The Hindu : Not funding hate, says IDRF

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 15, 2003

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Not funding hate, says IDRF

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JUNE 14. The U.S.-based fund-raising organisation, India Development and Relief Fund, on Friday presented a report in defence of itself against charges made in a report published last year that it was closely affiliated to the RSS and raised funds for sectarian causes in India.

`The Foreign Exchange of Hate', released in India in November last by the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, had catalogued the IDRF's links with the RSS, and also that of the NGOs to whom the money it raised went. It said that the majority of funds raised by the IDRF (as against donor-directed contributions for specific causes) went to the Sangh Parivar NGOs.

The IDRF's reply to the 91-page report is a 186 page-report, which it claims is a `Factual Response to the Hate Report on the IDRF'. Presenting the report, one of its authors, Ramesh N. Rao, Associate Professor of Communication at the Truman State University in the State of Missouri, said the report was a point-by-point rebuttal of the CSFH report.However, the report does not contest the IDRF's links with the RSS. It states that its founder, Vinod Prakash, has ``ideological kinship with the RSS''.

The report also does not provide a break-up of funds given to NGOs across India. It does, however, give a detailed break-up of the money spent in rehabilitation work after the Gujarat earthquake and Orissa cyclone. It does not contest the fact that the majority of the money it raises goes to RSS organisations. Under the heading ``Funding RSS Programs'' it provides a two-page commendation of the RSS' social service record.

At a press conference, Dr. Rao was asked whether the IDRF saw no contradiction in funding organisations like the Ekal Vidyalayas whose parent organisation the VHP was involved in campaigns that undermined communal harmony.

``We would not like to get into the ideological issues of the RSS, the BJP, the VHP... you cannot conflate social and development work with ideology,'' he said.

One of the charges levelled against the IDRF is that although it was willing to raise funds for Hindus in Bangladesh and Kashmir it was unwilling to help the victims of Gujarat's violence.

To a question about this, the IDRF's regional vice-president and media co-ordinator said that the organisation had a policy not to help in situations of communal violence, as they ``would not know who to support''.

The Campaign to Stop Hate, responding to the IDRF's release of the report in New Delhi, said in a press release that after denying its links with the RSS, through the Indian media and on the internet, the IDRF has been forced to admit its ties.

The IDRF, the statement said, is attempting to ``retrieve its position by claiming that the RSS and its affiliates are not sectarian''.

The IDRF ``can only do this by ignoring the volumes of documentation from numerous judicial commissions, people's tribunals and international human rights organisations that connect the RSS with sectarian violence''.

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