Dear President-elect (of the USA) Obama and the Presidential Transition
Team,
This refers to the missive (available at:
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2008/12/letter-to-president-elect-obama-sonal.html)
dated December 15 from the U.S.-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC)
on the issue of Ms. Sonal Shah's inclusion in your transition team, which
has been strongly objected to by various groups of Indian-Americans and
other Indians (pls. ref.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/india-unity/message/29359).
The following is placed before you in that context for your thoughtful
consideration.
I. The claim by the USINPAC that it "is the political
voice of 2.5 million Indian-Americans" is unsubstantiated and in fact
contradicted by the representations made by numerous Indian-American groups
objecting to Sonal Shah's inclusion in your transition team contrary to the
stand taken by the USINPAC from the very beginning. This is, however, not to
deny that the USINPAC represents powerful and conservative interest groups
within the Indian-American community.
II. While the representation talks of a "smear campaign", it
just shies away from addressing the objections in a straightforward and
substantive manner. Hence the talk of "smear campaign" cannot be justifiably
treated as anything but a "smear campaign" to tarnish the image of the
conscientious objectors who are objecting not out of any personal pique but
based on sound moral and political principles.
III. The representation claims that Ms Shah "is falsely
accused of supporting groups that condone violence against Christians and
Muslims". It further adds to buttress its point: "The organization these
radical groups speak of is the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which organized
many fundraisers and charity drives in Hindu temples across the United
States following the tragic 2001 earthquakes in Gujarat, India. Ms. Shah, in
an effort to give back to her community, participated in these drives."
The fact of the matter is that the VHP was "founded in India in 1964". It is
an offshoot of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The RSS holds Hitler
as a sort of role model. Its main ideologue, M S Golwalkar, in his major
work 'We or our Nationhood Defined', talked admiringly of Hitler's Holocaust
– a model to be emulated. Founded in 1925, it is committed to establish a
Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation-state) by demolishing the "secular democratic"
Indian state. Towards that end, the RSS is single-mindedly engaged in
fomenting and spreading anti-Muslim and anti-Christian hatred and violence.
One of its adherents, Nathuram Godse, assassinated Mahatma Gnadhi, the
principal architect of Indian freedom movement virtually on the very morrow
of independence for standing steadfast in his fight for social amity and
unity foiling the game plan of these nefarious forces. The RSS had to be
banned in the aftermath of Gandhi assassination.
At the founding conference of the VHP, its General Secretary, S S Apte,
declared:
"The world has been divided to Christian, Islam and Communist. All of them
view Hindu society as very fine rich food on which to feast and fatten
themselves. It is necessary in this age of conflict to think of and organize
the Hindu world to save it from the evils of all the three."
In any case, the VHP played the major role in the demolition of the
sixteenth century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya on December 6 1992 and carry out
large scale pogroms against Muslims all over India. The VHP has also a
comparably strong record of harassing the Christians, particularly the poor
tribal ones. In the month of last August in the district of Kandhamal in the
eastern state of Orissa it launched a massive attack on local Christians
causing large scale blood shed, displacement, loss of livelihood and
widespread sense of deep panic. It has now threatened to enforce a general
strike on the coming December 25 all over Orissa to further humiliate and
torture Christians all over the state.
IV. The association of Ms. Sonal Shah with the VHP as a senior
functionary of its American branch is to be read only in this specific
context. The VHP is an organisation that just not "condones violence", as is
deceptively claimed in the subject representation, but spearheads violent
campaigns in systematic and determined pursuance of the "Hindu Rashtra"
project. It has been brought into being with that very objective in mind as
a supporting organisation on the ground of the RSS.
V. Even the training manual meant for the fellows of her
NGO, Indicorps, includes articles by rabid hate mongers like Koenraad Elst
and Francois Gautier on the pretext of exposing the fellows to a wide
variety of views. *
VI. Under the given circumstances, keeping Ms. Shah on your
team would just not send out a wrong signal to the whole world but it would
also be grossly unfair to numerous Muslim and Christian Indians, both in the
US and India, and also those large number of Indian Hindus who fought
valiantly braving tremendous odds in the wake of state-sponsored massacre of
Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 to get the US visa of its Chief Minister Narendra
Modi cancelled. Ms. Shah, incidentally, received an award from Mr. Modi
through her younger her brother in Ahmedabad.
Yours sincerely,
Sukla Sen
EKTA (Committee for Communal Amity)
Mumbai
December 18 2008
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