In 2002 a coalition of professionals, students, workers, artists and intellectuals in the US organized "The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate". The report, published by
Sabrang Communications and the South Asia Citizens Web, was titled
The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva. It investigated how funding raised by IDRF in the US was being distributed in India. It accused that most of the money went to
Sangh Parivar organizations. Sabrang Communications, which prepared this report against IDRF, was itself alleged to have stolen huge sums of money away from victims of the
2002 Gujarat violence and its owner,
Teesta Setalvad is being prosecuted for embezzlement of funds on complaints filed with the police by the very "victims" for whom the funds were collected by Teesta Setalvad from donors in US and other countries and her appeal is being heard by the Supreme Court of India. The report said 70% of money was used for "hinduisation/tribal/education" work, mainly to spreading
Hindutva beliefs among tribals. When IDRF filed a tax document in 1989 with the United States Internal Revenue Service, it identified nine organisations as a sample of those it would fund, all of which were associated with the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Angana Chatterji, an anthropology professor helped write the report and said, "We're not saying IDRF is directly involved in communal violence, we're saying that IDRF supports a movement that provokes communal violence". The US State and Justice departments added IDRF to the list of organizations being investigated for illicit donations and money laundering. However, the
Office of Management and Budget approved IDRF for the 2012 and 2013 Combined Federal Campaign, the US federal government's workplace giving campaign. Soon after the report was issued, in November 2002, IDRF dismissed the allegations as "pure concoction, untruthful and self contradicting". In March 2003, in response to the allegations, a team of six Indian-American academics conducted a thorough investigation and concluded that IDRF was not, in fact, supporting violence or furthering any hateful ideology at all. This team, Ramesh Nagaraj Rao, Narayan Komerath, Beloo Mehra, Chitra Raman, Sugrutha Ramaswami, and Nagendra Rao, called themselves "Friends of India," and issued a report called
A Factual Response to the Hate Attack on the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF). Dr. Vinod and Sarla Prakash met the then Indian Home Minister Mr. Lal Krishna Advani and furnished him detailed information about IDRF's grants to various NGOs in India. Few months later, IDRF was informed by his office that there was no evidence of violation of law against it. They published a hard copy of the report,
IDRF: Let the Facts Speak in 2003. ==References==