'Extremist' US Hindu global group funding hate against Indian Churches: NGO groups

Counterview Desk
As many as 14 civil rights and faith-based organizations in co-signing a letter to the US Senators, Representatives, State Governor, and other elected officials have demanded the FBI, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Department of Justice should investigate into Texas-based organization Global Hindu Heritage Foundation (GHHF) a fundraiser campaign for demolishing churches in India.
Co-signed by Federation of Indian American Christian Organization in North America (FIACONA), North American Church of God, Southern Methodist University (SMU) Human Rights Program, Amnesty International - Dallas, World Without Genocide, Center for Pluralism, Genocide Watch, The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), Limitless Church, Justice for All, Hindu for Human Rights, North Texas Peace Advocates, Good Citizens of DFW, and the North Texas Islamic Council, the letter has been sent to Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz; Representatives Michael C Burgess, Pat Fallon, Van Taylor, Terry Meza, Collin Allred, Marc Veasey, Jake Ellzey, Michael Cloud; Governor Gregg Abbott and Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney.
The letter follows GHHF, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, circulating a flier for a fundraising event, listing one of the causes as demolishing what they call “illegal churches” in Tirupati, a city in India’s Andhra Pradesh state. “We find it extremely disturbing and dangerous that GHHF would so openly advertise their goal to cause such great harm to Indian Christians, who already face enormous persecution on a daily basis,” says the letter.
“We urge you to use your platform as elected officials to forcefully condemn this blatant and brazen display of anti-Christian hate and bigotry. We also urge you to… [seek] immediate investigative and legal action against the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation for violating its 501c3 status by funding hate and enabling violence against religious minorities in India,” it adds.

Text:

We, the undersigned civil rights organizations, are writing to express our deep concerns about a fundraiser held by Global Hindu Heritage Foundation (GHHF), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in Frisco, Texas on November 27, to raise money for the disturbing goal, among other causes, of demolishing churches in India.
GHHF is a Hindu supremacist group that raises money in the United States to fund its project of forcibly converting Muslims & Christians to Hinduism in India. This group supports an ideology known as Hindutva, or violent Hindu Supremacism, which holds that Hindu Indians are superior to non-Hindus and that minority groups, especially Christians and Muslims, should be reduced to second-class citizens and subjected to violence.
Hindu extremism in India has led to a hazardous environment for religious minorities. The US State Department and other major human rights organizations, including the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, have noted the demonization and persecution of nearly 28 million Christians.
Today, Christians in India face the threat of being physically attacked -- sometimes while in their own homes -- and having their churches vandalized, arsoned, or shut down.
These attacks are even more common in Indian states that have passed laws criminalizing religious conversions. Hindu extremists use flimsy claims that Christians are “forcibly converting Hindus” as an excuse to break into churches, vandalize prayer spaces, disrupt congregations, harass worshippers, molest women, detain faith leaders, and socially boycott Christian communities.
In most cases, authorities in the states ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party arrest the Christian victims instead of the Hindu extremists who orchestrate and participate in violence against them.

We urge you to use your platform as elected officials to condemn this blatant and brazen display of anti-Christian hate and bigotry

Human rights groups reported nearly 800 hate crimes against Christians in 2021 alone. However, the government of Prime Minister Modi refuses to condemn these hate crimes, and Hindu supremacists in India and abroad, including GHHF, continue to justify the persecution by claiming that Christians pose a “threat” to Hindus.
In 2014, GHHF wrote a letter to India’s Minister of Education urging her to revise the educational curriculum and teach children about the “heroism” of the man who murdered Mahatma Gandhi, Nathuram Godse.
The letter falsely accused Christians of “stabbing the nation” by converting the Hindus with “deception and allurement.” Upping its genocidal rhetoric, the letter further warns Indian Hindus that they might become “sacrificial lambs” in the hands of Christians.
In 2020, GHHF hosted an event in Plano to support discriminatory anti-minority legislation passed in India, advocating that Muslims and Christians be stripped of their minority status.
Now, GHHF is attempting to raise money to demolish even more churches, calling them “illegal.”
We find it extremely disturbing and dangerous that GHHF would so openly advertise their goal to cause such great harm to Indian Christians, who already face enormous persecution daily.
We urge you to use your platform as elected officials to condemn this blatant and brazen display of anti-Christian hate and bigotry. We also urge you to write letters to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Department of Justice (DoJ), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seeking immediate investigative and legal action against the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation for violating its 501c3 status by funding hate and enabling violence against religious minorities in India.

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Counterview

Search This Blog