Formation | 1993 |
---|---|
Type | NGO |
Purpose | Combat communalism and caste-based discrimination |
Location | |
Key people | |
Website | www |
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. [1] Communalism Combat is edited by Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad. [2] The Khoj programs try to help children to get past identity labels. [3]
Javed Anand left his job as a Bombay-based journalist in the mainstream press and founded Communalism Combat in 1993 to fight religious intolerance and communal violence. [4] His decision followed the December 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque by Hindu fundamentalists. [5] Communalism Combat first appeared in August 1993. [4] Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad, founders of Sabrang, are also founders of the NGO "Citizens for Peace and Justice", which fights communalism through the courts. [6]
Sabrang says its purpose is "to provide information on, analyse and expose the machinations of communal politics in India, on the subcontinent and abroad and to publicise the attempt of secular individuals, groups and organisations engaged in fighting them". [1] Sabrang also aimed to create new books on Indian history as an alternative to official accounts that distort or truncate reality. Part of the objective would be to destroy traditional stereotypes. [7] Another project begun in 1996 was named "Aman", which means "Olive Branch". It encouraged correspondence between Indian and Pakistani children as a way to start overcoming the hostility that has existed between the two countries since partition in 1947. [8]
In 2006 the Ford Foundation gave a grant of $200,000 to Sabrang Communications "to address communalism and caste-based discrimination in India through active research, Web-based information dissemination, development of civil society networks and media strategies". [9]
A report published in The Pioneer on 28 June 2013 quoted unnamed sources as saying that significant amounts of money donated to the Sabrang Trust to help riot victims had been diverted to the bank accounts of Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad, and to Sabrang Communications. [10]
In 1998 Sabrang published Damning Verdict: Report of the Srikrishna Commission on the riots in Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993, and the 12 March 1993 bomb blasts. [11] Following ongoing communal violence in Gujarat, in 2000 Sabrang published Saffron on the rampage: Gujarat's Muslims pay for the Lashkar's deeds. [12] In 2002 Sabrang and South Asia Citizens Web published The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva, which investigated how funding raised by the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) in the USA was being distributed in India. It found that most of the money went to Sangh Parivar for use in education, tribal or cultural activities. [13] The report alleged that Ekal Vidyalaya one-teacher schools that the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) had launched in the 1990s with funding from overseas charities had the goal of "Hinduizing" tribals and spreading hatred against Indian minorities. [14]
The 2002 Sabrang report included a diagram that illustrated how the US/UK and Indian components of the sangh parivar were related. The report may have contributed to growing criticism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) by prominent overseas Indians, and to the decision by the US State and Justice departments to begin investigations of the IDRF for illicit donations and money laundering. [15] The IDRF issued a counter-report denying the implied accusation in the Sabrang report that tribal activists, who had played a major role in the violence in Gujarat in 2002, were linked to US funding sources. [16] In the rebuttal the IDRF said Hindutva was simply a framework for maintaining identity in societies where Hindus are small minorities. [17]
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist volunteer paramilitary organisation. It is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar, which has developed a presence in all facets of Indian society and includes the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling political party under Narendra Modi, the 14th prime minister of India. Mohan Bhagwat has served as the Sarsanghchalak of the RSS since March 2009.
Hindutva is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922. It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the current ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and other organisations, collectively called the Sangh Parivar.
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 a controversial 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.
Pravin Togadia is an Indian doctor, cancer surgeon and an advocate for Hindu nationalism, coming from the state of Gujarat. He was the former International Working President of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and a cancer surgeon by qualification. He is Founder and Current President of Antarashtriya Hindu Parishad. He had a falling-out with the Sangh Parivar and is a vocal critic of Narendra Modi.
The Bombay riots were a series of riots that took place in Bombay, Maharashtra, between December 1992 and January 1993. An estimated 900 people, predominantly Muslims, were killed. The riots were mainly due to escalations of hostilities after large scale protests by Muslims in reaction to the 1992 Babri Masjid Demolition by Hindu Karsevaks in Ayodhya; and by Hindus in regards with the Ram Temple issue.
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 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."
Angana P. Chatterji is an Indian anthropologist, activist, and feminist historian, whose research is closely related to her advocacy work and focuses mainly on India. She co-founded the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir and was a co-convener from April 2008 to December 2012.
India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) is a Maryland, US-based 501(c) (3) tax exempt, non-profit organization 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 in grants to various developmental programs pertaining to areas like: education, health, women's empowerment, eco-friendly development, good governance, and disaster relief/rehabilitation.
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.
Norbert D'Souza is a railway engineer and trainer from Pune who was president of the All India Catholic Union (AICU) for four years. The AICU represents almost 16 million Catholics in India, including followers of the Latin Rite, the Syro Malabar Catholics and the Syro Malankara Catholics. He held office from 1996 to 2000, succeeding Peter G. Marbaniang and succeeded by Maria Emilia Menezes.
The Naroda Patiya massacre took place on 28 February 2002 at Naroda, in Ahmedabad, India, during the 2002 Gujarat riots. 97 Muslims were killed by a mob of approximately 5,000 people, organised by the Bajrang Dal, a wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, and allegedly supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party which was in power in the Gujarat State Government. The massacre at Naroda occurred during the bandh (strike) called by Vishwa Hindu Parishad a day after the Godhra train burning. The riot lasted over 10 hours, during which the mob plundered, stabbed, sexually assaulted, gang-raped and burnt people individually and in groups. After the conflict, a curfew was imposed in the state and Indian Army troops were called in to contain further violence.
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 1998 attacks on Christians in southeastern Gujarat refers to the wave of attacks against Christians mostly around the Dangs District of Southeastern Gujarat from late 1997 to early 1999. The attacks reportedly started at the end of 1997 before peaking during the Christmas of 1998 after the anti-Christian rallies in the Dangs District by the Hindu Jagaran Manch. The attacks included assaults on and killings of Christians, attacks against Christian schools, institutions and shops, damages, demolition and burning down of Prayer Halls and Churches mainly by members of the Bhartiya Janata Party, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Hindu Jagran Manch.
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.