The Founders of IDRF The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is elusive and shadowy—it is only open to Hindu males – primarily upper caste; it maintains no membership records; it has resisted being registered with the Government of India as a public/charitable trust; it has no bank accounts and pays no income tax. The IDRF (India Development and Relief Fund) was set up as a tax-exempt, non-profit organization in 1989 under the provisions of section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Its official, self-stated purpose is to raise money for organizations in India “assisting in rural development, tribal welfare, and urban poor.” According to its tax filings, the IDRF raised $ 3.8 million in the year 2000, of which it disbursed $1.7 million in ‘relief and development work.’ * Bhishma Agnihotri, a well-known RSS ideologue and a HSS Sanghchalak (Supremo), is one of the founders the IDRF. HSS is RSS’s equivalent organization in the US and UK. * Two of the IDRF’s other founders, Jatinder Kumar and Ram Gehani, are office bearers of FISI. Mr. Gehani is also associated with the OFBJP. FISI is the public relations arm of the HSS. OFBPJ is the overseas arm of the BJP. * Vinod Prakash is one of the founders of the IDRF and also its President since its inception. The HSS Newsletter, Sangh Sandesh, for January 2001 announces the opening of a tribal boys hostel by Sewa Bharati, MP named after ‘Sarla Vinod Prakash,’ the wife of Vinod Prakash. Both Sarla and Vinod Prakash are listed as founders of the IDRF. Members of the Prakash family were present at the inauguration and shared the stage with Mr. Ashok Singhal, the international President of VHP, who has currently been in the news for voicing his “appreciation” of the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat and the “cleansing” of several Gujarati villages of their Muslim residents. * The IDRF’s Other Office Bearers: Of the 6 Zonal Vice Presidents listed on IDRF’s website, four are HSS volunteers, and one of them is on the National Governing Council of the VHP of America. The General Secretary of the IDRF, Shyam Gokalgandhi, is also responsible for running the Balvihar of the HSS in the San Fransisco Bay Area. * The IDRF’s People in India: Shyam Parande, the India Advisor of IDRF, is listed in an article from The Observer, as ‘the organizer of Sangh activities abroad.’ Vijay Mallampati, India Coordinator for IDRF, is also actively involved with the Sangh Parivar, and acted as the Mukhya Shikshak (Chief Instructor) at one of the HSS camps in the US. |
Some organizations funded by IDRF From a list of 184 different organizations funded by IDRF that are available from its annual reports, we have given below names of 30 organisations and the total amount of money they received during the years for which the data is available. Organization Total |
An Unholy Alliance Exposed!!!
A NEWLY formed network of Indian professionals in the United States has claimed that several American corporations and hundreds of non-resident Indians are unwittingly funding ‘violent, sectarian Hindu supremacist organizations in India’ that stand implicated for fomenting riots and communal violence in India.
The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, a coalition of professionals, students,
workers and artists, has released a report in which it has alleged that the
India Development and Relief Fund (IRDF), set up in 1989 in the US to raise
money for organizations helping rural development, tribal welfare and urban
poor, has been channelling a major portion of its funds to RSS affiliates in
India.
Biju Mathew, a New York professor who released the report, The Foreign Exchange
of Hate, IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva, in New Delhi November 20,
said over the past seven years IDRF has disbursed more than $5 million in India.
Mathew said a large chunk of these donations came from corporations such as
Cisco, Sun, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard. He told reporters that IDRF did not
raise any funds for victims of the Gujarat riots, where most of those affected
were Muslims.
This report is a product of a careful study and analysis of more than 150 pieces of documentary evidence, almost three-quarters of which are those published by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (henceforth, RSS or Sangh) and its affiliates, either in printed form or electronically. These documents are diverse in nature, including forms of incorporation and tax documents filed by IDRF with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the US, articles in Sangh Sandesh, the newsletter of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, and occasional reports published by different Sangh organizations in India and the US. The remaining 25% of the documents are from secondary sources, largely drawn from mainstream media reports, including published interviews with RSS, BJP and VHP leaders; reports of judicial enquiry commissions; reports from citizen’s panels; and reports published by various Human Rights organizations. The methodological emphasis on primary sources internal to the Sangh Parivar is to ensure that the evidentiary basis of the conclusions drawn is of the highest standards.
The main points of this study are:
* From documents submitted to the US Federal government in 1989 as part of its application for tax exempt status, it is clear that from its very moment of inception, IDRF’s goal was clearly to support the Sangh in India. That IDRF supports Sangh organizations in India is thus not a matter of accident but is instead the very purpose for its existence.
* Since its inception, IDRF’s links with Sangh organizations in India have grown dramatically. Of the organizations in India that it lists as “sister organizations”, an overwhelming number are clearly part of the Sangh’s family of organizations.
* IDRF’s leadership in the US has well-established links with the Hindutva movement both in India and the US. Officials of IDRF in India are also openly part of the Sangh.
* Hindutva organizations in the US do extensive publicity and fundraising for the IDRF. They openly acknowledge IDRF as a part of the Sangh.
* Of the funds that the IDRF transfers to India, almost two-thirds go to organizations that can be identified as RSS organizations. About half of the remaining funds go to organizations that can be identified as sectarian Hindu organizations. In other words, less than 20 percent of the funds sent to India by IDRF go to organizations that are not openly non-sectarian and/or affiliated with the Sangh.
* More than 50 percent of the funds disbursed by the IDRF are sent to Sangh related organizations whose primary work is religious ‘conversion’ and ‘Hinduisation’ in poor and remote tribal and rural areas of India. Another sixth is given to Hindu religious organizations for purely religious use. Only about a fifth of the funds go for disaster relief and welfare-most of it because the donors specifically designated it so. However, there is considerable documentation indicating that even the relief and welfare organizations that IDRF funds, use the moneys in a sectarian way. In summary, in excess of 80 percent of IDRF’s funding is allocated for work that is clearly sectarian in nature.
* Adequate documentation also exists to show that the IDRF funds organizations in at least three states in India that are directly involved in large-scale violence against Muslim and Christian minorities. This reports documents the case of an the IDRF beneficiary, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Gujarat and its extensive involvement in anti-Christian violence between 1998-2000 including the physical destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges, and cemeteries and forcible conversions to Hinduism. Secondary documentation also exists to show that the same Hindutva organizations involved in the anti-Christian violence of 1998-2000 were involved in the Gujarat carnage of 2002 where, by most reliable accounts, more than 2000 people, mostly Muslims, were massacred. q