A United States-based charity alleged to have been financing fundamentalist organisations in India has said it has not been told by the United States authorities about reported investigations on its tax-exempt status.
Media reports had said on Sunday the US administration is probing the Maryland-based India Development and Relief Fund for financing organisations in India linked to last year's communal violence in Gujarat.
But Dr Vinod Prakash, IDRF president, said on Monday that his charity has not received any communication from the state department, justice department or any other agency about its tax-exempt status, as reported.
According to a report in the Financial Times, US state department has asked the justice department to investigate whether the IDRF is "funding affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which the Human Rights Watch said was 'directly involved' in the Gujarat riots."
The charity has received donations from leading US companies including Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Oracle, the report said.
The newspaper said the probe was based on a report by San Francisco-based Indians, who claimed that tax-exempt charities were funding affiliates of the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
The report also accused the charity of funding non-governmental organisations that are fronts for the RSS. The IDRF, which raised more than $10 million between 1997 and 2001, said it funds poverty alleviation projects and provides disaster relief, but admits links with the RSS.
Prakash, a retired World Bank official, said his charity funds no political organisation and is engaged solely in constructive work in India on a purely non-political basis. He said the IDRF officers in the US draw no salary or other compensation.
The report was compiled by US-based Non-Resident Indian Biju Mathew, a professor in New Jersey, and Shalini Gera and was released in New Delhi on November 20, 2002.
The report, Prakash said, had an impact on contributions by US corporations, which used to match donations by their employees. But what was surprising he said was that none of those who made the allegations, including the authors of the report, visited the projects funded by the IDRF or talked to those involved in the projects.
Prakash said he was in the RSS before he came to the US in 1967 and earned a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined the World Bank, from where he retired seven years ago and started the IDRF.
