After its foreign funding licence was cancelled by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) last week, civil society group Act Now for Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD) said it wore the development as “a badge of honour” from what it termed was “the most openly intolerant government” to lead the country, except for the 18 months of the emergency of 1975.
At a press conference on Tuesday, the NGO said that the Narendra Modi-led government was “openly repressive of any kind of liberal and progressive civic dissent” and added that it would continue its activities sans foreign funding after the revocation of its Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licence by the MHA.
FCRA renewed in March
The presser was addressed by civil society activists Apoorvanand, Harsh Mander and Shabnam Hashmi.
“Despite an MHA enquiry in June 2014 and again in November 2015, ANHAD’s FCRA was renewed in March 2016, but less than nine months later it stands cancelled,” read a statement by the NGO.
‘Agenda of suppression’
“We refuse to be cowed down, and will continue our work with Indian donations, and if these are unavailable, then with no funds. But we strongly condemn the deployment of the FCRA as a tool of repression by the current government,” the statement read.
Alleging that the Centre was “following a systematic and sustained agenda of suppressing” dissent, the nGO said that the current FCRA registration cancellations were an example of the government maligning and criminalising “organisations and individuals that stand for human rights and liberal values” and those engaged in working for “the most marginalised and dis-empowered sections of society”.
Condemning what it claimed was the abuse of legal procedures by the Centre vis-à-vis the FCRA, ANHAD challenged MHA-issued notices which were ‘on the basis of field agency reports’ as “arbitrary and unacceptable”.
‘Right to dissent’
“The Ministry of Home Affairs has also suggested that these outfits are working against ‘national interest’, a terminology that opens these organisations to all manner of abuse. The right to dissent, one of the cornerstones of a healthy democracy, has been haunted by this sceptre of anti-nationalism, creating a political climate where dissent warrants swift retribution,” the statement read.
