New Delhi: Reacting strongly to the United States criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for its action against NGOs, the RSS asked countries, including the US, to “respect” India’s sovereignty. The RSS has also questioned why ‘every developmental initiative taken by India is blocked by some NGO lobby or the other” and sought to know from the US whether “as a global protector of democratic rights’ it would allow “legal violations to happen in its own land”.
In a crackdown on NGOs allegedly receiving illegal foreign funds, the government last month had cancelled the licences of nearly 9,000 such entities for violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, or FCRA.
Charging NGOs like Greenpeace and Ford Foundation with violating Indian laws, the RSS questioned the US’ defence of the two organisations and chided it for “jumping the gun”.
The RSS mouthpiece Organiser, in an editorial titled The un-civil intervention, has said that by defending NGOs like Greenpeace and Ford Foundation by seeking a clarification from India, the “global protector of democratic rights” has ratified the fears of such NGOs being US agencies, as alleged by some in the US.
“If the US, or for that matter any country, wants to come clean on the issue of foreign funding for raising ‘rights-based issues’, they have to respect the sovereignty and cultural ethos of the home country... Otherwise, NGOism will always be perceived as another un-civil instrument of foreign policy intervention in the name of civil society,” it said.
