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Vijay Prashad & Tricontinental Services: Marxist Guru’s ‘No Connection’ Claim Under Fire Over $900,000 Funding
Vijay Prashad, the Marxist historian and executive director of the Massachusetts-based Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, has issued a categorical denial of any financial or organisational link between his institute and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or the protests in India. The institute, he stated, is funded solely by public foundations and individual donations, publishes its finances through annual IRS Form 990 filings, has never funded any political party, and maintains no connection to the CPI(M), Indian protests, or groups involved in demonstrations in Paris. The denial was clean, almost clinical. Then the screenshots began circulating. It showed payments from the American institute to a Delhi-registered company called Tricontinental Research Services Private Limited. Hundreds of thousands of dollars across years—research, analysis, translation services—routed to an address in South Patel Nagar. Company filings listed Sudhanva Deshpande, a permanent invitee of the CPI(M) Central Committee, as director and shareholder. Other names from the same ideological ecosystem appeared in the related-party disclosures: salaries, reimbursements, balances outstanding. Marxist student leaders associated with the SFI were said to be working there. Public US tax filings reveal that his institute funnelled more than $900,000 to Tricontinental Research Services Private Limited — an Indian company whose key shareholder and former director is none other than senior CPI(M) leader Sudhanva Deshpande. The same network Prashad insists has nothing to do with him received repeated, substantial payments for “research and translation services” while sharing his organisation’s name, ideology, and personnel. The denial was bold. The paper trail is bolder. Who is Vijay Prashad? The Chinese ‘Singham’ Connection Vijay Prashad is an Indian Marxist historian, executive director of the US Tricontinental Institute, editor at LeftWord Books (same imprint as Deshpande), and a senior non-resident fellow at China’s Chongyang Institute. He is the nephew of CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat. This is not an isolated transaction. It sits inside a much larger, carefully constructed global web first exposed in detail by The New York Times in August 2023. At the centre of that web is Neville Roy Singham, the American tech millionaire and self-described Marxist who sold his software company Thoughtworks for hundreds of millions and relocated to Shanghai. From there, Singham has channelled vast sums through a tangle of US nonprofits with UPS-store addresses into a network of think tanks, media outlets, activist groups and political projects that consistently echo Chinese government talking points. And then the new exposure says, that the same has been received by left groups. Tricontinental, the Massachusetts-based institute Prashad leads, is one of the most prominent nodes in that network. Prashad himself has publicly described Singham as “a Marxist with a massive software company” and acknowledged that Singham’s money formed the original endowment of the organisation. The institute produces research, videos and newsletters that blend progressive causes with strong defences of Beijing’s positions. It has collaborated with Chinese entities on projects explicitly aimed at “telling China’s story” to the world. Singham shares office space in Shanghai with a Chinese media company whose stated goal is to “tell China’s story well.” Tricontinental has collaborated with Chinese partners on projects aimed at spreading that story internationally. The line between independent progressive research and state-aligned messaging has repeatedly blurred. The Indian arm of this operation — Tricontinental Research Services (TRS)TRS) — was contracted to produce material on Indian social movements. Its offices and staff were among those raided by Delhi Police in October 2023 during the wider crackdown linked to the NewsClick case, another outlet that investigators and critics have tied to the same funding ecosystem. Sudhanva Deshpande’s dual role as CPI(M) permanent invitee and company insider makes the “no financial connection” assertion especially difficult to sustain. The pattern is consistent. Money moves through opaque American nonprofits. Content and talking points travel across continents. Organisations share staff, office space, cross-post material and amplify one another. Chinese state media, in turn, amplifies them. What appears on the surface as independent left-wing activism is, according to the Times investigation and subsequent reporting, part of a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China while presenting itself as organic progressive solidarity. Prashad’s latest denial arrives at a moment when protests in India and Europe have again drawn scrutiny to these networks. He insists Tricontinental has never funded any political party and has no link to the demonstrations. Yet the documented payments to a company controlled in significant part by a senior CPI(M) figure, the shared branding, the personnel overlaps, and the organisation’s place inside Singham’s broader architecture tell a different story. US Tax Filings Form 990 and the Left Link According to the Form 990 CP(I)M’s Sudhanva Deshpande’s name sat beside the salary line items. The institute’s public denial sat opposite the private company structure that shared its name and received its funds. We can see a funding pipeline dressed as research contracts. According to tax records available through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, Tricontinental Ltd declared payments totalling $138,200 in 2022 and $206,790 in 2023 to Tricontinental Research Services Ltd, a company based in New Delhi. The paper trail does not disappear because a carefully worded statement declares it irrelevant. It remains in the Form 990s, the Indian company filings, the collaborative projects with Chinese partners, and the public record of who funds whom. For a man who has spent years dissecting hidden power and imperial networks, the refusal to acknowledge the one surrounding his own institute is striking. Now this expose do not merely raise questions but the hard financial and organisational pipeline linking Tricontinental directly to India’s Marxist establishment. At the very moment Prashad and his institute face intense scrutiny for their role in a wider international network of left-wing organisations accused of amplifying protests from Paris to New Delhi, the money trail to a CPI(M)-linked company makes the “no connection” claim look increasingly untenable. What Vijay Prashad Posted “Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research is a research institute that has a mission of building knowledge from the ideas of working people and social movements. It has been at work for ten years […]
