Formation | 1988 |
---|---|
Type | Non-profit/ Public charity |
Purpose | To bring sustainable socio-economic development to remote parts of India |
Location | |
Coordinates | 39°02′16″N77°07′06″W / 39.03787°N 77.118294°W |
Region served | India, Nepal and Sri Lanka |
Key people | Vinod Prakash |
Website | www |
India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) [1] is a Maryland, US-based 501(c) (3) tax exempt, non-profit organization (EIN: 52-1555563) [2] that supports impoverished people in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. IDRF's programs span all over India from Jammu and Kashmir to Tamil Nadu, and from Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh, Nepal and more recently Sri Lanka. Since its inception in 1988, IDRF has disbursed $34 million [3] in grants to various developmental programs pertaining to areas like: education, health, women's empowerment, eco-friendly development, good governance, and disaster relief/rehabilitation.
IDRF was founded in 1988 by Dr. Vinod Prakash, a former World Bank development economist, who has worked as a volunteer for IDRF since he founded it.
IDRF maintains a close collaboration with the Indian American community and helps them realize their dreams of giving back to their “motherland” or" land of their ancestors".
Some IDRF accomplishments since 1988:
Education:
Health: IDRF provides health services to poor people living in remote areas. These services are provided either free or at nominal charges.
Women empowerment:
Eco-friendly development: IDRF funds programs that facilitate rural enterprises by incorporating clean-energy technology and practices and also in conservation of biodiversity and natural resources.
Disaster relief and rehabilitation:
Good governance
In 2002 a coalition of professionals, students, workers, artists and intellectuals in the US organized "The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate". [4] A report authored by members of this organization focused on IDRF, which it said "has systematically funded Hindutva operations in India ... is not a secular and non-sectarian organization as it claims to be, but is, on the contrary, a major conduit of funds for Hindutva organizations in India. [4] According to the report, IDRF was channeling funds to organizations involved in spreading hate against religious minorities and promoting communal violence. [4]
The report, published by Sabrang Communications and the South Asia Citizens Web, was titled The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva. It investigated how funding raised by IDRF in the US was being distributed in India. It accused that most of the money went to Sangh Parivar organizations. [5]
Sabrang Communications, which prepared this report against IDRF, was itself alleged to have stolen huge sums of money away from victims of the 2002 Gujarat violence and its owner, Teesta Setalvad is being prosecuted for embezzlement of funds on complaints filed with the police by the very "victims" for whom the funds were collected by Teesta Setalvad from donors in US and other countries and her appeal is being heard by the Supreme Court of India. [6] [7]
The report said 70% of money was used for "hinduisation/tribal/education" work, mainly to spreading Hindutva beliefs among tribals. When IDRF filed a tax document in 1989 with the United States Internal Revenue Service, it identified nine organisations as a sample of those it would fund, all of which were associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). [8] Some of the groups funded by IDRF had been associated with attacks on Muslims and Christians and with forced conversion of tribals to Hinduism. [9] Angana Chatterji, an anthropology professor helped write the report and said, "We're not saying IDRF is directly involved in communal violence, we're saying that IDRF supports a movement that provokes communal violence". [10] The US State and Justice departments added IDRF to the list of organizations being investigated for illicit donations and money laundering. [11] However, the Office of Management and Budget approved IDRF for the 2012 and 2013 Combined Federal Campaign, the US federal government's workplace giving campaign. [12] [13]
Soon after the report was issued, in November 2002, IDRF dismissed the allegations as "pure concoction, untruthful and self contradicting". [14] In March 2003, in response to the allegations, a team of six Indian-American academics conducted a thorough investigation and concluded that IDRF was not, in fact, supporting violence or furthering any hateful ideology at all. This team, Ramesh Nagaraj Rao, Narayan Komerath, Beloo Mehra, Chitra Raman, Sugrutha Ramaswami, and Nagendra Rao, called themselves "Friends of India," and issued a report called A Factual Response to the Hate Attack on the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF). Dr. Vinod and Sarla Prakash met the then Indian Home Minister Mr. Lal Krishna Advani and furnished him detailed information about IDRF's grants to various NGOs in India. Few months later, IDRF was informed by his office that there was no evidence of violation of law against it. [15] [16] They published a hard copy of the report, IDRF: Let the Facts Speak in 2003. [17]
Bajrang Dal is a Hindu nationalist militant organisation that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). It is a member of the right-wing Sangh Parivar. The ideology of the organisation is based on Hindutva. It was founded on 1 October 1984 in Uttar Pradesh, and began spreading more in the 2010s throughout India, although its most significant base remains the northern and central portions of the country.
Teesta Setalvad is an Indian civil rights activist and journalist. She is the secretary of Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), an organisation formed to advocate for the victims of 2002 Gujarat riots.
The Mata Amritanandamayi Math (MAM) is an international charitable organization aimed at the spiritual and material upliftment of humankind. It was founded by Indian spiritual leader and humanitarian Mata Amritanandamayi in 1981, with its headquarters in Paryakadavu, Alappad Panchayat, Kollam district, kerala and is also known as amritpuri
The Hindu American Foundation is an American Hindu non-profit advocacy group founded in 2003. The organisation has its roots in the Hindu nationalist organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad America and its student wing Hindu Students Council.
The 2002 Gujarat riots, also known as the 2002 Gujarat violence or the Gujarat pogrom, was a three-day period of inter-communal violence in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The burning of a train in Godhra on 27 February 2002, which caused the deaths of 58 Hindu pilgrims and karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, is cited as having instigated the violence. Following the initial riot incidents, there were further outbreaks of violence in Ahmedabad for three months; statewide, there were further outbreaks of violence against the minority Muslim population of Gujarat for the next year.
Final Solution documentary film directed by Rakesh Sharma concerning the 2002 Gujarat riots in the state of Gujarat in which 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed. Hindu right-wing organizations were made responsible for these riots, which took place as a "spontaneous response" to the killing of 70 Hindu pilgrims in the Godhra Train Burning by a mob of radical Muslims on 27 February 2002. But as the film proceeds with victims continuing to come forward and share their experiences, a more unsettling possibility seems to emerge- that far from being a spontaneous expression of outrage. The makers of the film claim that the violence had been carefully coordinated and planned.
Communalism Combat is a monthly magazine published by Sabrang Communications since August 1993. The magazine is edited by husband wife team of Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad.
Anti-Christian violence in India is religiously motivated violence against Christians in India. Human Rights Watch has classified violence against Christians in India as a tactic used by the right-wing Sangh Parivar organizations to encourage and exploit communal violence in furtherance of their political ends. The acts of violence include arson of churches, conversion of Christians by force, physical violence, sexual assaults, murders, rapes, and the destruction of Christian schools, colleges, and cemeteries.
The Jhabua nuns rape case refers to the gang rape of four nuns in the Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh in India on September 23, 1998, by tribal men. Around 18-26 men barged their way into the Ashram where the nuns lived and ransacked the entire ashram and some of the men gang raped the nuns.
The Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL), or the Forum of Inquilabi Leftists, is a group of left-wing activists of Indian background. The organization describes itself as "a clearinghouse for radical Indian activists in the United States, Canada and England." Its purpose is described by its founders as "some place for us to share information, offer support, and encourage each other to write in the open media on issues pertaining to Indians overseas and India itself, and help build projects that make our radical politics more material."
International Development and Relief Foundation (IDRF) is a Canadian non-profit organization dedicated to linking Canadian and Muslim communities with overseas development projects, both humanitarian emergency assistance and long term development projects in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Americas, based on Islamic principles of human dignity, self-reliance, and social justice.
Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation is the principal organisation of the Ekal Abhiyan project, a one teacher school initiative in India. The foundation operates under the umbrella organisation of Ekal Abhiyan Trust and has a number of associated organisations called the Friends of Tribals Society (FTS), Shree Hari Satsang Samiti (SHSS), Arogya Foundation of India (AFI), Grammotham Foundation (GF) and Ekal Sansthan (ES). EVF is actively involved in fund-raising activities in several countries outside India, most notably the United States, and is associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The Ekal Vidyalaya schools were assisted by the NDA Government from 1999–2000 onwards.
Sabrang Communications is an organization founded in 1993 that publishes the monthly Communalism Combat magazine and that operates KHOJ, a secular education program, in schools in Mumbai, India. Communalism Combat is edited by Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad. The Khoj programs try to help children to get past identity labels.
Javed Anand is an Indian journalist and civil rights activist who founded the Mumbai-based Sabrang Communications in 1993. He is married to Teesta Setalvad and they co-edit the monthly Communalism Combat.
Narayanan Menon Komerath is an Indian-born professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States. He has written numerous articles and books. He is known for his views on ways to build structures in space from asteroid debris, which could be used for a space-based economy, and for his research into microwave power transmission in space.
Supervasi is a non-profit organisation and movement based in Maharashtra, India, formed for the purpose of using technology to improve e-governance, business and society.
There have been several instances of religious violence against Muslims since the partition of India in 1947, frequently in the form of violent attacks on Muslims by Hindu nationalist mobs that form a pattern of sporadic sectarian violence between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950 in 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982.
The 2008 Kandhamal violence refers to widespread violence against Christians purportedly incited by Hindutva organisations in the Kandhamal district of Orissa, India, in August 2008 after the murder of the Hindu monk Lakshmanananda Saraswati. According to government reports the violence resulted in at least 39 Christians killed. Reports indicate that more than 395 churches were razed or burnt down, between 5,600–6,500 houses plundered or burnt down, over 600 villages ransacked and more than 60,000 – 75,000 people left homeless. Other reports put the death toll at nearly 100 and suggested more than 40 women were sexually assaulted. Unofficial reports placed the number of those killed to more than 500. Many Christian families were burnt alive. Thousands of Christians were forced to convert to Hinduism under threat of violence. Many Hindu families were also assaulted in some places because they supported the Indian National Congress (INC) party. This violence was led by the Bajrang Dal, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the VHP.
The Foreign Contribution (regulation) Act, 2010 is an act of the Parliament of India, by the 42nd Act of 2010. It is a consolidating act whose scope is to regulate the acceptance and utilisation of foreign contribution or foreign hospitality by certain individuals or associations or companies and to prohibit acceptance and utilisation of foreign contribution or foreign hospitality for any activities detrimental to the national interest and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. It is designed to correct shortfalls in the predecessor act of 1976. The bill received presidential assent on 26 September 2010.
The 2007 Christmas violence in Kandhamal violence refers to the violence that occurred during the Christmas of 2007 between the groups led by Sangh Parivar together with the Sangh-affiliated Kui Samaj and the Christians in the Kandhamal district of Odisha.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)