India's Media:Saudi Good-India Bad

[Guest guest]

Reporting bias

Francois Gautier

Why is it that in this country, when for decades Saudi Arabia has been

funding madarsas which are openly preaching sedition and are often

dens of terrorism, the Indian Press finds nothing to say? Why is it

that when foreign Christian organisations are pouring billions of

dollars to deviously convert innocent Harijans and tribals, teaching

them to hate their own culture and country, the media here keep quiet?

And why is it that when a few Hindu organisations collect funds for a

harmless programme like Ekal Vidyalaya - which are doing a wonderful

job for tribal children - they are attacked as fundamentalist by most

Indian publications?

 

Particularly targeted nowadays by some US-based Christian and Muslim

organisations, such as "The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate", is the

India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), a Maryland-based charity

which has denied allegations that it is raising millions of dollars

from non-resident Indians and American corporations and using the

money to fund a "hate campaign" in India.

 

 

Yet, the Federation of Indian American Christian Organisations of

Northern America, Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand's Sabrang

Communications, have demanded a probe by the US Congress into IDRF and

also asked the IRS to blacklist it and withdraw its tax exemption

status. Biju Mathews, the president of the Federation of Indian

American Christian Organisations of Northern America, a very little

known group, has accused IDRF of:

 

1) Funnelling millions of dollars every year to be used by "violent,

sectarian Hindu supremacist orgs."

 

2) That "the IDRF has funded numerous relief efforts in response to

natural disasters, communal violence, and other social crises.

However, the distributive mechanisms utilised by the IDRF have

consistently discriminated against Muslims and other minorities in India."

 

3) That "The IDRF's relief efforts are frequently divisive and have

supported the further communalisation of Indian society."

 

4) That "In recent times, the organisation has raised funds for

Bangladeshi Hindu victims of communal violence, Kashmiri Hindu victims

of terrorism, and relief efforts following the September 11 attacks in

the US." But that "In contrast, to date, IDRF has not announced any

relief for the victims of communal riots in Gujarat in February and

March 2002." The report goes on to say that the IDRF uses a network of

professional Indian migrants who work among the large US corporations

in the Silicon Valley, such as Cisco, Sun, Oracle or Hewlett-Packard.

"The swayamsevaks (volunteers) within US corporations, says the

91-page report, push IDRF as the best and the only way to provide

funding for development and relief work in India, thus causing not

only other unsuspecting employees, but also the corporation itself to

fund the Sangh in India".

 

"IDRF dismissed the allegations made by the groups as pure concoction,

untruthful and self contradicting," the charity said in a statement

last Friday. The report by Biju Mathew "is merely a string of

allegations, manipulated skillfully by piecing together information

available on the IDRF web site". The statement by IDRF continues: "The

allegations do not stand up to any rational scrutiny. Donors to IDRF

are among most well-informed of the donors to any South Asian

nonprofit charitable organisations operating in the US. IDRF questions

the credibility, motives and the political agenda of these splintered

and virtually unknown groups that have launched the Hate Campaign

against IDRF. IDRF does not to any religious, political or

sectarian agendas. Further, IDRF does not discriminate against any

religion, sect or race in either the collection or distribution of funds."

 

But the damage has been done: Sun Microsystems stated that all current

donations to the IDRF have been placed on hold pending a directive

from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It, however, added: "Any

non-profit and non-proprietary organisation that has been granted

501©(3) tax exempt and public charity status is eligible to receive

matching gifts from Sun Microsystems." The IDRF, it observed, does not

appear on the IRS list of agencies known to support terrorist

activities. Similarly, a Cisco spokesperson said the company had

terminated all matching donations to the IDRF.

 

This has infuriated many Cisco employees, such as Shyam Palleti, who

wrote that "there is a malicious campaign against work done by some

Indians for the benefit of Indian causes. All the money collected in

Cisco went to right causes, like the Orissa cyclone of 1999, and was

accounted and reported to IRS". Another NRI, Mr Ranganathan, says

"that IDRF seems to be gathering more money than others, because

people are aware of the good work done by IDRF and so money is sure to

go into right causes and not because people are duped". Adds Palleti:

"The word 'duped' is insulting to employees who build innovative

networking products and because of whom we can communicate with ease.

I don't think the articles published in the Indian Press cause anybody

to reduce their help to IDRF, but only incense them to think that

their own media is not India-friendly".

 

I personally met last August in Washington, the chief executives of

IDRF, Vinod and Sarala Prakash, two old, harmless, friendly persons,

who would not harm a fly. How is it possible that when Muslim

terrorists wreak havoc all the over India, kill innocent people, as

they just did in the Jammu temples, the Press only mentions these as

news items, without condemning them, but that it targets harmless

people such as the Prakash, who have never hurt anybody in their lives?

 

Is it not time we called a spade a spade? The spectre of a "dangerous"

RSS, for example, is a creation of the British who had understood, as

the Muslims invaders did before them, that the Hindus were the

greatest hurdle to their grip on India. So their own Press started

attacking anything Hindu, or any group which was trying to protect

Hindu culture or leader, such as the Hindu Mahasabha. It is also time

for Hindus of this country to face the truth: We are looking at the

Gujarat riots only through the prism of what the Western press and the

English-speaking Indian media have said - mad "fundamentalist" Hindus,

going after peace-loving Muslims.

 

However, reality might be different: Are not tolerant, God fearing,

peace-loving Hindus fed up of being maligned, made fun of, slandered,

attacked, killed, their women raped, their temples sprayed with

bullets and grenades, by a religion which for centuries has made

violence and hatred a way of life? Could it be that Gujarat is giving

a warning to the Muslims of India that Hindus have "had enough", and

that they are not ready to put up any more with their own women and

children being burnt like animals? The Indian media would do well to

take notice of this new popular mood of the majority community and try

to understand their feelings, instead of accusing them of being

"fanatics". They should also be careful not to give so much space to

small hate groups such as The Federation of Indian American Christian

Organisations of Northern America.