The decision by Jack Dorsey, to donate $2.5 million to RSS-linked NGO Sewa to support India’s second COVID wave faced flak.
Jack Dorsey CEO of social media giant set out to donate $2.5 million out of a total of $15 million (around Rs 110 crore) to RSS-linked Sewa International known to be the American arm of Sewa Bharti, a welfare organization affiliated with the right wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Dorsey’s statement defines Sewa International as “a Hindu faith-based, humanitarian, non-profit service organization.”
According to Friedrich, UK human rights outfit Awaaz South Asia Watch, in a 2004 exposé claimed that Sewa International’s “main purpose is to raise funds for and support a distinct family of organizations associated with the extremist RSS”.
Pieter Friedrich a freelance journalist specializing in the analysis of South Asian affairs revealed the history of Sewa International in an article. Madhukar Deoras, the third chief of the RSS, founded Sewa Bharati in 1989 as a service — or welfare — wing of the RSS.
“Sewa International was subsequently started to absorb the Indian Diaspora (NRI) worldwide. The US branch — the recipient of Twitter’s largesse — was registered in 2003 to serve as part of the ‘larger movement that started in India in 1989’ under Deoras,” writes Friedrich.
“As per Awaaz, both Sewa Bharti and Sewa International ‘are dedicated to building a Hindu nation based on Hindu extremist ideas, glorifying the RSS, recruiting for the RSS, and expanding RSS physical and ideological training cells (shakhas) in India’,” reveals Friedrich.
Dorsey’s donation of money to Sewa International drew hostility on social media, with dozens of Twitter users taking to the microblogging platform to criticize the move.
Pieter Friedrich: The fact that Sewa International is a wing of the #RSS, an Indian paramilitary that’s accused not only of pogroms against minorities but of also possibly using funds raised by groups like Sewa to help finance its violence, didn’t make you stop & think before donating to them?
The fact that Sewa International is a wing of the #RSS, an Indian paramilitary that's accused not only of pogroms against minorities but of also possibly using funds raised by groups like Sewa to help finance its violence, didn't make you stop & think before donating to them?
— Pieter Friedrich (@FriedrichPieter) May 11, 2021
Dilip Mandal: Dear @jack and everyone else reading this. Please stop funding hate in the times of corona.
@SewaUSA is a well-known peddler of hate and bigotry. #COVID19 #Covid19IndiaHelp
Dear @jack and everyone else reading this. Please stop funding hate in the times of corona. @SewaUSA is a well-known peddler of hate and bigotry. #COVID19 #Covid19IndiaHelp
RT requested for rapid awareness! @PKashwan
— Dilip Mandal (@Profdilipmandal) May 11, 2021
Md Asif Khan: @jack @CARE and 2 others
Hello Jack, this Sewa International is associated with Far Right Hindu organization RSS in India. DO NOT donate your money to these fascists.
Hello Jack, this Sewa International is associated with Far Right Hindu organization RSS in India.
DO NOT donate your money to these fascists.
— Md Asif Khan (@imMAK02) May 10, 2021
Great job helping to spread hate and facism across Indian.
— Monica Gill (@Monica_Gill1) May 11, 2021
Monica Gill @Monica_Gill1 Great job helping to spread hate and facism across Indian.
Pieter Friedrich set up a fast and petition for Jack to take back the donation and wrote,
Hi, this is Pieter Friedrich. It has now been about 124 hours — over five days — since I’ve eaten anything as I’ve been on hunger-strike to protest
“I conducted a hunger-strike from the morning of 26 May to afternoon of 31 May 2021. Here’s what I said when I broke my fast.
I have done what I can to shine a light on this issue. Now it is time for me to break my fast.
The call of “Take It Back, Jack” is now taking on a life of its own. Light is spreading from hand to hand as many others are stepping forward to push back against the darkness that has enveloped India in these grim times. Many have now pledged to keep the chain going, join the fast, and echo the call: “Take It Back, Jack.”
Many, many thousands more are now aware of the true nature of Sewa International and why Jack’s donation to it is so deeply disturbing.
Jack, speaking to you directly, let me first say thank you. I love Twitter. For me, it’s an amazing tool and I’m so glad you created it. But with great power comes great responsibility.
I hope that you are now on notice that people do care about what you do with your power. Your actions — and who you finance — will not be allowed to pass unnoticed. We will be watching.
And, Jack, never forget that Twitter only exists because of us.
Now, as more and more take up the fast in the hope that Jack opens his eyes and takes it back, I will be breaking my hunger-strike with a mug of homemade lamb bone broth.
Fueled by a broken fast, I will continue fighting the fascism of the RSS.
Never give up. Stay the course. Be relentless. Don’t back down. Continue the struggle.
And break the back of the RSS.
On 31 May, a few hours after breaking my fast, I conducted an interview with Muslim Network TV to discuss my hunger-strike and the issue behind it.
This is the link to his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJaqq-CtKeM
Pieter Friedrich is also the author of Sikh Caucus: Siege in Delhi, Surrender in Washington and Saffron Fascists: India’s Hindu Nationalist Rulers as well as co-author of Captivating the Simple-Hearted: A Struggle for Human Dignity in the Indian Subcontinent. Discover more by him at PieterFriedrich.net.
He has led a bold front in uncovering the brutality of the RSS whose inciting actions are compared to the same level of Hilter’s Nazism with dozens of similarities drawn between them.
It is no small secret that India is slipping into very abysmal lowlands of violence with increasing hatred spewed out by the political right-wingers of India under the nurturing of the RSS and Jack Dorsey’s huge donation to the RSS-affiliated NGO was not a welcome move among many Indians, being victims of violence, hatred, and division.