The “Coalition to Stop Genocide in India,” a broad coalition of Indian Americans and US-based civil rights organizations and activists, called on the US Small Business Administration (SBA) to probe how US-based Hindu right-wing organizations received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funding.
The coalition was responding to an expose published in Al Jazeera that five US-based organizations with ties to Hindu supremacists and religious groups in India- Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation, Infinity Foundation, Sewa International, and Hindu American Foundation received pandemic aid to the tune of $833,000.
Their extremist ideology is the driving force behind much of the persecution of Christians, Muslims, Dalits and other minorities in India.
“There are families across America still reeling from the human and economic toll of Covid 19, while groups that seem to be essentially serving as front organizations for a violent and supremacist ideology are raking in the windfall from federal Covid funding,” Rasheed Ahmed, Executive Director of Indian American Muslims Council (IAMC) said.
John Prabhudoss, Chairman of Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations (FIACONA) said, “A comprehensive probe and corrective action is needed to ensure that hard-working American taxpayers’ money is not funneled towards sponsoring hate, persecution and the slow genocide of minorities and marginalized communities in India.”
The funds were disbursed by the United States’ Small Business Administration (SBA), a federal agency that helps small business owners and entrepreneurs. According to the report, the SBA gave the funds as part of its Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan Advance (EIDLA), Disaster Assistance Loan (DAL), and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
The three programs leveraged by right-wing Hindutva organizations in the US were all intended to provide relief to struggling businesses and prevent workforce layoffs during the Covid-19 crisis.
These organizations have links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)- a violent extremist organisation that has been directly involved in orchestrating anti-Christian and anti-Muslim pogroms and instigating terror attacks. Its members and affiliated organizations have been implicated in countless acts of massacres, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, forced conversions and other forms of violence against religious minorities in India.
In 2002, a report by Sabrang Communications and South Asia Citizens showed that 50% of disbursements between 1994 and 2000 from the India Development and Relief Fund, a US-based, VHPA linked, Hindu nationalist organization, went to RSS affiliates in India. In 2014, another ground-breaking report titled ‘Hindu Nationalism in the United States: A Report on Nonprofit Groups’ exposed how the Hindu charity groups in the US were, directly and indirectly, financing activities of violent Hindu supremacists in India. The report analyzed the tax records of many US-based development-related charities that have connections to Hindu right-wing groups in India. It found that between 2001 and 2012, five organizations, including Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation, VHPA, and Sewa International together allocated more than $55 million to projects run by RSS across various Indian states.
The “Coalition to Stop Genocide in India” is committed to ensuring that American institutions and discourse are safeguarded from the virulent Hindutva ideology. To that end, the coalition will continue to expose Hindutva front organizations in the US and their role in normalizing the human rights abuses and religious freedom violations in India.
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Rushda Fathima Khan is the Staff Reporter for The Cognate.
