Forum of Indian Leftists

Biju Mathew is an American Marxist activist. He is an Indian immigrant and a professor of the Business Administration department at Rider University.^[12] Mathew is also an organizer of New York Taxi Workers Alliance. He has published a book titled Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City (The New Press).^[13] Biju Mathew is also a member of the Board of the Brecht Forum in NYC.^[14] Although the Brecht Forum closed in 2014,^[15] Mathew continues to spread his ideas through a radio show he co-hosts co-hosts called "Global Movements, Urban Struggles" on WBAI 99.5 FM (NYC).^[16] He has written extensively, spoken and organized around issues such as communalism, immigration, labor issues, and against the war. He lives in New York City.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist born on 14 August 1967 in Kolkata, India. From 1996 to 2017, Prashad served as the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and a professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.^[17] Prashad is the author of 25 books ranging in topics from South Asians in America to the future of communism in India. He has written numerous articles and papers on US imperialism and capitalist hegemony and impacts of this across the world.^[18] In one of his most popular pieces in The Nation, Prashad describes his vision of the progression and struggle towards Socialism.^[19] He argues that socialist forces typically have very good ideas, but no power. He asserts that without power, good ideas have little consequences and claims that socialists must not simply theorize but also organize.^[19] A prominent critic of leftists in the US, Mathew argued at a 2004 conference on Life After Capitalism that leftists in the United States are not as effective as they could be in situations where they win influence through community organizing, such as in local governments, because they often do not appreciate ideas originating from other parts of the world.^[20]

On 20 November 2002 FOIL published a report, titled 'The Foreign Exchange of Hate IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva',^[21] accusing the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), an organization which raised money in the United States, of funding hate. The report is described as a 'careful study and analysis of more than 150 pieces of documentary evidence, almost three-quarters of which are those published by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS.'^[21]

Separated into multiple parts, it begins by claiming the IDRF was supporting Hindutva, or the extremist Hindu ideology which has caused much of the violence between religious groups in India recently^[22] and has seen tremendous growth, much of which the RSS is responsible for, outside India over the last two decades.^[23] "The Foreign Exchange of Hate" asserts that the IDRF in fact has religious ties and serves as a major monetary sponsor for Hindutva organizations in India.

The authors of the report investigated the sending of money to Indian movements that participated in the attacks of Muslims in Gujarat, India in 2002. The report details donations to anti-Muslim organizations such as the RSS.^[24] In an interview in 2002, Mathew claims he and the other FOIL members are in clear opposition to all forms of right-wing religious fundamentalist and obscurantist groups.^[14] Mathew states, "If there are petrodollars coming into India to fund radical Islamist groups, that needs to be investigated and stopped."^[6]

The report was termed as misleading Marxist propaganda by IDRF who later published a report of their own^[25][26] responding to the charges leveled by FOIL.