The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) has announced the release of its report Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights 2006. This 200-page report covers Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir.
HAF is one organization that has its act together. I was privileged to part of their delegation for the 2005 Government Outreach Day, when we met with representatives of the Department of State and U.S. Representatives and their staffers.
Unfortunately, there are critics of HAF, such as Vijay Prashad, whose Letter to a Young American Hindu claims:
In the Diaspora, there was some reflection of this change in the Indian political landscape. The far Right moved to consolidate its agenda despite changes within India – closer ties between Indian American lobby groups and pro-Israeli lobby groups, to sharpen the idea that the Indo-Pakistani problems can only be resolved in the Israeli fashion, through force; the creation of the Hindu American Foundation (whose main campaign in 2004-05 was the Diwali resolution, and who was an active leader of the California textbooks campaign); an assault on scholars of India and Hinduism, led this time by the Infinity Foundation. [my italics]
Note that Prashad (willfullly?) does not cite the work that HAF has done in documenting human rights abuses against Hindus and taking its case to the State Department and Congress, often to Congressional representatives and staffers who are hostile to India and Hindus.
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