Moon Desk: Earlier this month, a team from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) visited India to conduct evaluations, assessing the country’s implementation of the legal framework against money laundering and terrorist financing.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Hindu-centric Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership might take solace in delivering a satisfactory report card to the international watchdog on terrorism financing, mounting evidence suggests that Hindutva groups, operating with state patronage, are involved in systematic and organised acts of terror, particularly targeting religious minorities.
A complex network of transactions, disguised as charitable endeavors, interwoven with a network of extremist organisations operating at home and abroad, and the covert funneling of financial support to Hindu supremacist and religious groups, now, collectively cast a dark shadow over India’s stance against terrorism before the global audience it has been trying to charm for decades.
Since the 2014 victory of the BJP, the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an organisation committed to turning India into a Hindu nation, marginalisation of minority communities, particularly Muslims, has become more pronounced. In the last decade, the RSS and its Hindu nationalist ideology, known as Hindutva, have experienced a significant surge. Advocacy groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch contend that the escalation of Hindutva-related violence and discrimination against religious minorities coincides with the rise of Modi’s BJP and has exacerbated further with each successive electoral triumph for the right-wing party.
According to Hindutva Watch, an independent research project that documents hate crimes and hate speeches against religious minorities in India, an overwhelming 205 (80%) of hate speech events in 2023 occurred in BJP-ruled states and union territories. Furthermore, a majority of the events were orchestrated by entities affiliated with the RSS, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) designated as a religious militant organisation by the World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Bajrang Dal, also a declared militant religious organisation by the World Factbook, the Sakal Hindu Samaj, and the ruling party itself.
The growth of these groups, and their involvement, the watchdog suggests, is directly linked to their financial resources, which plays a crucial role in scaling up their operations. It is revealed that Hindutva groups in India have relied on various legal and illegal methods, globally as well as domestically, to raise funds for their activities against religious minorities.
