NON RESIDENT INDIANS: YESTERDAY TODAY TOMORROW

K Vijayachandran

Churches, Mosques and religious institutions built with funds raised by non-resident Indians, are a common experience in Kerala. Hindu temples financed by non-resident Indians are rare in the state: Vallikavu Amma mostly specializes in institutions and not in temples and shrines. However, NRI financed Hindu temples and projects are a common experience in most other Indian states. Quoted below is the report on a massive temple project in Tamilnadu, that appeared on the front page of Mathrubhumi of 26th August, under the caption, Rupees Three Hundred Crore Golden Temple at Vellore!

"The golden temple built at this huge cost was offered to the devotees by a spiritual leader, who calls himself as Bhakthar Sakthi Amma. He headd a religious institution known as Sree Narayani Peeta, established in 1992. Hundreds of craftsmen have worked day and night continuously for six years, to complete the temple with a total built up area of 55,000 square, feet which was designed by the Bhaktar himself. Other than the foot path, the entire shrine is covered with gold which, imported through MMTC with the permission of Reserve Bank of India. Mahalakhmy is the chief deity and the temple is lighted up through out the night, with specially designed illumination system. The temple project was financed by the NRI devotees of the Bhaktar in USA, UK and Canada."

Non resident Sikhs had launched their massive Khalistan movement, in the seventies, from the benevolent soils of UK, USA and Canada: The movement had built numerous Gurudwaras, in India as well as abroad, and was tolerated for long until Government of India countered it with its Operation Blue Star, that ended with the murder of Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, by her own body guards. Nevertheless, the spirit of Khalistan movement continues to operate even today from US soil, under the banner the Council of Khalistan operating from Washington DC 20037 and patronage of Dr. P Singh Ajrawat as President. A recent caricature on the Manmohan cabinet, taken from its website is quite illustrative of Khalistani sentiments.

Viswa Hindu Parishat (VHP) and the numerous other movements of Hindu fundamentalist organizations are sustained by NRI finance. Tens of thousands of Karsewaks or village artisans were mobilized from Indian states, like Gujarat with a large NRI base, for the demolition of Babari Masjid and the re-construction of Ram Temple. Gujarat has a strong Muslim business community with a well developed NRI base in USA as well as in UK. Hindus and Muslims among the non-resident Indians in these developed countries are immensely rich, and being intellectuals, often wage communal wars on the Internet, a sort of proxy war for the real one in their native country.

How the wealthy Hindus, Muslims and Christians, among non-resident Indians, accuse each other, and how even the so-called left secularists get caught in their cross fire, will be evident from the poisonous tirades launched by Internet columnists like Rajiv Srinivasan in Rediffmail: "A few months ago, I was talking to a 'secular progressive' journalist, and he mentioned in passing how there was a lot of NRI money coming in from the US to support right wing Hindu activities. I was startled, for any NRI Hindu money would be a mere pittance as compared to the absolute billions funneled into India for Wah'abi mosques by Saudi Arabia and the ISI, and on conversion/terrorism activities by the Vatican, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Pentecostals and sundry Christian cults......Soon thereafter, there was a flurry of reports in the media, especially in the US media, about how money from US Hindus was helping Hindu militants in India. ...... The fact that Hindu 'militancy' is pretty mellow and consists primarily of shouting a few slogans - definitely no flying planes into tall buildings is involved - is conveniently ignored. Two, this is a concerted and organized campaign, presumably led by the lunatic fringe Marxists-with-Hindu-names in the US. It did not 'just happen': there is malice aforethought."

Hindu Students Council (HSC) in USA has an extensive organizational network in American Universities. It is accused of organizing hate movements, by its adversaries in the Internet document, Campaign to Stop Funding Hate 2007: The document says: The HSC was founded on May 27, 1990, at Camp Inawendwin, a Girl Scouts camp-site in Medford, NJ, and was attended by 35 students from all over the country. The official history of HSC records three individuals, Ajay Shah, Gokul Kunnath and Kanchan Banerjee, as the

founders of HSC, five with no indication of their institutional or ideological links. But as shown below, there are very clear institutional and ideological links with the Sangh Parivar. On September 9, 1990, HSC issued its first official public call via an email, inviting people to join the organization. This call includes the statement that “HSC is a project of Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America Inc., a non-profit tax-exempt organization." This campaign document maligns the HSC and its patrons, VHP, RSS, BJP and others for their numerous sins of commissions and omissions. Indian Muslim Council-USA established in 2002 has brought out an extensively documented report on Gujarat, raising serious allegations against the majority community and the Modi regime. Communal situation within the NRI community in USA is so vicious, and possibly bears no semblance to the real situation prevailing within the country.

This sort of campaigns, safely far off from the real places of communal conflicts, or indulging in proxy wars, are very typical of Indian intelligentsia. Campaigns and fights against the atrocities on Gujarati Muslims, as in the Godthra carnage, are staged not in Gujarat but outside Gujarat, including the United States of America. Muslims and Hindus living in Ayodhya and its neighborhoods had absolutely no problem either with the Ram Temple or the Babari Masjid, which had coexisted for centuries. They could have jointly and successfully resisted the influx of Karsewaks from far off places outside UP, for the demolition of the Masjid, with very marginal help from the secular political parties from outside. But this, never was attempted by our intelligentsia, despite the great lessons Gandhi had taught them: He had fearlessly walked into places of communal fury like Naokhali, and campaigned for communal peace, with the support of local people, Muslims as well as Hindus. That is very different from our present day intellectuals, who would rather fight communal evil, from a safe distances and constituencies and, preferably foreign soil.

It may look strange that, Gandhi himself was an NRI for long long years, and a good many among the leaders of our struggle for national independence were foreign trained or non-resident Indians. Notwithstanding their religious persuasions, they had longed to return to India, with their innovative and revolutionary ideas to transform their tradition bound society. Their dreams were different from those of the present day NRI intellectuals, who look for salvation by building temples, mosques and churches in their native towns and villages. Good many of them had dreamed of nation building and scouted for technologies that could be replanted on their native soil: A dream the non-resident Chinese have not forgotten even today. And, this difference is seen reflected in their attitude to religion, shrines and even in foreign trade and foreign direct investments (FDI).

In recent years, the top layers of the NRI community in USA has turned altogether mercenary: They are more like the elites among the Taiwan Chinese and scouting for huge defense purchases. In a recent NRI seminar in USA, a retired General of Indian army, VP Malik gave out graphic details of India's defense requirements in the following words: "The current 11th Defense Five Year Plan (2007-2011) envisages an expenditure of $30 billion to $40 billion on guns, fighter planes, naval vessels, advanced surveillance, night fighting and other force multipliers. Apart from 126 multi role fighter aircraft worth $10 billion required by the Indian Air Force urgently, the navy envisages getting 35 multi-role stealth frigates made in the next 10 years through a global tender. Unfortunately, our research, development and defence industrial complex has not developed any capacity to meet these requirements. India thus is a great opportunity for building long term relations in the defense industry."

Thanks to the economic reforms, not only the development of infrastructure, but even defense development of the country is put up as a salable commodity by our present day NRI communities; a trend, for sure, that is hardly sustainable.

19.09.2007