A Critical Look at

The Organized Labor of Hate

Part 1: Any substance to their five-year  “foreign exchange of hate?

January 2003

Contents

Preface

As the first generation born in free India finds time to plan for the future, the world’s largest democracy is changing and moving ahead with a new confidence. Inside and outside India, people of Indian origin have in the past few years become much more active and articulate in renewing bonds with their ancient culture. Indians view themselves as a generation building the best superpower of humanity. This change is simply the expression of a new generation, of their identity. They are still fiercely proud of their traditions of tolerance, adaptation and inclusiveness. But now such pride is accompanied by a refusal to accept bigotry and superciliousness in return for tolerance. It is also tempered with a refusal to accept the equation of India with totalitarian or religious states – or of Indian democracy with theocratic fundamentalism.

This change does not conform to the fashionable schools of belief in  “South Asian history”, “colonial history” or “anthropology”. Through the Cold War days, the “South Asian Establishment” in the US and UK has been dominated by people whose loyalties are either to such totalitarian states, or to schools of thought where Indian ideals were equated with pacifism and self-denial – partly to explain the abject poverty, underdevelopment and non-aggressive, non-aligned posture of India. The new generation unabashedly thrives on free-market ideas - and shows a dynamic, techno-savvy, business-savvy, exciting face of India to the world. It rejects the negativist thinking of the Marxist Communists and the Tragedy-Writers, who had so powerfully tried to dominate the developing world in the 1960s and  ‘70s. When India finally ended its ambivalence on “going nuclear”, just in time, as it turned out, to brush off the nuclear blackmail aspects of Pakistan General Musharraf's disastrous Kargil invasion attempt in 1999, 90% of Indians and the Indian diaspora approved. Since the horrifying events which heralded the new Millennium, the patience in the West for medieval theocratic dictatorships has also rapidly declined.

Facing irrelevance and imminent extinction, the Old Order of South Asia Studies has circled its wagons to squat on the high ground of “secular, democratic South Asia”, dismissing the rest of us  as unwashed illiterates in dire need of soul-saving - or as raving mobs of war-mongers. The Old Order has formed support groups which are fundamentally negativist, and indeed anarchist. They offer no viable alternatives which would avoid those evils which they see and condemn in the rest of humanity – they just blindly condemn. We call them the Leftist Anarchist Fundamentalists (LAFs).

This report is about a bitter, concerted attack by the LAFs – directed at a charitable organization which has grown through a reputation for simple sincerity. The India Development and Relief Fund, IDRF, has been targeted because it represents a bold project of the new generation of Indian-Americans and Indians. In addition to a record of delivering emergency relief with superb efficiency, IDRF has funded over 170 projects which work every day to build self-reliance, dignity and pride among the most needy of Indians. These are projects run by Indians who live and work there - neighbors helping neighbors. This is a demonstration of what the new generation of the Indian diaspora does - efficient, determined, low-key and, above all, effective. An organization run entirely by volunteers - mostly professionals holding down high-tech jobs - able to reach straight down to the most remoted villages of India, work with the people there, and get projects done with near-zero overhead - building schools, delivering education, delivering emergency relief and the infrastructure for long-term health, and above all, opportunity to succeed, and pride in being Indians. This is terribly threatening to the Marxist Party system of trickle-down benevolence from rich Politburo bosses. It leaves the "charity-as-business" organizations in the dust in terms of efficiency. No doubt this also goes against the model of the rich, "cultured South Asian intellectual" stepping daintily to the accompaniment of news photographers through the slums to deliver a few packets of surplus grains and powdered milk along with leftist, defeatist speeches to the illiterate, gaping masses of starving "natives".

In their hatred and disregard for collateral damage, the LAFs have attacked the non-political, mind-their-own-business Indians and Indian-Americans who simply try to do what they can to "light a candle rather than curse the darkness" - and who see IDRF as the best and most practical way to do that. They have casually and callously slandered us as hate-mongers. We are now alerted. We are angry. And in the following pages you can see the beginnings of the results from that outrage.

The LAFs boast a “91-page comprehensive report” with one conclusion: “The IDRF funds hate”. We submit, having read this report, that the right conclusion is “This is a malicious political stunt by losers”. What is being claimed to be a serious work of modern research, is instead an eye-opener to the abysmal academic standards of what describes itself as “South-Asian Studies”.  Clearly sweeping changes are needed – in the ethical, intellectual and technical standards of this field, and in the composition of its leadership.

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