With millions of people voting in India’s General Election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are seeking a third term in office, and are widely tipped to get it. The Hindu nationalist movement in India predates Modi and the BJP but their decade in power has catapulted Hindu nationalism into the mainstream.
Modi’s rise to power has reshaped India including the landscape for foreign funded organisations and media. Many human rights groups, journalists and activists critical of the government have come under intense scrutiny. A direct outcome has been the suspension or cancellation of their licences under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) which permits non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to receive funds from abroad.
In the past nine years more than 16,000 NGOs have had their FCRA registration cancelled due to “violations” according to, national daily The Hindu, including those working on rights of India’s most vulnerable minority groups.
Aakar Patel the former head of Amnesty International India – which was forced to halt operations in 2020 due to allegations of FCRA violations- told Bellingcat, “I think India should do away with a law that is used maliciously in a targeted fashion. There is no reason for one part of the private sector to be governed by a special law that the rest of the private sector is not subject to. And it is the government that decides, arbitrarily, what activity and which entity should submit itself to FCRA.”
This story was originally published in bellingcat.com. Read the full story here.
