Following an Al Jazeera investigation, a broad coalition of Indian American activists and United States-based civil rights organisations has called on the US Small Business Administration (SBA) to probe how Hindu right-wing groups received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funds.
A statement issued by the Coalition to Stop Genocide in India this week said the Hindu groups that received the funds have “existential links” with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the “fountainhead of Hindu supremacist ideology” and “ideological parent” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Last week, Al Jazeera reported how five Hindu right-wing groups with links to Hindu nationalist organisations in India received more than $833,000 in direct payments and loans, according to data released by the Small Business Administration (SBA), a US federal agency that helps small business owners and entrepreneurs.
For Christians trying to care for the poor in India, there is always a need for more prayer, more hands, and more money. Much of that money comes from donors in other countries. Recently, though, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has tightened regulations on foreign funding to nonprofits, including Christian groups that feed orphans, run hospitals, and educate children.
Since Modi took office in 2014, the Indian government has revoked permission for more than 16,000 nongovernmental organizations to receive foreign funding, using the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA).
“It is deliberately an assault against the nonprofit sector,” said Vijayesh Lal, the general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, “and that includes the churches.”
A religious cross is captured through some ornamental railings in the Fort Kochi area in the state of Kerala in South India. | Getty Images
A pastor in India was brutally beaten by tribal animists angered by his refusal to contribute money toward the ritual worship of tribal deities yet police refused to punish the assailants.
In January, Pastor Lakshman Oraon, a convert from tribal deism to Christianity, was summoned by the elders of Jungur village, Latehar District in Jharkhand state, Morning Star News reports. The elders demanded that the pastor and other village Christians help fund the ritual worship of tribal deities. When he refused, they became angry.
In excess of 30 priests and seminarians (priest novices) who were singing Christmas carols in a village near Satna Town in Madhya Pradesh were arrested yesterday (Friday 15th December 2017), after a Hindu nationalist group named Bajrang Dal accused them of forcibly converting Hindus. | (Photo: britishpakistanichristians.org)
Police in India’s central state of Madhya Pradesh registered 23 cases of “forced” conversion in the first 23 days of the implementation of a new and strict “anti-conversion” law, according to media reports, indicating that the ongoing persecution of religious minorities is likely to further intensify.
“Twenty-three cases were registered under the newly passed Freedom of Religion Ordinance 2020 in January in Madhya Pradesh,” the state’s interior minister, Narottam Mishra, who is from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said, according to The Times of India.