Where do RSS funds come from ?

NEW DELHI: For the last 13 years, the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), a US-based charity has reportedly misused American corporate philanthropy to fund RSS-affiliated organisations here. For instance, the IDRF obtained vast sums from CISCO, a leading technology company in the US with a substantial number of NRIs on its rolls by saying its activities are "secular" since company rules explicitly prohibit donations to organisations of a "religious" nature. 

These are some of the findings presented in a 91-page report by The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (TCTSFH), a coalition of professionals, students, workers, artists and intellectuals. In the first phase of its campaign, "Project Saffron Dollar", the TCTSFH plans to write to large American corporates to guard against funding the IDRF, Biju Mathew, a spokesman for the TCTSFH said. 

The report, explaining the dynamics of IDRF's corporate funding, says that as professional Indian migration to the US boomed over the last decade, especially in the software sector, Sangh operatives in large hi-tech firms with liberal giving policies worked to put IDRF on the corporations' list of grantees. They then pushed IDRF as the best and only way to provide funding for development and relief work in India, resulting in other unsuspecting employees, as well as the corporation itself to fund the Sangh in India. 

RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav, when contacted, said: "There is no specific organisation which collects funds for the RSS. However, certain projects run by RSS-affiliated organisations do get money from NRIs for specific projects such as the Ekal Vidyalaya scheme (one-teacher schools run in tribal areas). This organisation (that you have mentioned) may have given some money, too. I have not heard much about it." 

The TCTSFH report says that though the IDRF claims to be a non-sectarian, non-political charity that funds development and relief work in India, the IDRF filed a tax document (at its inception in 1989) with the Internal Revenue Service of the US Federal government, identifying nine organisations as a representative sample of organisations it would support. All nine were Sangh organisations. 

The report also says that 82 per cent of IDRF's funds go to Sangh organisations. It documents the fact that 70 per cent of the monies are used for "hinduisation/tribal/education" work, largely with the view to spreading the Hindutva idealogy among tribals. Less than 20 per cent is used in "development and relief" activities, but the report concludes that since there is a sectarian slant to how the relief money is disbursed, these are sectarian funds, too. 


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