Rohan Giri
The Polis Project bills itself as a journalism and research group, but its activities betray a much darker purpose. Instead of being an impartial organisation dedicated to the truth, it routinely targets Hindu organisations and India, spreading misleading information while omitting the realities of religious persecution and intricate geopolitics. Under its cover of human rights, it serves as a platform for anti-India propaganda, twisting the truth and influencing opinions around the world to support its political agenda.
Another illustration of The Polis Project’s continuous effort to discredit Hindu organisations and harm India’s reputation abroad is the recent propaganda report it released titled “Transnational Funding in Hindu Supremacist Movements”. This purported report is a politically driven attempt to paint Hindu institutions as extremist fronts rather than an unbiased analysis of financial networks. With an aim to provide the impression that there is an organised supremacist movement, where none actually exists, the paper has selectively omitted important information, using inflammatory language, and cherry-picking statistics. It vilifies organisations involved in humanitarian, educational, and cultural preservation efforts while willfully ignoring the actual threats posed by radical groups operating in South Asia and abroad.
There is a certain pattern to the Polis Project’s operations. While ignoring grave human rights abuses in other regions of the world, it unfairly criticises India. Its obsession to depict the current Indian government as authoritarian, using hyperbolic phrases like “genocide” and “fascism”, is to stir up indignation and sway global opinion. By creating a biased narrative that ignores the complexity of religious conflicts and communal tensions in India, their reporting on sociopolitical events distorts reality. While ignoring the persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Kashmir, it creates the impression that India is an oppressive state by publicising certain occurrences and interpreting them with a preconceived ideological framework.
Deep state funding, particularly those supported by George Soros, is the source of the Polis Project rather than an independent organisation. Its creator, Suchitra Vijayan, has a history of endorsing radical groups while posing as an activist. A cursory glance at her social media activity shows that she publicly supports people who have been charged with inciting violence, such as Umar Khalid, who was detained for his role in the Delhi riots. She also offered assistance to Irfan Mehraj, a “journalist,” who was detained in connection with a terror financing investigation in 2023. Mehraj was identified by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as a close associate of Khurram Parvez, a well-known anti-Indian activist and a prominent member of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies (JKCCS), a group connected to dubious financial dealings that aid separatist elements.
The Polis Project’s operating structure further demonstrates foreign influence over it. As per Disinfo Lab’s claim, the administrator of its Facebook page is headquartered in Pakistan, which raises severe questions regarding its legitimacy and motivation. Although its propaganda efforts are focused on India, its digital presence indicates external management, raising the prospect of planned influence tactics aimed against India’s stability. This aligns with broader international efforts to amplify divisive narratives against the country.
Even outside of its digital activities, The Polis Project has close connections to groups that have openly supported separatist and Islamist causes. The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an organisation well-known for advocating against India on global forums, regularly features in its events. Despite IAMC’s acknowledged affiliations with extremist organisations, The Polis Project finds common ground with them, confirming that it is far from being an unbiased research organisation.
Its unclear funding structure is another issue. The Polis Project says it is transparent, although it hasn’t given a detailed account of where its funding comes from. Its closed financial sources raise serious concerns, and as a nonprofit organisation with headquarters in the United States, it is nevertheless vulnerable to outside interference. Who provides the funding for it? What outside parties gain from its persistent anti-Indian propaganda campaign? The ambiguity surrounding these issues suggests a conscious attempt to hide the foreign entities that might be controlling its operations.
Besides targeting Hindus in India, The Polis Project has also reached out to the Hindu diaspora around the world. It attempts to damage the standing of charitable endeavours carried out by Hindu communities around the world by unjustly associating Hindu cultural organisations and charities with a purported supremacist purpose. Claims that organisations like Sewa International, Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation, and Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh are political fronts are unfounded, despite the fact that they have played important roles in social service, education, and disaster relief. Discrediting the Hindu diaspora and stifling its contributions to social advancement are deliberate goals.
The Polis Project’s utter silence over the religious persecution of Hindus is another example of its duplicity. It vigorously promotes stories of state-led persecution of minorities in India, but it ignores the violent attacks on Hindu communities around the world, the systematic discrimination and persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and ethnic cleansing in Kashmir. Its selective activism reveals its lack of sincere support for human rights and demonstrates that its goals are not to promote justice but to pursue a political agenda.
India’s sovereignty is being undermined globally by The Polis Project, who continuously depicts India as an authoritarian state. It is in line with larger efforts to destabilise India as it presents internal policies as dictatorial, supports separatist language, and purposefully leaves out important background information. This cannot merely be the result of a journalistic error, but a well calculated move to damage India’s reputation internationally. In an effort to undermine India’s position as a rising global force and sow internal strife, it manipulates narratives for the benefit of outside interests.
With a blatant ideological agenda, the Polis Project is not an impartial monitor. Its biased narratives, foreign affiliations, selective activism, and untransparent funding make it clear that it is an anti-India propaganda tool. It is crucial to refute its misinformation with factual arguments and stop its lies from becoming widely accepted in global discourse. Organisations with a stake in dividing people and promoting misinformation should not hold India and its institutions hostage.
(Author: Rohan Giri is a journalism graduate from Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) New Delhi, and Manager Operations at CIHS.)
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