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| Shabnam Hashmi of Anhad |
Anhad is one of the seven NGOs whose Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) license has been cancelled by the Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI, after it was issued in March 2016. “Those who were sent donations were asked whether they knew for what purpose it was meant”, a knowledgeable source told Counterview.
Another prominent NGOs whose FCRA has been cancelled is Navsaran Trust, a Gujarat-based Dalit rights which supported the anti-caste powerful movement which gripped the state and the nation against the gruesome flogging of four Dalit youths in Una, a town in the Saurashtra region, for skinning dead cows.
Cancelling Navsarjan Trust’s FCRA license, the GoI accused it of “undesirable activities aimed to affect prejudicially harmony between religious, racial, social, linguistic, regional groups, castes or communities”, cancelling the license it was issued on August 3, 2016, three weeks after the Una incident.
Issued soon after the FCRA withdrawal, an Anhad statement said, “It’s not the foreign funds that are being questioned”, calling it an effort to “suppress” any dissident in India. Terming it “draconian”, it added, “The present attack is a continuation of similar draconian measures taken during the past three years by the present government in almost every sphere of intellectual activity and freedom of expression.”
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| Martin Macwan, founder, Navsarjan Trust |
Things allegedly became awry for Anhad immediately after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. An enquiry was instituted against it from the Home Ministry in June 2014. In November 2015 the Home Ministry did the second enquiry, following which it sent four trunks full of material to it.
“The scenario is like the demonetization notices”, Anhad said, wondering, “Government can’t make up its mind what it wants to do… If it had to cancel the FCRA, it should have done after the November 2015 enquiry. Why did they renew the FCRA then and why have they cancelled it now?”
“It is very clear that a government which thinks it is fine to have 100% FDI in many areas, including defence, but cannot afford the dissenting voices to have any access to funds. Notices were also sent in 2014 to donors who donated more than Rs 10,000 to Anhad from within India”, it added.
Navsarjan Trust founder Martin Macwan told Counterview, “We have come to know about GoI decision of canceling the FCRA license from the media." Dalit rights activists in Gujarat suspect the move has come on account of participation in the Una movement” calling the decision “purely political.”
Meanwhile, several Rajya Sabha members of Parliament (MPs), cutting across party lines, have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi wondering why the GoI has refused to investigate Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which collects “huge amounts of money abroad and then use it to further a hate filled agenda”.
Calling the selective targeting of NGOs such as Sabrang Trust run by Teesta Setalvad, Anhad, Lawyers Collective, Greenpeace India, Navsarjan Trust, as “abhorrent and anti-democratic” only because they are critical of government policies, the MPs said, their “licenses had been earlier renewed, showing that in the normal course these NGOs had fulfilled the criteria required for registration.”
“The decision to cancel the registration is therefore a decision motivated by the politics of vendetta, victimization and an effort to bully them into silence”, the MPs insisted, demanding revocation of the cancelled licenses.
Those who have signed the statement include Sitaram Yechury and P Karunakaran of the CPI(M), D Raja of the CPI, Ahmed Patel and Renuka Chaudhury of the Congress, Premchand Gupta of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Praful Patel and Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party, and Neeraj Shekar of the Samajwadi Party.
“The scenario is like the demonetization notices”, Anhad said, wondering, “Government can’t make up its mind what it wants to do… If it had to cancel the FCRA, it should have done after the November 2015 enquiry. Why did they renew the FCRA then and why have they cancelled it now?”
“It is very clear that a government which thinks it is fine to have 100% FDI in many areas, including defence, but cannot afford the dissenting voices to have any access to funds. Notices were also sent in 2014 to donors who donated more than Rs 10,000 to Anhad from within India”, it added.
Navsarjan Trust founder Martin Macwan told Counterview, “We have come to know about GoI decision of canceling the FCRA license from the media." Dalit rights activists in Gujarat suspect the move has come on account of participation in the Una movement” calling the decision “purely political.”
Meanwhile, several Rajya Sabha members of Parliament (MPs), cutting across party lines, have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi wondering why the GoI has refused to investigate Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which collects “huge amounts of money abroad and then use it to further a hate filled agenda”.
Calling the selective targeting of NGOs such as Sabrang Trust run by Teesta Setalvad, Anhad, Lawyers Collective, Greenpeace India, Navsarjan Trust, as “abhorrent and anti-democratic” only because they are critical of government policies, the MPs said, their “licenses had been earlier renewed, showing that in the normal course these NGOs had fulfilled the criteria required for registration.”
“The decision to cancel the registration is therefore a decision motivated by the politics of vendetta, victimization and an effort to bully them into silence”, the MPs insisted, demanding revocation of the cancelled licenses.
Those who have signed the statement include Sitaram Yechury and P Karunakaran of the CPI(M), D Raja of the CPI, Ahmed Patel and Renuka Chaudhury of the Congress, Premchand Gupta of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Praful Patel and Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party, and Neeraj Shekar of the Samajwadi Party.
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