India Bars 20,600 NGO’s From Accepting Foreign Donations

India’s pervasive use of national security laws to target individuals is draconian says the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute

September 29, 2024

Over the past decade, under new laws passed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, more than 20,600 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India have been barred from receiving foreign donations, according to an Amnesty International report published this month.

Many of these groups, the report notes, “have long promoted human rights in the country.” There is also a delay in prosecutions under the laws “resulting in a high number of pending cases and accused persons in judicial custody waiting for cases to be tried and concluded”. Such delays, Amnesty adds, illustrate the possibility that these laws are being misused to clamp down on human rights defenders by ensuring that the criminal proceedings characterized by stringent bail provisions, prolonged detention, and lengthy investigation act as punishment.

In June, Narendra Modi began his third five-year term as Prime Minister. According to news reports, his government continues to file criminal cases and imprison civil rights activists and critics, including of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leaders, as well as ignore rising attacks on Muslims, Christians, and other minorities.

Last week, Indian officials shut down NGO Aman Biradari’s access to donations. “We have worked with a large number of violence-hit people across the country, including survivors of the 2020 Delhi violence and the ethnic conflict in Manipur,” Harsh Mander, founder of Aman, told Scroll.

In Delhi, in 2020, 53 people were killed, more than two thirds of them Muslims, and hundreds injured in Hindu Muslim clashes. In Manipur state, since May 2023, more than 237 people have died and more than 59,000 persons displaced in clashes between Hindu and Christian ethnic tribes.

Aman, based in New Delhi, works to promote peace and mutual respect. Founded in 2018, Aman organizes youth and women, “to strengthen mutual bonds of tolerance, fraternity, respect, and peace between people of different religions, caste and language groups.”

In February, government agencies searched Mander’s home and office. They filed a legal case against Mander and the Centre for Equity Studies, another NGO he runs, for alleged violation of the laws on receiving foreign donations. Under laws passed by Modi’s government, Indian correspondents, columnists, cartoonists, editors, owners, printers, and publishers cannot accept payments from foreign entities. Mander writes articles for newspapers and web sites and is also the author of 16 books.

Mander is also a writer, teacher, a scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and has worked with advocacy groups based in New York, Berlin and elsewhere. Mander earned a PhD from Vrije University, Amsterdam and his thesis was on Designing State Interventions for Hunger, Homelessness, Destitution and Targeted Violence in India. 

For nearly 20 years, Mander was in the Indian Administrative Service, the country’s top civil service rank, serving in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states. In 2002, he resigned to “protest against the role of the state in the communal massacre in Gujarat…” More than 1,000 people, mainly Muslims, were killed in Hindu Muslim clashes when Modi was the Chief Minister of the state.

Mander told Scroll that he plans to continue with his advocacy work saying he will not let the ban of donations “come in our way.”

In July, Juan Vargas, a member of the United States House of Representative from California, reintroduced a resolution asking “India to pursue an independent investigation” into the arrest, imprisonment, and death of Father Stan Swamy. An Indian Jesuit priest and prominent human rights activist, Swamy, 84-years-old, died while in police custody in Mumbai on July 5, 2021.

“Father Stan dedicated his life to giving a voice to the voiceless. He was a tireless advocate for the rights of the indigenous Adivasi people, trained young community leaders, and worked for justice for many communities in India,' said Vargas, a member of the U.S. Congress, in a statement. “As a former Jesuit, I’m horrified that Father Stan faced relentless abuse and was denied medical care while in custody.”

In June, five days after Modi became Prime Minister for the third time, judicial authorities in Delhi were asked to prosecute Arundhati Roy under a stringent anti-terrorism law. Under the law, Roy, 62, can be imprisoned for years without charges, for a speech she made on Kashmir 14 years ago.

Like Mander, Roy has an international reputation. She is best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997) which won the Man Booker Prize. She is the author of several politically oriented non-fiction books. Roy is also active in environmental and human rights causes.

By launching cases against globally renowned human rights activists like Roy and Mander, Modi’s government is apparently sending a message to journalists, academics, civil rights activists, and others in India. As in his previous two terms, they risk being imprisoned for criticizing the government and the BJP and its leaders.   

The criminal prosecution of Roy “is absurd, concerning and deeply puzzling particularly with such a draconian law being invoked,” Anne Ramberg co-chair of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute and former secretary of the Swedish Bar Association, said in a statement. The action by Delhi officials “raises serious issues about the pervasive use of national security and anti-terrorism legislation to target individuals. In a country often described as the ‘world’s largest democracy’ these violations of international human rights and domestic legal frameworks run counter to the description of India being a constitutional democracy. Criticism of any government anywhere by anyone is not a crime and should not be treated as such.”