Unmistakably Sangh: The National HSC and its Hindutva Agenda
An Executive Summary
The Hindu Students Council (HSC) is a national network of university-based organizations in the United States that purports to teach about Hindu heritage and culture. On several distinct occasions the National Office of the HSC (located in Houston, USA) has asserted that the HSC is not connected to any political movement and that it is independent of the Sangh Parivar. The UNMISTAKABLY SANGH report, however, establishes that, despite such denials, the HSC continues to be a Sangh project from its inception in 1990 into the present. In fact, the HSC remains an integral component of the Sangh Parivar’s globalizing overseas operations including as a grooming space for future Sangh workers. This report provides the first comprehensive documentation of the origins, methods and practices of the HSC. Unfortunately, many local HSC chapters and their membership may be completely unaware of the political and ideological connections between the HSC and the Sangh and continue to participate in the HSCs activities. The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH) started the Truth Out on HSCs!1 Campaign last year in order to engage in a productive dialogue with local HSC chapters. Over the last several months this engagement has provided the public with a large body of evidence revealing the connections between the National HSC to the Sangh Parivar. This report is a consolidation of this evidence, along with some new evidence that we have uncovered most recently.
The HSC was founded in 1990 as a project of the VHP of America. In 1993, Ashok Singhal, the then General Secretary of the VHP declared that "Now, the first project we have in mind is strengthening the Hindu Student Council".2 Although the National HSC now claims that the HSC "has been independently run since 1993",3 our report documents continuous and consistent affiliations between the HSC and the Sangh into the present. In sum, this report provides detailed and well-documented evidence of the continued affiliation of the national HSC with the Sangh, Yet, in spite of this clear evidence, the national HSC continues to deny its connections with the Sangh Parivar. The value of the HSC’s work for the Sangh is illustrated in the graphic below.
[see image above]
HSC’s links to the Sangh Parivar:
• 1995: HSC members attend an RSS-conducted shibir in Gujarat for NRIs on Sangh ideology.
• 1996: HSC and VHPA together set up the Global Hindu Electronic Network (GHEN)/Hindunet --
the Sangh’s major electronic infrastructure hub, which hosts several Sangh organizational websites
including the RSS, ABVP, VHHP, and Seva Bharati off a server cluster in California.
• 1997: HSC collaborates with other Sangh organizations to organize Freedom Festival 97 in the US.
• 1998: HSC part of a Sangh delegation that met with A.B.Vajpayee during his visit to the US.
• 2001: HSC still on the VHPA tax returns.
• 2004: Even after the HSC filed for a legal non-profit status, the VHPA filed for Ownership of the
HSC logo and slogan with the US Patents Office as late as 2004.
• 2005-2007: HSC along with the global Sangh Parivar organized the Dharma Conference and over the last three years has co-hosted such Sangh leaders as Ram Madhav and Sadhvi Rithambara.
While the national HSC performed an essential service for the Sangh Parivar in developing the Sangh’s electronic infrastructure, its contribution to these organizations was considerably more than creating websites for the RSS and its affiliates. For instance, the VHP Governing Council listserve that possibly
coordinated the VHP’s global operations was carried on the GHEN/Hindunet servers. Moreover, the HSC’s Freedom Festival and Dharma Conference along with other such events represent a way for Sangh ideologues to propogate their message under the cover of multiculturalism.The evidence which we present here reveals an undeniable and close alliance between the National HSC and the global Sangh. It is our
concern that hundreds of HSC members in local chapters may be unaware of these connections between their organization and the Sangh Parivar. Hence, in the spirit of engagement, we ask the National HSC a simple question: How does the National HSC explain its continuing links with the VHP-A and the Sangh Parivar years after it claimed to have become an “independently run organization?”
______
1 See http://hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org/
2 See http://hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org/PRs/docs/Singhal_Vision-2000_Int.pdf
3 See http://www.hscnet.org/fact.php
