Human interest stories are very popular in journalism. Simply put, human interest stories would mean news that gives primacy to human experiences and viewpoints rather than mere objective data. On the face of it, this sounds quite revolutionary. For a long time, English language journalism in Bharat was dominated by feel-good stories of common Bharatiyas whose lives had been transformed by the magic wand of the developmental work undertaken by too-good-to-be-true NGOs. Herein lies the catch.
The NGOs aka non-governmental organizations are actually too-good-to-be true! They claim to tackle issues like poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, gender discrimination, etc. from the grassroots level. Yet, what they really do is use the guileless poor people of developing countries as clickbait to get more funding and widen their axis of influence. The result – they get to enjoy all the media limelight while justifying their need to be active in these countries by constantly badmouthing the government. Since the governments in these countries are inefficient and corrupt, therefore, NGOs are a must for the welfare of their people. Such is the stock argument.
Yet, how often do you hear of big charities like Amnesty International, Smile, Action Aid, Save the Children Foundation, etc. working for the welfare of children in Europe or the US? The mere thought of it sounds odd, doesn’t it? In most European countries, the government itself acts as a welfare state, with basic facilities like quality education and healthcare free for all its citizens. Plus, the population of these countries is very small. Therefore, there is hardly any scope of intervention of non-governmental organizations. Although with the economic crisis looming large in Europe post-COVID-19, their welfare model is also crumbling fast. But that’s a separate issue. Here, we are focusing on Bharat, the country that has unfortunately become the playground of international NGOs or the missionary model of development, to put it more bluntly.
Most international charities operating in the developing world have some source of missionary funding. Although some of these organizations do not identify themselves as Christian but going by the large-scale evangelization of underprivileged populations in developing countries, these charities are undoubtedly running a covert agenda. Think about it. Most international charities operating in Bharat claim to work with children and vulnerable communities. Education is one of their core areas. Just think of the sheer percentage of the population that is in their access as they easily make inroads into urban slums, tribal areas, and rural communities. They exploit loopholes in the inefficiency of the government welfare system and set up schools and libraries even in the most interior and far-flung of areas in Bharat. Education can be a changing force if used for good. But it can also be a potent tool of propaganda; getting access to a huge population that is vulnerable, marginalized, and cut off from the mainstream is the first step towards infiltrating the minds of these people.
Dubious sources of foreign funding of these NGOs with the potential to be used for anti-Bharat activities is also a source of concern. The Bharatiya government has issued a crackdown on many NGOs for their suspect sources of foreign funding leading to non-compliance of the new FCRA regulations. The government has also frozen the foreign funding of international charities like Oxfam India, The Missionaries of Charity, Amnesty International India, Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation, Greenpeace India, etc. The Union Home Ministry recently cancelled the FCRA registration of the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research (CPR) under FCRA regulations. This means that the CPR is no longer eligible to receive foreign funding. According to a report published in Hindustan Times, the MHA had argued that the think tank’s foreign funding had to be stopped because it was receiving foreign funds for “undesirable purposes” likely to affect the country’s economic interest.
Out of the non-governmental organizations whose funding was reportedly frozen by the government, The Missionaries of Charity is an NGO founded by Mother Teresa. In December 2021, the Vadodara city police booked a case against the NGO under the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act for forced Christian conversions of young Hindu girls in a shelter home run by the organization.
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/missionaries-of-charity-conversion-fir-7670821/
According to an opinion piece published on the News 18 website in January 2022, the NGO The Missionaries of Charity has been accused of promoting conversion under the disguise of charity many times. In 2019, BJP MLA Nishikant Dubey accused the NGO of running a conversion machinery in Jharkhand and illegally sending children abroad for adoption, according to the article. The article also says that RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat had issued a word of caution against The Missionaries of Charity in 2015.
This is just one example. There are probably thousands of such NGOs operating in Bharat which orchestrate fraudulent conversions in the name of charity. Unfortunately, the mainstream Bharatiya media either downplays such news or ignores it altogether. The English language media doesn’t even cover a lot of this news whereas it lends a disproportionate amount of space to news glorifying these NGOs and presenting them as some kind of savior of the poor and deprived Bharatiyas. This is what one could call missionary journalism that encourages long narrative-style pieces depicting entire communities from the standpoint of “NGO-aided development”. For example, many of these stories will exaggerate how learning English transformed the life of a poor village woman, or transformed an entire community by making them self-reliant, etc. On the face of it, such stories seem an innocent exercise in developmental journalism. But they are staged mouthpieces of the missionary and anti-Bharat coalition for whom it’s important to develop a positive public image to discredit any criticism.
If any complaint is launched against these NGOs regarding forced conversion or other fraudulent practices, the paid stooges of the woke media get overactive to attribute all this to Hindutva and the supposedly Hindu majoritarian government of Bharat to silence the minorities. The way the Hindutva discourse has been developed by the woke leftists in Bharat, its function is to discredit any critical interrogation of the missionary ecosystem of development that is eating Bharat at its roots. An entire ecosystem of sophisticated propaganda is created even before any of the charges leveled against the NGOs are investigated. It’s the classic leftist ploy of preemptively shaming and silencing the other side to prevent any rational discussion or probe. Since the Bharatiya government is Hindutvavadi and anti-minority, the institutions of Bharat – the police, the CBI, etc. have no right to investigate minority institutions! This is the woke logic.
Left-wing activist Harsh Mander’s ngo Aman Biradari is also under the government scanner. The Ministry of Home Affairs has recommended a CBI inquiry against his NGO Aman Biradari for FCRA violations. In 2021, Delhi Police also filed an FIR against an NGO run by Harsh Mander. Based on a complaint by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), the FIR was filed against two children’s homes run under the aegis of Harsh Mander’s NGO. According to NCPCR, the orphaned kinds living in these children’s homes were taken to CAA and NRC protests. The child rights body also reportedly received complaints of sexual harassment of children. According to the FIR, the NCPCR had conducted a surprise inspection of the premises of these children’s homes, and that’s when these allegations came to the fore.
Now the Bharatiya woke media at that time, instead of doing its job and honestly reporting what happened, focused its energies on discrediting the NCPCR by calling its raids politically motivated and a part of the Modi government’s witch hunt against its critics.
This is precisely how the missionary model of development works. Any attempt at investigating the money trails of shady activities of dubious NGOs founded by the missionary – anti-Bharat nexus stakeholders is paused at the outset. The missionary model has enormous influence in the mainstream media, and this is how they distort the narrative.
Yet, the rot is not limited to Christian charities, international charities headquartered in the west, or Bharatiya NGOs founded by leftist intellectuals. Even NGOs sponsored by well-meaning Bharatiyas are a part of the system. The missionary model of development works at the deepest of levels, cutting off the most vulnerable from their own culture, traditions, and identity in the name of development. It’s not just about outright Christian conversions but a larger agenda to erode Bharatiya culture and civilization. As politico-religious observer and anti-conversion campaigner Jerome Anto put it aptly in his recent interview with Hindupost, “Throughout history, we’ve seen instances where missionaries, in various parts of the world, have been involved in activities that extended beyond the realm of religious outreach, especially in the case of Abrahamic faith. Religious conversion is intertwined with broader geopolitical agendas, leading to unintended consequences and even the destruction of indigenous cultures”.
This intertwining of geopolitical agendas and the politics of religious conversion is what noted author, scholar, and pioneer in the research of civilizations Rajiv Malhotra has investigated in his book “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines”. The book examines at length how the missionary ecosystem strives to break Bharat from within and creates an anti-Hindu narrative in the name of development and progressive thinking.
How do we dismantle the missionary model of development? What is the solution? The solution is twofold: firstly, the Bharatiya government should ensure the optimal delivery of all existing welfare schemes and radically overhaul the government school education infrastructure, and secondly, we need more Dharmik organizations to come forward and undertake developmental work in Bharat’s interiors.
Bharat has ample welfare schemes to address all the issues these NGOs claim to address. Therefore, if the government ensures optimal performance of all its developmental initiatives, we don’t need NGOs. Also, the concept of social enterprise should be given precedence over NGOs. NGOs enjoy huge tax exemptions but there is no mechanism to hold them accountable for what they have actually delivered on the ground. Therefore, the very definition of an NGO makes it prone to corruption. A social enterprise, on the other hand, adopts a business model, where people can contribute their skills and earn money. It’s not charity. The government should encourage social enterprises and entrepreneurship instead of giving NGOs an open field to exploit and fool the poor and run an anti-Bharat agenda.
Secondly, as I mentioned, Dharmik organizations should take the lead in undertaking developmental activities in Bharat. ISKCON, for example, is doing great work by running free schools in the most interior of areas. These schools, unlike the missionary model schools, are run on a Dharmik ecosystem and develop a sense of pride amongst students for Bharatiya culture and heritage, apart from imparting them modern education. Other organizations with a Dharmik viewpoint need to come forward and undertake developmental activities in Bharat. Hindu business tycoons and philanthropists should also be mindful of the ideology of non-governmental organizations they support. Overall, a concerted effort is needed from the government and the Hindu civil society to dismantle the missionary model of development in Bharat.
