Project Saffron Dollar

It is widely known that funding for Hindu groups inciting communal hatred pours in from Indians based in the US and the UK. The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (SFH), an American coalition of professionals, students, workers, and artists concerned by the use of American dollars in fuelling sectarianism in India, has launched Project Saffron Dollar to stop the flow of money. Their research suggests that over half a million dollars goes every year to the respectable-seeming India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF). The IDRF claims to be a non-sectarian, apolitical charity, concerned only to support relief and development work in India. However, a detailed report of their activities co-published last year by the French-based South Asia Citizens Web and Sabrang Communications of Mumbai reveals close links between the IDRF and the Sangh Parivar, the collective name given to the network of organizations associated with the Hindu fundamentalist RSS. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The report concludes that over 82% of funds disbursed by the IDRF goes to Sangh organizations, and much of the rest to Hindu charities. The bulk of this money, it states, is used for spreading the ideology of Hindutva, especially among the rural poor. This is achieved primarily under the guise of ‘education’ of the adivasis (tribal peoples). (The term adivasi means ‘first dweller’, and this being against the Hindutva view of history – that the Aryans are indigenous to India – they are called ‘vanvasis’ or ‘forest dwellers’ by the Hindu fundamentalists.) The surprising involvement of adivasis in the Gujarat genocide has been associated with the communalization perpetrated by organizations such as Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad and Vivekananda Kendra. Both are funded by the IDRF. The report identifies 15% of IDRF-disbursed funds as going towards relief work, but the relief work conducted by Sangh organizations has been widely noted as discriminatory against non-Hindus. As for ‘development work’, only 4% goes towards what would normally be understood by that term by NGOs.

Most of the donations to IDRF are made electronically. SFH sent a petition to leading portals and money exchange facilities in the US, with supporting documentation, calling for an immediate end to the transfer of funds to the organizations. Earlier this year, the IDRF admitted to being an RSS operation, but declared that “the RSS and its affiliates are neither sectarian nor hate organizations but the victims of unrelenting propaganda by vested Indian and foreign interests”. SFH warns potential donors to scrutinize the nature of groups which ask money for ‘development work’ in India.

For details of the campaign and the report, see http://stopfundinghate.org.