From:
"Ra Ravishankar"
Date:
Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:08:17 -0700
Subject:
[saldwr] Lying Religiously (a report on the Hindu Students Council)
#message { overflow:auto; visibility:hidden }
[my apologies if you get this more than once -- ravi]
Dear Friends,
Greetings! The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate [www.stopfundinghate.org]
announces the launch of our new report on the Hindu Students Council
(HSC): "Lying Religiously: The Hindu Students Council and the Politics
of Deception" [hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org]. The report brings
together evidence from multiple sources to demonstrate a web of
connections between the HSC and the violent, ultra-right Sangh family
(the RSS family of organizations, also referred to as the Sangh
Parivar), and exposes the deliberate efforts of the HSC leadership to
conceal its links with the Sangh family in order to deceive
Hindu-American college students. The report provides the first
comprehensive documentation of the origins, methods and practices of
the HSC.
The report, released at the "2007 Organizing Youth Conference" held in
New York City from April 13-15, was enthusiastically received by desi
youth (second-generation youth of South Asian origin) at the
conference. Some of them have joined us in our campaign to get the
"truth out about the HSCs".
Summary:
The HSC was started "as a project of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of
America" in 1990. In the initial years, the HSC openly acknowledged
(or at least, made no efforts to hide) its links with the VHP of
America, supported the political projects of VHP in India, such as the
demolition of the Babri Masjid, and backed the VHP's Hindu nationalist
stance on Kashmir. Today, however, acknowledgment of these explicit
links has vanished, and HSC projects itself as a "tolerant, liberal"
organization devoted largely to the religious/cultural cause of
refashioning Hindu tradition to the contemporary situation of Hindus
in the United States. However, the denial of explicit connections with
the Sangh family is at best only a facade erected by the HSC,
especially if we look at moments of crisis, planning and celebration
in the Sangh family. Rather than the beginnings of a trajectory of
separation from the Sangh family, we actually see an integration of
the HSC into the Sangh family as a full and equal partner.
A note on methodology:
Similar to "The Foreign Exchange of Hate",
[www.stopfundinghate.org/sacw] the 2002 report documenting the flow of
money from the United States into the coffers of the Sangh family in
India, almost all of the documentation used to construct the current
report comes from the archives of the HSC itself and from the
publications of the Sangh family in North America and elsewhere. The
report documents the rise of early HSC leaders into the ranks of Sangh
family leadership in North America, the detailed family connections
between a significant section of the HSC leadership and the Sangh
family, and the central role played by the HSC in the creation and
maintenance of the Sangh family's internet infrastructure, including
the web infrastructure of the Sangh family's parent organization, the
RSS. The electronic infrastructure of the Sangh family was unearthed
using domaintools.com (formerly whois.sc), a domain name search tool.
The methodological emphasis on neutral primary sources and those
internal to the Sangh family is to ensure that the evidentiary basis
of the conclusions drawn is of the highest standards.
The report is supplemented by three appendices.
* Appendix A describes the Global Hindu Electronic Network (GHEN)
maintained by the HSC. The GHEN houses some of the most notable
Hindutva oriented organizational /activist / ideological websites on
the web, including www.rss.org, www.organiser.org,
www.Sewainternational.org and www.Idrf.org
* Appendix B is a primer on the RSS.
* Appendix C documents in brief the Sangh's regressive views on caste,
gender and sexuality -- some of it also shared by the HSC, though
expressed differently -- and its contempt for the pluralistic
traditions of Hinduism.
Over the last two decades, HSCs have worked to normalize a narrow
brand of upper-caste Hinduism on university campuses across the US. A
generation of Hindu and non-Hindu students (as well as university
administrators) have come to think of HSCs as apolitical, cultural
organizations that allow Hindu students to connect with their roots.
But it is exactly this normalization of a certain type of Hinduism
that allows for multiple expressions of Hindutva – on the one hand
through seemingly benign organizations that claim to be
service-oriented, such as Indicorps, and on the other it enables some
within the HSC fold to become more open about their affiliation to
Hindutva. As it gains confidence, it is possible that both HSC
national, in as much as it is in charge of the electronic
infrastructure for the entire Sangh, and local HSC chapters that are
fully mature could openly associate with Hindutva (as done by the HSC
at the University of Washington).
The Collective urges you to forward the report widely, and write about
it for your local newspaper or for a popular publication of your
choice. We look forward to hearing back from you (at
hsctruthout@gmail.com).
In solidarity,
Campaign to Stop Funding Hate
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