Is Vijay a Church Project in Tamil Nadu Politics?

When?

What?

December 2016

Jayalalithaa’s demise; O Panneerselvam was sworn in as interim CM; confusion within the AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) as VK Sasikala attempted to take control over the party

January 2017

Protests erupted across Tamil Nadu over the Supreme Court’s order to ban Jallikattu. The protests ended in violent clashes with the police. Later investigations by this writer revealed that the beach sand mining mafia don S Vaikundarajan had organised the protests, providing food, black t-shirts and funding on behalf of the DMK. This was done as an attempt to destabilise a perceived weak state government.

In February 2017, Edappadi K Palaniswami takes charge as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

September 2017

The DMK fronted the anti-NEET protests in the state with heir apparent Udhayanidhi Stalin taking the lead. A 17-year-old Dalit girl from Ariyalur district, S Anitha, was identified by the DMK and turned into the face of the NEET protests. The DMK and activists linked to the party filed a petition in Anitha’s name before the Supreme Court to scrap NEET.

An activist, DMK sympathiser, Christian and self-professed “educationist” called Prince Gajendra Babu provided flight tickets to Delhi for Anitha and her brother to visit Delhi for the orders on a petition filed in the name of Anitha.

Anitha lost the case in the apex court and died by suicide after she returned home. This was turned into anti-NEET propaganda by the DMK and publicised across media and social media.

At least five youngsters took their own lives in quick succession following Anitha’s demise.

(PRINCE GAJENDRA BABU IMAGE

March 2018

As the NEET fire turned to embers, the DMK and the Church started the next set of protests. Intense protests erupted in Tamil Nadu against the proposed India-based Neutrino Observatory in Theni district.

The protests were politically led by DMK’s ally MDMK (Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and its leader Vaiko. An MDMK leader even attempted self-immolation in protest.

Activists in the forefront included Poovulagin Nanbargal’s G Sundarrajan and environmentalist Nithyanand Jayaraman. We will see more about these two activists in later protests.

The state and Centre quickly backtracked on the Neutrino project, which would have greatly benefited not just Tamil Nadu but also India.

May 2018

In 2018, anti-Sterlite protests broke out in Thoothukudi due to a false research paper that claimed the Vedanta-owned Sterlite copper plant was causing cancer among villagers.

The false research paper by a student was repeatedly cited by activists Nithyanand Jayaraman and Sundarrajan, among other local activists.

Catholic priests, nuns, and religious leaders were among those who led protesters in demanding the factory's shutdown to protect the environment and public health.

Pastors such as Mohan C Lazarus were prominent figures in the movement, reportedly using social media and large evangelical meetings to advocate for the plant's closure.

The situation escalated on May 22, 2018—the 100th day of demonstrations—when a massive rally towards the District Collectorate turned violent.

Some churches served as assembly points or "protest camps." For example, on the morning of May 22, 2018, thousands gathered outside Our Lady of Snows Basilica to begin their march toward the District Collectorate.

Police opened fire on the crowd, resulting in 13 civilian deaths and over 100 injuries, drawing international condemnation for the use of "excessive lethal force".

In the immediate aftermath, the Tamil Nadu government ordered the plant’s permanent closure, a decision that was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court of India in 2024.

India, as a result of this closure, became a net importer of copper, since the Sterlite plant produced one-third of India’s copper demand.

Centre Cracks Down

In 2016, the Indian government cracked down heavily on NGOs and foreign entities like Open Society Foundations (owned by billionaire hedge fund investor George Soros), the Ford Foundation and Omidyar were put onto a prior permission list - which meant that if they wanted to donate to any Indian organisation, they had to first get the approval of the Ministry of Home

Affairs. 19,000 NGOs were denied FCRA licences by the end of this exercise for various reasons ranging from not submitting their annual returns to misappropriation of funds.

The networks involved in the Church-led and DMK-backed trickery is as follows.

Police officers who handled the protests say that towards the end, violence was pre-planned by the SDPI, the May 17 Movement, NTK (Naam Tamilar Katchi) as well as by the late DMK MLA J Anbazhagan.

“Anbazhagan’s people went to the nearby slum areas and instigated everyone to violence,” said the officer on condition of anonymity. Another officer stated that the Church had mobilised protesters and sent people in droves, along with funding for them, to join the mayhem.

We will now look into the funding behind the following Usual Suspects, as we will call them.

1. Nithyanand Jayaraman, The Other Media

2. G Sundarrajan, Poovulagin Nanbargal

3. Henri Tiphagne, People’s Watch

4. Mohan Lazarus

5. Peoples’ Action for Education NGO

The Other Media

Nithyanand Jayaraman is a member of The Other Media, a Delhi-based non-profit that has FCRA clearance. A look at the details of donors to The Other Media is illuminating. 30% of its funding comes from organisations affiliated to various churches internationally.

We also looked into the donors who fund The Other Media. An astonishing milieu appears - Caritas Internationalis, one of the largest church-funded organisations in the world, with 160 similar member organisations in its network, has funded The Other Media.

Caritas also funds Trocaire, founded by the Irish Bishops of the Catholic Church as well as Cordaid, founded and funded by the Netherlands Catholic Church. Caritas has been criticised in the Western world for funding radical groups that aim to topple regimes. The work of Caritas-funded activists and NGOs has raised red flags in countries like Israel. Trocaire and Cordaid directly fund The Other Media as well.

Another controversial NGO, Misereor, founded by the Catholic Bishops of Germany, has indirectly funded The Other Media - through an organisation called Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact Foundation.

Apart from these, other church affiliated organisations have funded The Other Media - United Church of Christ, World Association for Christian Communication and Christian Conference of Asia.

In 2006, The Other Media received Rs 4.6 crore from an unknown donor in the USA!

Radical Green Groups from abroad also appear to have funded The Other Media. For instance the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Germany is one such. There are also organisations like the Global Greengrants Fund, Pesticide Action Network and Environmental Defender Law Centre, which do not disclose their sources of funding but appear to be radical green groups.

The Other Media also has an interesting set of donors from the USA - the New World Foundation, which is headed by Colin Greer, an aide of former American Vice President Hillary Rodham Clinton. Clinton herself was on the board of New World Foundation a few years ago.

The Foundation for Ecological Security is also a donor - this organisation is funded by the Ford Foundation, Omidyar network as well as the Lucille Foundation.

And finally the most delightful donor of the lot - The Asia Foundation. Declassified CIA documents show that the Asia Foundation was set up by the spooks to carry out covert operations in India. However, in 1966, the CIA decided to cut funding for and ties with The Asia Foundation. However it is not clear as to how the Foundation continues to have a large corpus

of USD 100 million at its disposal.

There are other strange opaque donors who have covered their tracks well. For instance, AID or Association for India’s Development, has a branch in the USA which has lost its non-profit status twice and got it restored last year. They are one of the largest donors to The Other Media. But their source of funding is not declared and is dubious.

Similarly the Global Community Monitor and the Woka Foundation show no affiliation with any other group but they are funding many NGOs in India. Are they conduits set up to funnel in money discreetly?

Poovulagin Nanbargal

The next usual suspect on the list is G Sundarrajan of Poovulagin Nanbargal. Those in Tamil Nadu would have watched him on television or social media at least once. He is a self-professed environmental activist, political analyst and was even briefly a Covid specialist.

Sundarrajan is attached only to one firm - an IT firm called Hard N Soft Technologies Pvt Ltd.

It is also alleged that Sundarrajan avails of money from the local churches for his protests and movements.

In 2022, Poovulagin Nanbargal co-ordinator S Sundarrajan was rewarded for his efforts in fronting protests for the DMK with a seat in Stalin’s Climate Change Council.

People’s Watch

Henri Tiphagne of The People’s Watch is the third person to watch out for. The People’s Watch is not actually an NGO. It is a project by the Centre for Promotion of Social Concerns (CPSC), Madurai, and has received close to Rs 70 lakh from Bread for the World between 2009-2015.

Bread for the World “is the globally active development and relief agency of the Protestant Churches in Germany”. In its website, it says “Key issues of our work are food security, the promotion of health and education, the access to water, the strengthening of democracy, respecting human rights, keeping peace and the integrity of creation.” It adds “Bread for the

World considers itself part of the global Christian Community.“

CPSC received Rs 1.65 crore from Misereor in 2009 which was about 30% of its total foreign fund receipts in that year. In 2015-16, CPSC received Rs 2.9 Crore from Misereor. As we saw earlier, Misereor is an organisation run by the Catholic Bishops of Germany which pursues secular work.

Jesus Redeems Ministries

Mohan Lazarus, preacher, had endorsed many such protests vehemently and he had exhorted his followers to join the anti-Sterlite protests in Thoothukudi.

Upon researching Lazarus’ funding, we found that he has a similar non-profit registered.

in the USA under the same name - Jesus Redeems Ministries. This organisation has about $190,000 in its account.

Again, it is not clear who the donors are.

Peoples’ Action For Education

This is yet another NGO whose name crops up in relation to various protests. This organisation received initial seed funding from Siemenpuu Foundation based in Finland, which appears to be

funded by the government of Finland.

LIFE

Ritwick Dutta, a well known lawyer who represented anti-Sterlite protester Fatima Babu in court, is the founder of an NGO called LIFE or Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment.

Among other donors, LIFE has been funded by The Asia Foundation, Global Greengrants Fund, World Resources Institute which is in turn funded by the

Ford Foundation & Oak Foundation

The Oak Foundation is currently headed by Douglas Griffiths who was a Foreign Service Officer and served as the US representative to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva by former President Barack Obama. The Oak Foundation was founded by industrialists Alan and Jette Parker.

May 2019

The 2019 Salem-Chennai Expressway protests were against a proposed ₹10,000 crore greenfield road project.

The conflict, led by Anbumani Ramadoss of the PMK (Pattali Makkal Katchi), centered on the acquisition of over 2,000 hectares of fertile land and the destruction of reserve forests, which protesters argued would devastate local livelihoods and ecology.

The movement reached a legal milestone in April 2019, when the Madras High Court quashed the land acquisition notifications due to a lack of mandatory environmental clearances.

Here too, the Church’s agents – Sundarrajan and Nithyanand Jayaraman – participated.

This project too was scrapped.

After coming to power in 2021, the DMK started to implement this project, which it had initially opposed.

2020

Pandemic & lock down

2021

DMK came to power; protests magically ended