Hindu Supremacists Are Pumping U.S. Dollars to Fuel Christian Persecution in India
Nazi-inspired Indian outfits are receiving billions from Western affiliates masquerading as charities
India Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Hindu supremacist entities posing as charities in the U.S. are pouring millions of dollars into militant Hindu outfits in India that are using the funding to target Christians and establish a homeland for Hindus alone.
A report titled Transnational Funding in Hindu Supremacist Movements, released online by the Polis Project in mid-February, documents the “unprecedented surge of American money” and “the expansive global network of financial flows behind Hindu supremacist movements.”
The 60-page dossier reveals how “staggering” sums of money sent to India under the guise of humanitarian relief is used by the Hindu supremacist movement’s leading organizations — the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), for the persecution and reconversion of Dalits (untouchables) and tribals from Christianity to Hinduism.
The U.S. wing of the Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) coalition, which has close ties both to President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is made up of America’s wealthiest ethnic group and draws its inspiration from Mussolini’s Fascism and Hitler’s Nazism, especially its doctrine of Aryan supremacy.
Corporate Funding Directed at Persecution
The report traces the hand of Hindu-American corporates in funding the supremacist movements and identifies two family foundations — the Bhutada Family Foundation and the Gupta & Aggarwal Family Foundation — that are also registered as nonprofits.
These organizations and the families running them are among the most influential in American Hindutva circles and also run million-dollar corporations, the report notes. In 2023, India witnessed the highest amount of remittance inflows across the world, at a whopping $125 billion.
Major Hindutva bodies in the U.S. funneling cash to India include the RSS’s Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA (HSS), which recorded a total revenue of $1.42 million, net assets of $5.50 million, and total expenses of $1.41 million.
However, the only salaried employee listed in the filings is a single individual named Saumitra Gokhale, who is identified as a “yoga instructor” but is listed on the website of the Hindu University of America as the “Global Coordinator for the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh.”
Hindutva Spreading in the U.S.
The HSS now has approximately 235 centers across 164 cities in 34 U.S. states, which draw a regular attendance of 5,000 to 7,000 Hindu activists.
According to the report, Hindutva affiliates in Britain, Canada, and Australia are also major contributors to militant Hindu movements in India. The RSS has also established a large global presence through its affiliate, the HSS, which operates in more than 40 countries.
The funding of such radical groups directly impacts India’s tribal communities (with substantial Christian populations) through “religious indoctrination that can even take the extreme forms of kidnapping tribal children with impunity,” the report states.
Using double standards, the Modi-led government since 2014 “has also enabled a monopoly to Sangh [RSS] organizations in tribal regions by cutting off funding for both secular nonprofits and Christian missionary organizations through highly restrictive laws,” it adds.
More Reports Reveal Hindutva Financing
The regulatory filings by VHP of America (VHP-A) show that it transferred more than $7 million dollars to VHP India and its subsidiaries between 2001 and 2020, a second report by the Global NPO Coalition’s Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published in October 2023 found.
The report highlights how Hindutva groups receive financial support from extremist organizations through a complex web of transactions masquerading as charitable work.
“The supporting organizations are spread over continents and have clandestinely provided financial support to Hindutva groups through covert methods,” ir states. “Sometimes the financial support to Hindutva groups have been through overt and legal financial institutions because the government fails to put a check on such flow of funds.”
A third report, Hindu Nationalist Influence in the United States (2014-2021): The Infrastructure of Hindutva Mobilizing, documents the flow of funds from American RSS affiliates to RSS entities in India.
The report names two dozen Hindutva-linked organizations with net assets worth at least $97.7 million. These outfits include charitable groups, think tanks, political advocacy groups, and entities working in higher education.
Targeting Tribal Christians
Using tax records and government filings, the report shows that between 2001 and 2019, an RSS front organization calling itself the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) sent $30 million to the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA) — the tribal wing of the RSS involved in targeting Indian Christian aboriginals and reconverting them to Hinduism.
The VKA’s primary goal is to counter the influence of Christian evangelization among India’s aboriginals by oppressing the Christian tribals and luring the tribal communities to embrace Hinduism by absorbing their indigenous deities as incarnations of Hindu gods and goddesses, as well as by introducing Hindu rituals into tribal traditions.
According to tax returns, seven RSS-affiliated charitable groups spent at least $158.9 million on their programming between 2001-2019, sending much of it to Hindutva outfits in India.
“While it is hard to show beyond reasonable doubt that all the money flow of these Hindutva groups was misutilized and used for terror financing and other criminal activities, it is apparently clear that these groups are raising money which is being used for terrorist activities, hate speeches, and carrying out genocidal threats to the minorities in India,” the report observes.
Influencing American Policy
Hindu supremacist groups are also using their power and money to influence American policy, the report adds. As an example, it cites the Hindu American Foundation receiving $142,000 from the Uberoi Foundation to fund a campaign aimed at removing the term “Dalit” from U.S. textbooks in the academic years 2005-6 and 2016-17.
The radical outfits are also benefiting from U.S. taxpayer dollars. In 2021, five organizations with ties to Hindu supremacist groups, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, received COVID-19 relief funding amounting to $833,000, according to data released by the United States’ Small Business Administration (SBA).
The CIA has listed VHP and the Bajrang Dal as “militant religious organizations” for several years in its World Factbook.
Modi’s Double Standards
Meanwhile, the Modi-led government has clamped down on foreign funding received by Catholic and other Christian organizations working in schools, hospitals, and other forms of social development, as well as evangelical organizations engaged in outreach.
At the same time, the Modi administration has canceled the registration of 20,000 nonprofit organizations under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, crippling them by preventing them from receiving foreign funds, while allowing U.S. dollars to flow into Hindutva outfits, including nationalist websites that target Christians and other religious minorities.
“The double standards of the Indian government in selectively targeting civil society actors and shielding Hindutva terror groups violates India’s promise of complying with the FATF standards in preventing the risk of terror financing,” the report states.
The biggest hurdle in investigating the corporate financing behind transnational Hindutva movements — and perhaps the reason behind the strategic choice of registering as charities — is that nonprofits do not have to disclose the identities of their donors.
Hindutva terror poses a global threat, and if appropriate and timely actions are not taken, it will pose a security threat in other countries and will destabilize global peace.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.