[Reader-list] Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired, Guilt by Participation, , By VIJAY PRASHAD

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Dear Sonia
 
The similarity of the situations faced by Sonal Shah and Yasin  Malick is interesting.
 
Both placed in the predicament of being identified with their associations/acts of the past as they try to re-invent or redesign an acceptable identity for the 'today'.
 
Kshmendra
 

--- On Fri, 11/14/08, S. Jabbar <sonia.jabbar at gmail.com> wrote:

From: S. Jabbar <sonia.jabbar at gmail.com>
Subject: [Reader-list] Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired, Guilt by Participation, , By VIJAY PRASHAD
To: "Sarai" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Friday, November 14, 2008, 10:18 AM

Counterpunch. November 13, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad11132008.html

Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired
Guilt by Participation

By VIJAY PRASHAD

Barack Obama¹s victory in the U. S. presidential election warmed the
hearts of millions around the world. When Jesse Jackson wept, I cried
too. I had worked for Jackson¹s campaign in 1988. With Jackson¹s defeat
came the long hibernation of American progressivism. Obama¹s victory
awoke that tradition. A few days later Obama began to announce his
transition team. The names were not from the progressive tradition, but
from the more cautious, even conservative side of the Democratic Party.
In the list I saw the name Sonal Shah.

That day, I wrote an essay for counterpunch.org calling attention to
Sonal Shah¹s affiliations with various Hindutva groups. In this viral
age, essays such as this leave their locales and take on a life of their
own. This one created a little kerfuffle. People excited by the Obama
victory and by the ascension of an Asian American to a position of
authority were miffed that I had rained on their parade. Some claimed
that I had stooped to the Sarah Palin tactic of guilt by association.
Just because her parents are closely affiliated with the Hindutva groups
does not mean she is associated with them, they said. I agree. Sonal
Shah released a statement against ³baseless and silly reports² on the
Internet. She forthrightly pointed out that her ³personal politics have
nothing in common with the views espoused by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or any such organization.²
The VHP and the RSS are well known to spread hate and to have
participated in ghastly acts of violence within India against Muslims,
Christians, and oppressed castes, not to speak of spreading the general
misogyny that their ideology preaches.

Sonal Shah¹s statement is gratifying, but unpersuasive. The VHP¹s Shyam
Tiwari recently said, ³Sonal was a member of the VHP of America at the
time of the [2001 Kutch, Gujarat] earthquake. Her membership has
expired.² This was eight years after the 1993 Gujarat riots, when the
VHP had an active, and ghastly role. Ms. Shah was 33 years old then. Her
parents were active in Hindutva organizations. How could she not have
known of their role, and the controversy surrounding them? She was not
from an apolitical household, but an activist one. I brought up her
parents only to suggest that she cannot claim now that she was ignorant
of the VHP¹s role in India. She must have known. And yet she
participated in its activities. There were a host of other agencies that
raised money for the earthquake survivors. All the earthquake survivors:
credible media reports showed that the money raised by the VHP did not
go to Muslim survivors, only Hindu ones (for example, ³Communalizing
Relief: VHP seizes earthquake opportunity,² Statesman, Kolkata, 12
February 2001 and Vijay Dutt, ³Discrimination in Distribution of Relief
against Dalits in Gujarat Causes Concern,² Hindustan Times, 27 February
2001). This is hardly an act of charity.

The VHP says Ms. Shah left the organization in 2001. Three events from
2004 bear mention:

(1) Ms. Shah delivered a keynote address at the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh
young conference. The HSS is the U. S. branch of the RSS. The University
of Chicago¹s Martha Nussbaum describes the RSS as ³possibly the most
successful fascist movement in any contemporary democracy.² The RSS
³guru² (teacher) M. S. Golwalkar wrote glowingly about Nazi ³race
pride,² and called it a ³good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and
profit by.²

(2) Ms. Shah delivered a keynote address at an Ekal Vidyalaya conference
in Florida. The Ekal Vidyalaya¹s are schools set up in tribal areas. The
RSS¹s Chief of Service work, Premchand Goel, said that the RSS and the
VHP run ³thousands of Ekal Vidyalayas.² One Ekal Vidyalaya teacher,
Mohan Lal, told Frontline reporter, T. K. Rajalakshmi, ³We go for the
RSS shakha [branch] meetings regularly. The teachers are selected only
if they subscribe to the RSS way of thought.²

(3) On her behalf, her brother Anand Shah received an award from the
Gujarat government in the presence of Chief Minister Narendra Modi. When
Mr. Modi became Chief Minister of the State in 2001 was the first RSS
pracharak (volunteer) to be in the position. The RSS celebrated its
victory. Human Rights Watch¹s 2002 report calls attention to the way the
RSS and Mr. Modi have used Gujarat as ³Hindutva¹s laboratory,² stacking
the higher administration with RSS-VHP cadre. No Muslim police officer
has a field posting. As Frontline reporter Praveen Swami wrote at the
time, ³Chief Minister Narendra Modi has become something of a hero for
many Hindus because he presided over the pogrom.²

At none of these events did Ms. Shah or her brother raise their voices
for the broken hearts and bodies, the survivors and victims of the 2002
pogrom in Gujarat. By 2004, even mainstream human rights organizations
and media outlets had recognized that the Gujarat riots were
state-engineered, and that their author was Narendra Modi. In 2005, the
U. S. government refused to allow Mr. Modi a visa on these grounds. And
yet, Ms. Shah received an award given by Mr. Modi. The novelist Amitav
Ghosh refused to be considered for the Commonwealth Prize in 2001
because it commemorated imperialism. That is a sign of sound moral
judgment. To have taken an award from a man who conducted a pogrom is a
sign of moral turpitude.

It is a dark cold day if high expectations are to be dashed by such
convoluted ethics.

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian
History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College,
Hartford, CT His new book is The Darker Nations: A People's History of
the Third World, New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at:
vijay.prashad at trincoll.edu



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