Govt of India "cancels" foreign funding license of 25 NGOs sans valid reason: Amnesty, Human Rights Watch

By A Representative
In a joint statement, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, two of the topmost human rights NGOs with global presence, have strongly reacted to the Government of India’s reported refusal to renew foreign funding licenses of 25 NGOs “without valid reasons.”
Pointing out that this “violates their rights to freedom of expression and association”, the statement said, “On November 5, 2016, media reports quoted unnamed officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs as saying that the NGOs were denied permission under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), which regulates foreign funding for NGOs, because their activities are not in the national interest”.
“While the government has not published the list of affected groups, it appears to include several human rights organizations”, the statement points out, adding, “The ability to access foreign funding is integral to the rights to free association and expression, which can only be restricted under narrow specified grounds.”
The statement quotes Aakar Patel, Executive Director at Amnesty International India, as saying that “the Home Ministry’s decision to prevent NGOs from receiving foreign funding without sound justification is mystifying. The Ministry has an obligation to show how these restrictions are necessary and proportionate.”
The statement notes, “On October 29, the Centre for Promotion of Social Concerns, a prominent Indian human rights organization better known by its programme unit People’s Watch, said that its request for renewal of its foreign funding license under the FCRA had been denied.”
It adds, “The FCRA website said: ‘On the basis of field agency report, the competent authority has decided to refuse [People’s Watch’s] application for renewal.’ No other reasons were given.”
Earlier, on October 21, the Ministry of Home Affairs denied a request from the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), a network of NGOs and people’s movements, for renewal of its FCRA license “without providing any reasons”, the statement says.
“An email from the Ministry to INSAF merely said: ‘Your application… has been refused due to following reasons: Your application for renewal is refused.’ INSAF also had its FCRA license suspended in April 2013, but the Delhi High Court quashed the suspension in September that year.”
Then, the statement says, “On October 28, 2016, the Ministry of Home Affairs also sent a one-line email to the NGO Hazards Centre, a unit of the Sanchal Foundation, stating that their application for renewal had been denied ‘on the basis of field agency report’, adding, On November 3, the Ministry of Home Affairs said it had cancelled the FCRA licenses of 11,319 NGOs that had not applied for renewal of their licenses by the June 30 deadline.”
Pointing out that “the applications of another 1,736 NGOs were ‘closed due to non-submission of documents or deficient documents’, the statement says, “Successive governments have used the FCRA as a political tool to harass groups critical of government views and actions.”
Saying that in cases where organizations challenged the suspension of their FCRA, the courts have generally ruled in their favour, the statement says, “The courts have also repeatedly reminded the government that in a democracy, dissent should not be muzzled”, as it happened “in ruling for Greenpeace India activist Pillai, who had been prevented from traveling to London to raise concerns over a coal plant.”
The statement regrets, “Even as the authorities use the FCRA to tighten restrictions on nongovernmental groups, in March the government amended the law to retroactively legalize funding by foreign entities to political parties.”
Asking the Government of India “repeal the FCRA, or amend it so that it does not interfere with the rights to freedom of expression and association, and cannot be misused for political reasons”, the statement quotes Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch as saying, “While India is actively encouraging foreign investment in key industries, it is trying to deny funding for efforts to assist the most vulnerable and marginalized.”

Comments

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Search This Blog