“The Martyrs for National Integration” Fund is listed in “The Foreign Exchange of Hate” as the last of the “Nine Sisters”. Obviously the authors of The Foreign Exchane of Hate could not find any stones to throw at it other than their aggrieved explanation that the “terrorist war” mentioned in the Fund’s description was the war waged by Pakistani terrorists against India, and included the violence along the India-Pakistan border and in “Kashmir”.
The following is from Narayanan Komerath, initiator of the fund:
I am the motivator, initiator, leading donor, and starting in October 2002, the official project director of this Fund. The Fund was started as a long-term resource which would collect donations and use the interest proceeds towards long-term, continuing assistance programs for families of people hurt (killed or wounded) in the terrorist war being waged on India by, yes, Pakistan. Most of the donations there to-date have come from students and young professionals whose concern for these families, and determination to defeat Global Terrorism, far exceeds their ability to make large donations. Many of the donations have been in $5 amounts.
The idea for the fund originated through discussions at the Bharat-Rakshak Forum, where participants are certainly friends of India. The forum is open to the public. Readers are welcome to form their own opinions about the extent to which the general views at BRF, and the Moderators’ views in particular, agree with either the “Hindutva Extremism” scourge so pilloried in The Foreign Exchange of Hate or the Marxist / Pakistani views which appear to underlie the sponsors of The “Foreign Exchange of Hate” Report. Seeing that Pakistani terrorism was continuing even after the Kargil War, we approached IDRF in November 2000 with the request to help us start such a fund to address this long-term need. IDRF was chosen as our first preference for this endeavor after careful study, and after some discussion of precisely the fact that many of IDRF’s projects appeared to be routed through organizations with some association with the “RSS”. The realities of these projects were discussed, and we concluded that IDRF was doing excellent, dedicated, honest work, entirely for the purposes they advertised.
IDRF agreed to collect the funds on our behalf, but told us that we would have to select the Indian NGOs to do the disbursement, and that we would have to do the advertising and fundraising. The reason for these caveats were that they are an all-volunteer organization, already stretched quite thin in resources of time. Perhaps seeing the tenacity of this effort, IDRF offered to match our donations 1 for 1 from undesignated funds coming into IDRF, upto some maximum amount, which they have since been generous enough to increase substantially. All funds-receiving, accounting, funds-handling and auditing functions are performed by IDRF.
MNIF has not to-date disbursed any funds. The plan is to start disbursements from accumulated interest in early 2003, while continuing to make the fund grow. The first disbursement is scheduled to occur through a donor-designated grant to the “Akil Bharati Poourva Sainik” (All_ India Ex-servicemen’s) organization in Jaunary 2003 . We have not selected NGOs to do other disbursements, but will probably go with the ones IDRF already uses. They seem to be doing excellent work.
In late 2002, IDRF decided to adopt MNIF as one of their projects. I am hence listed as a “project director” in the latest IDRF mailing. Donations are welcome and sincerely appreciated. Please mention “MNIF” when making the donation to IDRF. Thank you. With best regards
Narayanan Komerath, PhD
Alpharetta, Georgia, USA”