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In 1996, Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute,
a conservative think tank in Washington, organized a summit sponsored by the
National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that represents 42,000 Evangelical Churches. 
At the conclusion of the event, the delegates pledged their collective efforts to “take appropriate action to combat the intolerable religious persecution now

victimizing fellow believers and those of other faiths.”
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and the new batch of Republican Congress members were eager to see
that protection of Christians be a central part of United States foreign policy.
The result was the International Religious Freedom Act, which Representative Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, introduced in March 1998 to wide, bipartisan support.
Though Mr. Wolf’s original vision called for sanctions on countries that violated religious freedom,
that idea ran into resistance from corporations that worked in countries like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.
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In the new piece of legislation,
most of the language on sanctions was dumped. 
However, one clause would carry over and would later prove fateful to Mr. Modi. Section 604 of the new legislation
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Many of the initial commissioners had strong evangelical leanings, but when Felice D. Gaer, the director of the American Jewish Committee’s human rights program, was selected as a commissioner in 2001, she decided to widen the panel’s scope to other religions.
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Ms. Gaer tried to arrange an official commission trip to India to survey the damage caused by the 2002 riots but was denied permission to enter India.
Instead, the commission decided to hold a hearing in Washington in June 2002. Ms. Gaer was “shocked” by the findings at the hearing. “I can’t forget what I heard that day,” Ms. Gaer said.
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an Indian-born, Washington-based evangelical Christian named John Prabhudoss led a delegation to riot-affected Ahmedabad that included two Republican congressmen, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania and Mr. Wolf. Another person on the trip was Raju Rajagopal, an Indian-born retired health professional
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In a report on violence against women during the 2002 Gujarat riots, written by a collection of Gujarat-based nongovernmental organizations known as
Citizen Initiative, the authors found that the violence followed “an escalation of tension and build-up by the V.H.P. and the Bajrang Dal,” another Hindu nationalist group.
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In a report in 2002, Human Rights Watch described a letter, bearing the name and logo of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, that called for an economic boycott of Muslims in Gujarat, creating a climate of fear. However,
Human Rights Watch acknowledged that the letter could not be traced 
and that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad denied authorship.
{so they lied}
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co-wrote a 91-page report that alleged that the India Development and Relief Fund, which was based in the United States, had collected $4 million and sent some of the funds to right-wing Hindu groups.
Soon after the release of the report,
Silicon Valley companies with large numbers of Indian-American employees promised to either stop or suspend donor matching programs with the fund.
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Soon after Mr. Modi’s United States visit was announced, 41 South Asian groups across the country came together to form the
Coalition Against Genocide. On Feb. 24, 2005, a letter organized by the group was signed by over 100 professors and sent to the hotel association, asking them to rescind Mr. Modi’s invitation. Another pressure group flooded Mr. Matthews with letters.
On March 8, 2005, Mr. Matthews backed out of the conference for “scheduling reasons.” On March 15,
Amnesty International said it had written a letter to American Express asking it to withdraw its sponsorship of the conference.
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Mr. Prabhudoss focused on Washington. “If this was going to work, we had to make a legal and not a political argument as to why the United States should deny a visa to Modi,” he said. He zeroed in on the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which stipulates that no person who has violated religious freedom could enter the country.
He knew he could count on Mr. Pitts, the Republican lawmaker who accompanied him on a visit to Gujarat in 2002, but he had a tough time convincing Democrats to block Mr. Modi’s visa.
“We needed a Democrat so the White House could say there is bipartisan support against Modi,” Mr. Prabhudoss said.
He hired two professional Democratic lobbyists to assist him with his efforts, for an amount Mr. Prabhudoss declined to disclose.
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Mr. Prabhudoss found an ally in John Conyers Jr., a Democrat from Michigan who is the longest serving African-American member of Congress and has
a large Arab and Muslim constituency.
{All rascals appearing to look most democratic}
On March 16, 2005, House Resolution 160 was introduced in Congress, condemning Mr. Modi “for his actions to incite religious persecution.” On March 18, the State Department denied Mr. Modi a visa.
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Mr. Modi called the visa denial in 2005 “an attack on Indian sovereignty” and raised the question, “Will India also consider what America has done in Iraq when it processes visa applications of Americans coming to India?”
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Joseph Grieboski,
the founder of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy in Virginia, who also was deeply involved in trying to block Mr. Modi’s visit
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