Petition to Prof. Sriprakash Kothari to withdraw from his role as Chair of the World Hindu Congress 2018

Aazaad Lab
Aazaad Lab started this petition to Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting and Finance, MIT Sloan
School of Management SP KOTHARI and 1 other.

We, the undersigned, appeal to Prof. Sriprakash Kothari to withdraw from his role as Chair of the
World Hindu Congress 2018 (WHC). Prof. Kothari is the Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting
and Finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-Sloan School of Management, and
his participation in the WHC is not commensurate with the core values of MIT or with broader
humanitarian values of inclusion, diversity and respect for life.
The World Hindu Congress is being organized in Chicago, September 7-9, 2018. The stated purpose
of WHC 2018 is: “...a global platform for Hindus to connect, share ideas, inspire one another, and
impact the common good”. The real objective of World Hindu Congress, however, is to legitimize and
embolden the hate groups affiliated with India’s fearsome Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, to
raise funds and to network internationally to further push their agenda of hate and violence.
Officially, the World Hindu Congress is being organized by the World Hindu Foundation (based in
Gurgaon, India). But going through the names of WHC’s Organizing Committee, it becomes amply
clear that the real organization behind the event is Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America or "VHPA"
(World Hindu Council of America), along with the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh or HSS, the official
U.S. arm of the RSS.
"VHPA" is the American arm of the nefarious Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an RSS affiliate
organization whose role in various incidents of communal violence in India is very well documented.
VHP is also officially classified as a “militant religious organization” by the U.S. administration. The
parent organization of the VHP, the RSS, and its followers have been known to be ardent admirers of
Nazis and especially of Hitler. The second chief of RSS, late M.S. Golwalkar wrote in his seminal
book ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’ - "...German race pride has now become the topic of the day.
To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the
country of the Semitic Races - the Jews ... a good lesson for us in Hindustan for us to learn and profit
by.".
The VHP and its sister organization, Bajrang Dal have a long track record of intimidation of
minorities, incitement of hatred and violence, and are linked to many acts of terror in India which have
been documented by the Indian and international media, as well as Indian and international human
rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc. The political party
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the political arm of the RSS. Since the BJP came to power in India in
2014, there have been 100+ mob lynchings of minorities, including members of Dalit and indigenous
communities by these extremist organizations under the guise of “cow protection”. In most of these
instances, the perpetrators are roaming free while the victims, if they survive the lynchings, are being
harassed with trumped-up cases for consuming or transporting beef.
Commitment to diversity and inclusion are fundamental values of MIT and it’s disheartening to see an
MIT faculty member not only associating with a divisive hate group but offering, inter alia, his
leadership and MIT’s name recognition to an event meant to promote exact opposite of MIT’s values.
We want to see a secular India and the world where every religion and community is treated with
equal respect and we see Prof. Kothari's participation in WHC as a direct challenge to values of
diversity and inclusion.
We appeal to Prof. Kothari and to all potential participants to withdraw from the World Hindu
Congress 2018. Only by withdrawing from the event can Prof. Kothari send a clear and unequivocal

message that the message of Hinduism and that of RSS's hate-filled propaganda are not the same, and
that hate and bigotry cannot hide behind a façade of respectability.
https://www.change.org/p/prof-sp-kothari-withdraw-from-participating-in-world-hindu-congress-2018