tribal/education"
work, largely with the view to spreading the Hindutva idealogy
among tribals. Less than 20 per cent is used in "development
and relief" activities, but the report concludes that since
there is a sectarian slant to how the relief money is disbursed,
these are sectarian funds, too.