[Reader-list] Sonal Shah

[OISHIK SIRCAR]

Weekend Edition
November 7 / 9, 2008
The Many Faces of Sonal Shah
Obama's Indian

By VIJAY PRASHAD

Barack Obama has appointed John Podesta to run his transition. During the
lean years of the Bush administration, Podesta, native of Chicago, ran a
shadow cabinet for the Democrats. Since 2003, the home of this
government-in-exile has been the Center for American Progress (CAP), a
liberal think tank set-up to rival the Heritage Foundation and the American
Enterprise Institute. The money, about $10 million per year, came from
George Soros, Peter Lewis, Marion Sandler and Herb Sandler – the main
liberal financiers. CAP has its set of fellows. Many of them worked in some
capacity within the Clinton administration (where Podesta was Chief of
Staff). There are hard-nosed people like Rudy deLeon (who went through every
Defense secretariat in the Clinton years) and Jeanne Lambrew (who served as
a health analyst in the National Economic Council during the waning years of
the Clinton administration). But there are also the fresh faces, young
people who came to Washington with glowing references from the Ivy League.
Others marched over from the Hill, after serving various terms as staff
members for the Democratic warhorses. They have been groomed to be part of
the next Democratic administration. Their hibernation is over. Obama has
called.

The likely suspects have picked up the phone and moved to the transition
headquarters. Among them is a former CAP fellow and now Google employee,
Sonal Shah. Shah is well known in the South Asian American community, and is
a fixture in the Washington liberal circuit. The latter know her for her
Democratic credentials, most of which seem to lie somewhere between
neo-liberalism and welfare liberalism. The bleeding heart pauses, but then
ticks again to the tune of pragmatism. This is perfect material for the CAP,
which is hardly enthusiastic about the Democratic Leadership Council's total
commitment to triangulation (which means capitulation to conservatism), but
it is not averse to a little political calculus itself. Shah, a product of
the University of Chicago, shined her corporate shoes at Anderson Consulting
(who was Enron's accountant), which probably made it easier for her to go
into Clinton's Treasury Department, where she helped Robert Rubin put a U.
S. stamp on the post-1997 Asian economic recovery. The corporate side was
balanced with an interest in the ideology of "giving back." When Bush took
office, Shah went to the Center for Global Development, and while there
joined her brother Anand in forming Indicorps. Knowing full well the desire
among many South Asian Americans to give back to their homeland, the Shahs
created an organization to help them go and volunteer in India, to do for
them what the Peacecorps did for young liberals in the 1960s. Shah left the
CAP to work for Goldman Sachs, and then went to Google. Shah's story is not
unlike that of most of the CAP fellows, many of whom honed their dexterity
at trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, capital and freedom, private
accumulation and human needs.

But there is a less typical side to the Shah story. Born in Gujarat, India,
Shah came to the United States as a two-year old. Her father, a chemical
engineer, first worked in New York before moving to Houston, and then moving
away from his education toward the stock market. The Shahs remain active in
Houston's Indian community, not only in the ecumenical Gujarati Samaj (a
society for people from Gujarat), but also in the far more cruel
organizations of the Hindu Right, such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP),
the Overseas Friends of the BJP (the main political party of the Hindu
Right) and the Ekal Vidyalaya. Shah's parents, Ramesh and Kokila, not only
work as volunteers for these outfits, but they also held positions of
authority in them. Their daughter was not far behind. She was an active
member of the VHPA, the U. S. branch of the most virulently fascistic outfit
within India. The VHP's head, Ashok Singhal, believes that his organization
should "inculcate a fear psychosis among [India's] Muslim community." This
was Shah's boss. Till 2001, Shah was the National Coordinator of the VHPA.

In 2004, I ran into Shah at the South Asian Awareness Network conference in
Ann Arbor, Michigan. At an earlier panel I questioned her links to the Hindu
Right, and so asked people to be wary about her organization, Indicorps. She
was furious, and we had a bitter exchange in the Green Room. But at no point
did she deny her active connections to the Hindu Right. Her brother, Anand,
wrote to me not long after, concerned that Indicorps, which he runs
full-time from India, would be tainted by our tussle. "I was curious about
Sonal's own personal relationship with the VHPA," I wrote back, "That
sparked some concern for me. Of course we are free to have our multiple
associations, and there is no expectation that all our affiliations
necessarily influence each other. That necessity is granted, although it is
my understanding that the VHPA is a very disciplined organization that
demands a lot from its members – notably congruence in all the work that
they do. Which is why I raised the question."

And so I raise the question again.

For more, please go to http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad11072008.html.

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-- 
OISHIK SIRCAR

Scholar in Women's Rights
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

oishiksircar at gmail.com
oishik.sircar at utoronto.ca