[Reader-list] Deflections to the Right

[Bijoyini]

Deflections To The Right
16 Jul 2002
Deflections To The Right  
A few fund-raising organisations come under the
scanner for diverting overseas charity money into RSS
propaganda activity 
 
A.K. SEN 


Kanwal Rekhi has been facing the ire of right-wing
Hindus across America. This is because in a recent
article in The Wall Street Journal, Rekhi, global
chairman of The IndUS Entrepreneurs, an organisation
of South Asian businesspeople, claimed that money
collected by Indian Hindus in America and sent to
religious groups in India was being channelled to
target minorities. "Many overseas Indian
Hindus—including some in this country—finance
religious groups in India in the belief that the funds
will be used to build temples, and educate and feed
the poor of their faith. Many would be appalled to
know that some recipients of their money are out to
destroy minorities (Christians as well as Muslims) and
their places of worship," wrote Rekhi in the article,
co-authored with Henry S. Rowen, a professor emeritus
at Stanford University and senior fellow of the Hoover
Institution. They suggested that Prime Minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee could deal a severe blow to such
covert causes by simply labelling them terrorists.

Their claims—of right-wing Hindu groups diverting
funds from the US to finance divisive activities in
India—were articulated in respected academic Robert M.
Hathaway's recent testimony (see interview) before the
US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Hathaway asked the commission to recommend an inquiry
into fund-raising activities in the US by groups
implicated in the recent violence in Gujarat. He told
the commission that "some US residents make financial
contributions to overseas religious groups in the
belief that these funds are to be used for religious
or humanitarian purposes, when in fact the monies so
raised are used to promote religious bigotry".

The India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) is among
the most prominent of charity groups involved in
raising funds in the US, much of which ends up
bankrolling outfits in India that are connected to
Hindutva through the umbilical cord of the RSS. A
Maryland couple, Vinod and Sarla Prakash, established
the IDRF in 1978, and speak of their role in the
upliftment of adivasis in India.  
An ex-employee of the World Bank and a former RSS
member, Vinod Prakash claims the RSS doesn't accept
any foreign contributions. He declares emphatically,
"The IDRF has given absolutely no money to the RSS. We
deal only with NGOs involved in relief  
and rehabilitation."

Outlook investigations, though, show irrefutable RSS
links of some organisations that the IDRF funds. This
is what makes a social activist from the San Francisco
Bay Area, Raju Rajagopal, remark acerbically, "If you
claim to have nothing to do with it when you actually
do, it becomes a matter of transparency. After working
hand-in-glove for years, Sangh parivar outfits in the
US can't suddenly try to distance themselves from the
VHP-Bajrang Dal. They have left footprints all over
the Internet."

Not only do footprints exist, so does incriminating
evidence of the IDRF's duplicity. Precisely what has
goaded Rekhi and Hathaway to demand investigations
into the fund-raising activities of Hindutva groups in
the US. The IDRF, for instance, has donated $2,50,000
in the last four years to Sewa Bharati Madhyakshetra,
an RSS affiliate, which claims to "protect the tribal
people from subversion, and integrate them into the
mainstream". Again, the Keshava Sewa Samithi in
Hyderabad, to which the IDRF has sent $40,000 since
1998, has the same address as the RSS headquarters in
the city.

When confronted with the Sangh antecedents of Sewa
Bharati, Prakash quickly retracted from his earlier
position to say, "I am aware of the RSS-VHP
affiliations of some organisations we fund." He then
went on dismiss such links as a non-issue.  
But Sewa Bharati isn't the only RSS-linked recipient
of the IDRF's munificence.For instance, the IDRF lists
a sister organisation called the Ekal Vidyalaya.
Incidentally, the Ekal Vidyalaya was started by the
VHP under the aegis of the Bharat Kalyan Pratishthan
(BKP), and has now been taken over by the Sri
Vivekananda Rural Development Society (SVRDS). The
IDRF funds both the BKP and the SVRDS.

The BKP's history is in itself quite interesting.
Since the VHP did not have the necessary clearance to
accept funds from overseas, it set up the BKP for this
purpose, receiving $81,750 from the IDRF since 1998.  
  
  In a message dated February 14, 1999, now posted on
the Internet, US-based S.P. Attri says he had written
a letter to VHP leader Ashok Singhal enquiring about
the method of sending donations from the US to the
VHP. Attri reveals that in response he received a
letter on March 23, 1998, from Sitaram Agarwal,
all-India secretary, VHP, acknowledging that his
organisation "needs money and lots of it to carry out
shuddhi and seva and dharam prasar for the tribals,
Harijans and the Dalits".

Agarwal's problem was that under existing rules, the
VHP couldn't accept foreign donations without the
government's permission. The VHP, however, had
shrewdly found a way out, a fact Agarwal confessed in
his March 23 letter. As Attri writes, "To get around
the problem of GoI rules hurdle, VHP has floated a
trust under the name of 'Bharat Kalyan Pratishthan'
and VHP can now accept foreign money in the name of
this trust, provided the donor accompanies his
donation with a letter stipulating that 'this money is
to be used for the Welfare of the Tribals and the
Dalits'."

The address Agarwal recommended for NRI Hindus to send
money to is revealing: Secretary, Bharat Kalyan
Pratishthan, Sankat Mochan Ashram, Sector-VI, Rama
Krishna Puram, New Delhi-110 022, India. This is
precisely the address from where the VHP operates in
Delhi.

This isn't all. The IDRF lists the Bharat Vikas
Parishad and Sanskrit Bharati as sister organisations;
both are listed on the RSS website that describes the
many outfits it has spawned. In addition, some of
IDRF's recipient organisations are headed by RSS
activists. For instance, the Jeevan Dhara Rakt
Foundation, to which the IDRF has sent approximately
$45,000 since 1998, is run by Shyam Behari Lal, a
businessman and a social worker. The foundation
website lists Lal as a "Sampark Pramukh, Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh, Meerut Vibhag." Again, Dr
Vishwamitra of the Kalyan Ashram, Shillong, belongs to
the RSS while the Guwahati-based Shishu Shiksha Samiti
is situated in Keshav Dham, which is the local RSS
headquarters.

The IDRF also funds Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams (VKAS) and
kendras to reconvert tribals to Hinduism. The IDRF's
'affiliate/sister' organisation in Sidumbar, Gujarat,
the Hostel-Dispensary-Cultural Centre for Children and
Nurseries, in its own literature, Amrut-Kumbha
(Reservoir of Nectar), authored by one Dr Shantaram
Hari Ketkar, says in a section on the Kalyan Ashram in
Gujarat: "The Muslims are also trying to create chaos
in these communities, either by enticing these tribals
or by raping the tribal girls by force. The Kalyan
Ashram at Sidumbar is trying to put a stop to these
activities of Muslims as well as Christians.... The
workers of Kalyan Ashrams are required to give a tough
fight to the Christian missionaries because they keep
on harassing the local residents." In its October 1999
report, Human Rights Watch linked the attack on
Christians in tribal areas in India to the increased
activity of the Kalyan Ashrams.  
Prakash preens about his support to the VKAS in Ranchi
and Bangalore. But the link between VKAS and
reconversion raises serious questions here about why a
"development" NGO should indulge in reconversion. Says
Rajagopal, "It's one thing to feed tribals, but
another to teach children that all Muslims are their
enemies."

Adds Najid Hussain, a professor at the University of
Delaware, whose father-in-law Ehsan Jaffri, a former
Congress MP, was brutally murdered in the Gujarat
violence, "Much of the money raised in the US is
poured into so-called adivasi education programmes.
Given that adivasis committed most of the post-Godhra
violence in Gujarat, it's quite possible they are
being brainwashed like the Al Qaeda members were at
the madrassas." Hussain even told the US Commission on
International Religious Freedom that nine out of every
10 dollars spent on fanning the communal frenzy in
Gujarat came from the US and Europe.

Opposition to organisations like the IDRF stems from
the fact that they operate under the garb of secular
and non-political organisations when they are fronts
for radical Hindu organisations in India. Says San
Jose-based Shalini Gera, author of an online petition
to the National Human Rights Commission condemning the
Gujarat riots, "In such a scenario, several people who
would otherwise not wish to fund RSS organisations
unwittingly send money to the IDRF." Adds Rajagopal,
"It is one thing if an NRI donor were to knowingly
fund the RSS or the VHP. It would be his right. It is
quite another if a donor is funding a 'front'
organisation, without being aware that he may be
bankrolling the RSS or VHP agenda."

Prakash, however, insists that every single person
donating money to the IDRF knows where his/her
contribution is going. "I am not a mediaperson, nor do
we have a PR department. People should look at our
published reports to know where their money is going."
While many donors may be ignorant about the misuse of
their donations, there are indeed a large number of
people who consciously contribute to hardline Hindutva
groups.

Rekhi says he was shocked to see many prominent
Indian-American entrepreneurs on the list of donors to
Hindu front organisations. As an affluent investor,
Rekhi says he has always turned down repeated requests
to contribute to such groups. Some Indians do,
however, fall into the trap set by what Rekhi
describes as slick talk and good packaging.

Admitting it is widely alleged that money collected by
some Hindu organisations in the US go to extremist
elements in India, Sumit Ganguly, a professor of Asian
studies and government at the University of Texas,
Austin, however, told the US Commission on
International Religious Freedom that it would be
unfair to tar and feather the entire community with
the same brush. "Rumours are rife that money changes
hands, but most people innocently send money to India.
If indeed the money is going towards extremist
propaganda, there is enough legal basis to put an end
to the source," he says.

Connecticut-based lawyer Sunil Deshmukh attests that
extreme right-wing Indian Hindus in America tend to be
more staunch than those in India. "Their silence on
the violence in Gujarat was deafening. What is more
alarming is the feeling among them that with their
money power, they can do anything." 

For the moment, though, it seems their dollars could
have fanned the communal conflagration in Gujarat.
Considering the horrific nature of the violence there,
and the role the Sangh outfits played in the carnage,
the depositions before the US Commission isn't the
last we have heard about the routing of greenbacks to
India for extreme right-wing groups.  



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