Vijay Prashad Responds on the Sonal Shah Controversy

In Counterpunch:

Sonal Shah released a statement against “baseless and silly reports” on the Internet. She forthrightly pointed out that her “personal politics have nothing in common with the views espoused by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or any such organization.” The VHP and the RSS are well known to spread hate and to have participated in ghastly acts of violence within India against Muslims, Christians, and oppressed castes, not to speak of spreading the general misogyny that their ideology preaches.
 
Sonal Shah’s statement is gratifying, but unpersuasive. The VHP’s Shyam Tiwari recently said, “Sonal was a member of the VHP of America at the time of the [2001 Kutch, Gujarat] earthquake. Her membership has expired.” This was eight years after the 1993 Gujarat riots, when the VHP had an active, and ghastly role. Ms. Shah was 33 years old then. Her parents were active in Hindutva organizations. How could she not have known of their role, and the controversy surrounding them? She was not from an apolitical household, but an activist one. I brought up her parents only to suggest that she cannot claim now that she was ignorant of the VHP’s role in India. She must have known. And yet she participated in its activities. There were a host of other agencies that raised money for the earthquake survivors. All the earthquake survivors: credible media reports showed that the money raised by the VHP did not go to Muslim survivors, only Hindu ones (for example, “Communalizing Relief: VHP seizes earthquake opportunity,” Statesman, Kolkata, 12 February 2001 and Vijay Dutt, “Discrimination in Distribution of Relief against Dalits in Gujarat Causes Concern,” Hindustan Times, 27 February 2001). This is hardly an act of charity.

The VHP says Ms. Shah left the organization in 2001. Three events from 2004 bear mention:       

(1) Ms. Shah delivered a keynote address at the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh young conference. The HSS is the U. S. branch of the RSS. The University of Chicago’s Martha Nussbaum describes the RSS as “possibly the most successful fascist movement in any contemporary democracy.” The RSS “guru” (teacher) M. S. Golwalkar wrote glowingly about Nazi “race pride,” and called it a “good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.”

(2) Ms. Shah delivered a keynote address at an Ekal Vidyalaya conference in Florida. The Ekal Vidyalaya’s are schools set up in tribal areas. The RSS’s Chief of Service work, Premchand Goel, said that the RSS and the VHP run “thousands of Ekal Vidyalayas.” One Ekal Vidyalaya teacher, Mohan Lal, told Frontline reporter, T. K. Rajalakshmi, “We go for the RSS shakha [branch] meetings regularly. The teachers are selected only if they subscribe to the RSS way of thought.”