Persecution of Hindus -- The pioneer – 12.5.12

This past week, the persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan was raised in India’s Parliament and led to

Union Minister for External Affairs SMKrishna making a statement, with a particular reference to Pakistan’s tiny but beleaguered Hindu community. There was much discussion on the subject in political circles, the media and the social media too. As can be expected, views varied strongly. There were sections that wanted default refugee status for Hindus who fled or left Pakistan and came to India. There were calls for immediate offers of citizenship

to these embattled people. Others took the view that India should petition and raise the issue with the international community. After all, there were clearly-defined principles as to how countries must treat, and the freedom and autonomy they must accord, their minorities. The common sense retort to that was that it was impossible for the international community to get Pakistan to ensure anything at all, whether related to its minority communities orin deed its majority community as well. It has been easy to consider the matter of Hindus in Pakistan as a cause for the Indian Right, for the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. It is equally easy to contend that the Left and the Congress, the urban intelligentsia and foreign policy pundits must take a more detached view, calling for international action and cautioning against emotionalism and entanglement in domestic politics.

While there are persuasive arguments to be made on either side, it is worth asking if the implicit divide on the question of India’s responsibility vis-à-vis Pakistan’s Hindus that we see today has been with us ever since

1947. Were things always so clear cut? Some years ago, this writer was re searching the history of religious tensions and violence in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the post-Partition period. An educative set of incidents from 1964 that emerged shook a lot of contemporary certitudes. On December 26, 1963, a lock of hair

believed to belong to the Prophet disappeared from Srinagar’s Hazratbal shrine. There was uproar in the Kashmir Valley. Crowds of 1,00,000 and more came out on the streets and stone-throwing and violence resulted, in turn triggering police firing. On January 4, 1964, the holy relic reappeared, almost as mysteriously as it had vanished. There were many theories about the episode, including the role of Indian intelligence agencies, but that should not detain us here. The locus of this article is not Kashmir, it is further east in the sub-continent. On January 3, what had begun as a peaceful protest against the theft in Hazratbal, turned into an angry mob In Khulna, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).The brunt of the fury was borne by Khulna’s

Hindus. The riots spread to Jess ore and other cities in East Pakistan/East Bengal. There was growing unrest in India, especially in West Bengal, home to many Hindu migrants from East Pakistan, some of whom still had

relatives across the Padma.Politicians jumped in. A Congress session was in progress. VK Krishna Menon,

eager to establish his nationalist and hawkish credentials after the humiliation of the China war just over a year earlier, accused Pakistan of atrocities on its minorities. He charged it with waging a “war of hostages”.

In Calcutta, Opposition parties —largely from the Left, since the Congress ruled in Writers’ Buildings, as it did in South Block — and student organisations started protesting outside the Pakistan Deputy High Commission. Makhan Pal, leader of the Revolutionary Socialist Party — and a familiar name to anybody who followed Left Front politics in West Bengal in the 1980s— was vocal in demanding (East) Pakistani authorities protect their Hindu citizens. In border villages, rumors spread of a Pakistani attack. These were quickly believed, given memories of the Chinese invasion of 1962. Hindu refugees (both from within India and from East Pakistan)began moving towards Calcutta. Meanwhile, protesting students in Calcutta turned unruly, and one of them was shot by the police. This made the situation worse, rioting was now inevitable and the Muslim community in then Calcutta came under attack in a counter-mobilization. Left parties in West Bengal had a strong constituency among Partition-era refugees and so were accused of fanning the fires. Full scaleriots broke out in Calcutta and in outlying districts. By January 11, the Army had been called in and many neighborhoods of Calcutta were under curfew. It was the city’s most lethal religious battle since the 1940s. There were cases of stabbing on the streets, the Army and curfew measures proved ineffective in entirely curbing the violence. An exhibition commemorating SwamiVivekananda’s birth centenary was attacked at the Park Circus Maiden in south Calcutta and partially burnt down. At this point, Gulzari Lal Nanda, then Union Minister for Home Affairs, flew down to assist the State Government. By January 24 peace had returned. Curfew had been lifted from all parts of Calcutta. The previous fortnight had claimed65 lives. This included 21 Hindus and eight Muslims who fell to police bullets. Now comes the interesting after math.On January 27, a ‘citizens’ convention’ was held in a hall at the Calcutta University Institute. Here all political parties, other than the Congress, demanded the removal of restrictions on the migration of Hindus from Pakistan to India. Jyoti Basu was a speaker at this convention, where the Communist Party of India (it hadn’t yet been divided and the CPI(M) had not been born), the Forward Bloc and even something called the Bolshevik Party shared a platform with, and agreed on the status of Pakistan’s Hindu minorities with, the Jana Sangh. Basu expressed his anguish at the plight

of Hindus in East Pakistan. Nevertheless, he was heckled by the crowd because — ever a better communist than a Hindu — he refused to criticize China for its nexus with Pakistan. Today, the CPI(M) and the other Left

parties would not want to be reminded of the chilling Calcutta January of 1964.Today, the business of Hindus in Pakistanis a BJP affair, a point for the Hindu Right and supposedly not a mainstream concern. Fifty years ago it was all so different. Was Indian politics more honest then — or simply just as expedient?

Marxists send a brutal message to dissidents -- The Pioneer --- 10.5.12

When TPChandrasekharan of On chiyam, a village in Kerala’s Kozhikode district that had contributed

ten martyrs to the communist movement back in 1948, and his supporters left the CPI(M) protesting against its neo-liberalist leadership’s “right-wing decadence ”and formed the Revolutionary Marxist Party in 2008, State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan had termed the masi kulamkuthikal (traitors of family).There is only one punishment for traitors of the family: Death. Chandrasekharan was hacked to death on the night of May

4 in his own village which his RMP had made its fortress and where the CPI(M)had no place at all. It was one of the most heinous attacks Kerala’s murderous politics had ever seen: He was hacked 51times in the head and face. In a statement that reiterated his conviction that ‘family traitors’ deserved no honour even in death, Mr Vijayan in his Press conference held just 14 hours after the murder, said, “It is not my job to analyse his greatness (as a communist).”Three days later he announced: “Traitors will always remain traitors.”The cruelty demonstrated in the murder of Chandrasekharan was not all that unparalleled in the history of murderous

politics followed by the Kerala Marxists. Most of the hundreds of murders the party has committed in Kannur,

the hell-hole of Marxist violence in ‘God’s own country’, have been brutal in one way or the other. On May 25, 1996,thien Kannur district secretary of BJP, Pannyannur Chandrani, was killed in front of his wife. On December 1, 1999, KTJayakrishnan, then vice-president of the Kerala Yuva Morcha and a primary school teacher, was hacked to death in front of his students inside his classroom. Several of those kids in that classroom, whose books and dresses were splattered with the blood and shreds of flesh of their beloved teacher, would tell you that they are yet to recover from that shock. However, Chandrasekharan’s murder was different in many ways. It was standard and routine practice for the Marxists to offer denial of involvement each time a Sangh Parivar member was killed in Kannur. That was so because they had been convinced that such killings would

not affect their political strength. But MrVijayan had to call a Press conference just13 hours after the killing of Chandrasekharan because the deceased leader could cause irreparable damages to the CPI(M) — even in death as he had done when alive. If his war against the CPI(M) was limited to Onchiyam when he was alive, his death was powerful enough to extend that war to other regions, and the Marxists knew it. Mr Vijayan’s senior colleague, Mr VSAchuthanandan, described him as a “brave communist”. The former Chief Minister was the only senior CPI(M) leader to visit Chandrasekharan’s home to pay tributes to him. The fact is that the martyr’s men and kin would not have allowed any other Marxist to enter their village. The resolve was so pronounced that the first public words of Rama, his wife, after the incident were : “They could kill him. But they cannot kill his movement.”The ripples the murder set off are not to subside soon as far as the CPI(M) is concerned. Its lesser allies in the Opposition LDF, especially the CPI, are seeing this as a moment to redefine intra-Front relationships. The message is that they are not prepared to tolerate the hegemonic attitude of the big brother anymore. The CPI, which has never aired its opinion in any of the scores of Marxist murders in Kannur, has a specific stand on this brutality. State CPI secretary PannyanRaveendran demanded a probe into the

allegation of involvement of the CPI(M).That the murder of Chandrasekharan was an act of political blunder — like the LTTE had admitted long after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi — as far as the CPI(M) is concerned would be proven soon. With a leadership line that is frequently accused of corruption, abetment of crony capitalism, defending moral turpitude of top bosses, right-wing decadence and all such ills, the Kerala CPI(M)

can no more claim the self-righteousnes sit has been known for so far. The internal contradictions are coming out in the form of political hypocrisy. In its ideological documents, the party speaks of the need for

democratisation and Indian isation, but in its core it continues with its ever-solidifying Stalinist authoritarianism.

This was the context which forced the rebels to gather courage to constitute the RMP in On chiyam, the People’s

Development Council in Shoranur, Palakkad and the Leftist Coordination Committee at the State level. This was the context which emboldened former Marxist MP, AP Abdullakutty to join the Congress in a place like Kannur back in2009, and R Selvaraj of Thiruvananthapuram to resign as CPI(M)’s Assembly

member on March 9 and contest the bypollas a Congress candidate. Examples are many. There are rumours that Chandrasekharan’s murder was in fact a warning to certain young MLAs of theCPI(M) who were allegedly planning to follow Mr Selvaraj’s example. On chiyami, with its history of fervent communist activity which culminated in the contribution of 10 ‘martyrs’ to the movement in 1948 to the materialist party, was part of its soul, just as Punnapra and Vayalar are known for their historic peasant up risings. Chandrasekharan and his

pack of ‘traitors’ effectively tore a huge piece off that soul when they formed the RMP in 2008 and gathered such popularity in the area that the CPI(M) became almost non-existent there.

On Tuesday, the CPI(M) sent LDFMLAs in Kozhikode district to the Onchiyam region to atone for its sin of not sending any senior leader to Chandrasekharan’s house after the murder, but the dead leader’s relatives and supporters saw it as an act of further humiliation. They warned them against visiting his home. The RMP has become such a big for ceini Onchiyam, perhaps the strongest fortress of the CPI(M) in all of Kerala till four years back, that it could have asked the MLAs not to set their foot any where in the region. This was exactly how several villages of West Bengal became off limit to the party that ruled that State for over three decades. If the leaders of the Kerala CPI(M) do not want a repeat of that experience in their State, they will have to undertake some serious thinking.

CPM Rebel killed in Kerala; Party under fire -- The Pioneer --6.5.12

The brutal murder of CPI(M) renegade and Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) leader TP Chandrasekharan (52) of On chiyam in Kozhikode district late on Friday has put the Marxist party, which has along history of pursuing violent methods in the Malabarregion, especially in Kozhikodeand Kannur districts, in a political trap .Chandrasekharan was killed by a group about 10.15pm, when he was returning home on a motorcycle. The killers came in a Innova and hacked him after throwing bombs to scare away people who tried to prevent

the attack. Chandrasekharan’s face had become unidentifiable. The police said the killers attacked him on the head, face and arms at least 50 times. On chiyam, known for its history of communist struggles, has been witnessing Marxist violence ever since Chandrasekharan and loyalists left CPI(M) to form RMP in 2008.The Congress-led ruling UDF, which blamed the CPI(M) for the murder, observed a State-wide dawn-to dusk shutdown in protest. A special investigation team of the Kerala Police launched a full-fledged probe even as the CPI(M) denied any role. There is now immense political pressure on the CPI(M), especially in context of the police’s recent finding that the party was even annihilating its political enemies after holding “trials” in party courts, as in the killing of Muslim League activist Abdul Shukoor (21) of Pattuvam in Kannur on February 20.“As Chief Minister, I don’t want to say anything about those involved in the killing but everyone has a fair idea of who

could be behind this brutality, ”said Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in obvious reference to the CPI(M) while State Congress chief Ramesh Chennithala alleged that the murder was committed with the knowledge of the State leadership of the CPI(M).“The murder and subsequent allegations are part of a huge conspiracy aimed at hunting our party down,” said State CPI(M) secretary PinarayiVijayan on Saturday. “It seems that professional killers hired by the UDF are behind the murder,” he said. Kozhikode district CPI(M)chief TP Ramakrishnan denied any party involvement.

Using NGO’s to coerce nation -- The Pioneer –8.5.12

Non-Western nations have long known that non-Government organisations, ostensibly set up to provide humanitarian services to citizens in their

respective countries, such as against the police or other public authorities, fighting poverty or environmental degradation, are funded by foreign regimes to serve their agendas. They are, in that sense, a tool of

coerciive diplomacy, or war by other means. Some weeks ago, Egypt, front-runner of the aborted Arab Spring, clamped down on foreign NGOs and refused to license eight US civil groups, including the election-monitoring

Carter Centre, prior to the presidential poll. Under Egyptian law, NGOs cannot operate without licence.

American NGOs, called ‘quangos’, tend to focus on promoting democracy abroad, an euphemism for electing Governments that serve American interests. Last month, the UAE decided to shut down the offices

of an American ‘quango’ run by the Democratic Party but mainly funded by the US Government. Observers said the move was engineered by Riyadh and other capitals that felt the ‘quango’ was interfering in

their internal affairs, and hence urged the UAE to close it. Many capitals view ‘quangos’ as intrusive

of national sovereignty. By grooming ‘democracy activists’ — recall the Colored Revolutions in former Soviet republics —they create the environment for US-desired changes to occur. The decision by the UAE and other Gulf countries to curtail the functioning of German and US foundations is likely to usher in a new system whereby entities directly or indirectly funded by foreign Governments will be allowed to function only under negotiated agreements and can no longer operate as they please. The National Endowment for Democracy, closely associated with the Reagan Administration, was conceived as a tool of US foreign policy by its founder MrAllen Weinstein, a former professor, Washington Post writer, and member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a neo-conservative think-tank whose members included Mr Henry Kissinger and MrZbigniew Brzezinski. The NED’s first director, Mr Carl Gershman, was candid that it was a front for the CIA. From its inception in1983, the NED’s annual funds are approved by the US Congress as part of the United States Information Agency budget. Its activities include funding anti-Left and anti-labour movements; meddling in elections in Venezuela and Haiti; and, creating instability in countries resisting imperial America.Freedom House, set up in 1941 as a prodemocracy and pro-human rights organisation,

is engaged with the Project for the New American Century, and much of the

War-mongering in Washington, DC. The Bush Administration used it to support its

‘War on Terror’. The US Government provides 66 per cent of its funding via US AID, the State Department, and the NED.

Freedom House leapt into the Arab Spring, training and financing civil society groups and individuals, including the April 6Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and grassroots

Activists in Yemen.

The Bush Administration also compelled NGOs to serve its imperial agenda. In 2003,US AID Administrator Andrew Natsios saidthe NGO-USAID link helped the Karzai Government to survive, but Afghans did not appreciate this. In Iraq, he wanted NGO work there to show a connection with US policy. It is difficult to be more explicit.By far the most important tool of empire is Amnesty International. Its current executive director, Ms Suzanne Nossel, was previously Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organisations at the US State

Department. She is credited with coining the term ‘smart power’ to achieve US goals by

recruiting others to work for them, as in Libya, where Washington used the UN to engage in ‘humanitarian intervention.’ Amnesty has actively joined the propaganda war against Syria. The author of a 2011 report on custody deaths in that country confessed in an interview that Amnesty had not been allowed to enter Syria at the time, so research for the report was done mainly from London, neighboring

countries and other sources. In other words, unverified information. In India, despite decades of unhappiness

with Western NGOs, the Union Government decided to openly confront

them only when it felt aggrieved over the stalling of its _15,000 crore Kudankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu, and   protests over genetically modified crops. Indian law bans NGOs from taking foreign

funds for political purposes or affecting the security, strategic, scientific or economic

interest of the state. The Church-organised Kudankulam protest was purely political.

Popular concerns over the power of NGOs, however, stem from their staggering funding, dubious agendas including religious conversion, and untrammeled powers to interfere in domestic matters. Data available

with the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, as reported first by The Pioneer, shows that in

the nine years between 2001 and 2010, NGOs received more than _70,000 crore. The

highest donors were the US, Germany and Britain, and the most significant recipients

include Gospel For Asia Inc, USA (_232.71crore), Foundation Vicente Ferrer, Barcelona,

Spain (_228.60 crore) and World Vision Global Centre, USA (_197.62 crore).

                          Analysis of the data shows that the greatest ums out of the foreign contributions were

utilised for establishment expenses (_1482.58crore), followed by rural development(_944.30 crore), welfare of children (_742.42crore), construction and maintenance of school/college (_630.78 crore) and grant of

stipend/scholarship/ assistance in cash and kind to poor/deserving children (_454.70crore). Note the diminishing values. Now, if 50 per cent to 70 per cent of the funds of any organisation are spent on establishment expenses, such as buying land, buildings, vehicles, office infrastructure,

mobiles, laptops and cameras, paying salaries, consultancy fees, honorarium, and on foreign

travel, should such expenditure be tax free when there is no public beneficiary? Huge sums are expended on conversions, which also cannot be designated as ‘charity’ or ‘public service’. World Vision, in particular, has an exclusive Christian identity, as attested to by its own website, where it admits that while 20 per cent of its world wide staff belongs to other faiths, all prospective staff are expected to affirm their Christian faith in writing. This was after firing some staff in America for changing their religious affiliations. In the light of these experiences, many Indians feel that the country does not need foreign aid to improve the lot of its citizens,

and that all social service activities can be meaningfully conducted with local donations. As India itself provides considerable assistance to other Asian and African nations, there is no merit in accepting foreign funding on the

pretext of charity, and then using the same for conversions or politics.

(The Church was actively involved in

organising the NGO-sponsored protests against

the Kudankulam nuclear power project.)

Probe BSY role in illegal mining: SC--ToI-12.5.12 Order To CBI Hits Ex-CM’s Comeback Bid Dhananjay Mahapatra TNN New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the CBI to probe former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa for allegedly permitting illegal mining by major corporate groups like Jindals and the alleged “windfall profits” reaped by his relatives through quid pro quo by mining firms. A bench of Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justices Aftab Alam and Swatanter Kumar accepted the April 20 report of its environmental panel, Central Empowered Committee (CEC), and asked the CBI to complete the investigations in three months and file a chargesheet against accused persons before the court concerned. The bench rejected the pleas of Yeddyurappa, Jindal Steels and South West Mining Ltd who attempted to persuade the court not to accept the CEC’s recommendations for a CBI probe into alleged irregularities in the award of mining leases, iron ore extraction and the payment of donations as a quid pro quo to NGOs run by the ex-chief minister’s relatives. The order is a setback for Yeddyurappa who was hoping for a comeback as CM, and interferes with BJP’s plan to put its Karnataka house in order ahead of the challenges of state and Lok Sabha polls. Although the BJP strongly resisted Yeddyurappa’s demand for reinstatement, its hopes of protecting its new-found dominance in Karnataka hinged on the Lingayat strongman’s return to the helm in Bangalore. The setback for Yeddyurappa may ensure the continuation of Sadananda Gowda as chief minister: hardly an appealing prospect for those who are worried about BJP’s sliding graph in Karnataka. Asking the agency to treat the CEC report as “informant’s information to the investigation agency”, the apex court said, “The CBI shall undertake investigations in a most fair, proper and unbiased manner uninfluenced by the stature of persons and the political and corporate clout, involved in the present case. The CBI shall complete its investigation and submit a report to the court of competent jurisdiction with a copy of the report to be placed on the file of this court within three months.” It further said, “Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and all other government departments of that or any other state to fully cooperate and provide required information to the CBI.” The court expressed anguish over the CEC report pointing out the inaction on the part of government and statutory authorities to stop rampant illegal mining of iron ore carried out with impunity under political patronage in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. “The facts in the present case reveal an unfortunate state of affairs which has prevailed for a considerable time in the mentioned districts of both the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The CEC has pointed out, and the complainant and petitioners have also highlighted, a complete failure of the state machinery in relation to controlling and protecting the environment, forests and minerals from being illegally mined and exploited,” said Justice Kumar, writing the 46-page judgment. The abject failure of the state and statutory authorities to stop devastation of the environment and forest through illegal mining was the trigger for the apex court to order CBI probe and direct it to bring the guilty to book. Justice Kumar, writing the judgment, said, “Wherever and whenever the State fails to perform its duties, the court shall step in to ensure that rule of law prevails over the abuse of process of law.” THE WAY FORWARD TILL YEDDY GETS READY Options before Yeddyurappa Lie low till CBI inquiry is completed Try to strengthen his position in the party even as inquiry is on Strategize to keep his flock together Team up with G Janardhana Reddy and B Sriramulu Attempt to float a new political outfit and support Congress to defeat BJP Destabilize the Sadanan d a Gowda government Stay within the BJP and demand that Gowda and K S Eshwarappa be replaced with his supporters Demand accommodation of his supporters during cabinet expansion Slowly fade away from politics in the face of arrest Options before BJP Lend moral and leg legal support to Yeddyurappa Sympathize with BSY, meet his minor demand s Keep Yeddyurappa at bay and build party image Keep distance as the party is fighting corruption at the national level Key accused in illegal mining scam gets bail Hyderabad: Gali Janardhana Reddy, Obulapuram Mining Company director and prime accused in the illegal mining case, was granted bail by a CBI court here on Friday. Gali, who is currently in a Bellary jail, is also accused in another mining case in Karnataka and will walk free only if he secures a bail there. TNN Using NGO’s to coerce nation -- The Pioneer –8.5.12

Non-Western nations have long known that non-Government organisations, ostensibly set up to provide humanitarian services to citizens in their

respective countries, such as against the police or other public authorities, fighting poverty or environmental degradation, are funded by foreign regimes to serve their agendas. They are, in that sense, a tool of

coerciive diplomacy, or war by other means. Some weeks ago, Egypt, front-runner of the aborted Arab Spring, clamped down on foreign NGOs and refused to license eight US civil groups, including the election-monitoring

Carter Centre, prior to the presidential poll. Under Egyptian law, NGOs cannot operate without licence.

American NGOs, called ‘quangos’, tend to focus on promoting democracy abroad, an euphemism for electing Governments that serve American interests. Last month, the UAE decided to shut down the offices

of an American ‘quango’ run by the Democratic Party but mainly funded by the US Government. Observers said the move was engineered by Riyadh and other capitals that felt the ‘quango’ was interfering in

their internal affairs, and hence urged the UAE to close it. Many capitals view ‘quangos’ as intrusive

of national sovereignty. By grooming ‘democracy activists’ — recall the Colored Revolutions in former Soviet republics —they create the environment for US-desired changes to occur. The decision by the UAE and other Gulf countries to curtail the functioning of German and US foundations is likely to usher in a new system whereby entities directly or indirectly funded by foreign Governments will be allowed to function only under negotiated agreements and can no longer operate as they please. The National Endowment for Democracy, closely associated with the Reagan Administration, was conceived as a tool of US foreign policy by its founder MrAllen Weinstein, a former professor, Washington Post writer, and member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a neo-conservative think-tank whose members included Mr Henry Kissinger and MrZbigniew Brzezinski. The NED’s first director, Mr Carl Gershman, was candid that it was a front for the CIA. From its inception in1983, the NED’s annual funds are approved by the US Congress as part of the United States Information Agency budget. Its activities include funding anti-Left and anti-labour movements; meddling in elections in Venezuela and Haiti; and, creating instability in countries resisting imperial America.Freedom House, set up in 1941 as a prodemocracy and pro-human rights organisation,

is engaged with the Project for the New American Century, and much of the

War-mongering in Washington, DC. The Bush Administration used it to support its

‘War on Terror’. The US Government provides 66 per cent of its funding via US AID, the State Department, and the NED.

Freedom House leapt into the Arab Spring, training and financing civil society groups and individuals, including the April 6Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and grassroots

Activists in Yemen.

The Bush Administration also compelled NGOs to serve its imperial agenda. In 2003,US AID Administrator Andrew Natsios saidthe NGO-USAID link helped the Karzai Government to survive, but Afghans did not appreciate this. In Iraq, he wanted NGO work there to show a connection with US policy. It is difficult to be more explicit.By far the most important tool of empire is Amnesty International. Its current executive director, Ms Suzanne Nossel, was previously Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organisations at the US State

Department. She is credited with coining the term ‘smart power’ to achieve US goals by

recruiting others to work for them, as in Libya, where Washington used the UN to engage in ‘humanitarian intervention.’ Amnesty has actively joined the propaganda war against Syria. The author of a 2011 report on custody deaths in that country confessed in an interview that Amnesty had not been allowed to enter Syria at the time, so research for the report was done mainly from London, neighboring

countries and other sources. In other words, unverified information. In India, despite decades of unhappiness

with Western NGOs, the Union Government decided to openly confront

them only when it felt aggrieved over the stalling of its _15,000 crore Kudankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu, and   protests over genetically modified crops. Indian law bans NGOs from taking foreign

funds for political purposes or affecting the security, strategic, scientific or economic

interest of the state. The Church-organised Kudankulam protest was purely political.

Popular concerns over the power of NGOs, however, stem from their staggering funding, dubious agendas including religious conversion, and untrammeled powers to interfere in domestic matters. Data available

with the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, as reported first by The Pioneer, shows that in

the nine years between 2001 and 2010, NGOs received more than _70,000 crore. The

highest donors were the US, Germany and Britain, and the most significant recipients

include Gospel For Asia Inc, USA (_232.71crore), Foundation Vicente Ferrer, Barcelona,

Spain (_228.60 crore) and World Vision Global Centre, USA (_197.62 crore).

                          Analysis of the data shows that the greatest ums out of the foreign contributions were

utilised for establishment expenses (_1482.58crore), followed by rural development(_944.30 crore), welfare of children (_742.42crore), construction and maintenance of school/college (_630.78 crore) and grant of

stipend/scholarship/ assistance in cash and kind to poor/deserving children (_454.70crore). Note the diminishing values. Now, if 50 per cent to 70 per cent of the funds of any organisation are spent on establishment expenses, such as buying land, buildings, vehicles, office infrastructure,

mobiles, laptops and cameras, paying salaries, consultancy fees, honorarium, and on foreign

travel, should such expenditure be tax free when there is no public beneficiary? Huge sums are expended on conversions, which also cannot be designated as ‘charity’ or ‘public service’. World Vision, in particular, has an exclusive Christian identity, as attested to by its own website, where it admits that while 20 per cent of its world wide staff belongs to other faiths, all prospective staff are expected to affirm their Christian faith in writing. This was after firing some staff in America for changing their religious affiliations. In the light of these experiences, many Indians feel that the country does not need foreign aid to improve the lot of its citizens,

and that all social service activities can be meaningfully conducted with local donations. As India itself provides considerable assistance to other Asian and African nations, there is no merit in accepting foreign funding on the

pretext of charity, and then using the same for conversions or politics.

(The Church was actively involved in

organising the NGO-sponsored protests against

the Kudankulam nuclear power project.)