For Info: Samip Mallick-514 274-6184*Murli
Natarajan 973 570 3391 *
hsctruthout@stopfundinghate.org
New York, Monday, April 23, 2007: On Sunday,
April 15, 2007, the Campaign to Stop Funding
Hate (CSFH) released a 65-page new report titled
"Lying Religiously: The Hindu Students
Council and the Politics of Deception,"
(LyR) that comprehensively documented the links
between the North American campus based organization,
the Hindu Student Council (HSC) and the ultra-right,
violent, Hindu chauvinist network of organizations
in India-the Sangh Parivar. The report was released
at the "2007 Organizing Youth (OY!) Conference"
held in NYC from April 13-15 and was enthusiastically
received by South Asian American youth at the
OY conference.
In its response to the report, the HSC press
release of April 20, 2007 characterizes the
CSFH report as a "smear campaign"
that is "based on inaccuracies" and
"outdated information." Beyond these
assertions the press release only repeats banal
platitudes about itself and its vision without
denying even one item of evidence presented
in the LyR report.
The first charge is curious since almost all
information presented in the CSFH report are
drawn directly from official HSC or Sangh Parivar
sources. This leaves no room for claiming that
the sources are invalid or the representation
is "inaccurate" since these are all
the HSC's own statements about itself, and various
Sangh organizations' official statements about
the HSC (See our first press release and a summary
power point presentation at hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org
for details of the report). The methodological
emphasis on sources internal to the Sangh family
is to ensure that the evidentiary basis of the
conclusions drawn is of the highest standards.
Given this, we can only conclude that the HSC
leadership is in denial.
Nevertheless, CSFH would like to highlight a
few pieces of the evidence that the National
HSC leadership has chosen to avoid and invite
the HSC to publicly comment on the same.
a. The CSFH report documents that HSC maintains
and hosts numerous Sangh websites (RSS, VHP,
VHPS, ABVP, and others), thus playing the role
of a mature partner in the Sangh family or parivar.
This information is documented in detail with
IP addresses in section 2.4.3, and Appendix
A of the CSFH report. Does the HSC deny this?
b. In 1993, the HSC claimed that it became fully
independent of the Sangh. Yet, in December 1995,
the HSC was an invited participant at the Vishva
Sangh Shibir (Global Sangh Training Camp). According
to the press release of the organizers of that
camp, "all its delegates were from several
affiliated organizations of RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh], which operate abroad as Hindu Swayamsevak
Sangh, Sewa International, Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
Hindu Students Council, Friends of India Society
International, etc.," and the camp was
"conducted on RSS ideology for NRI [non-resident
Indians] workers." CSFH challenges the
National HSC leadership to comment on how it
gained access to the sanctum sanctorum of an
RSS shibir without being a member of the Sangh?
c. Despite all disavowals by the HSC leadership
about their relationship to the Sangh, the VHP
of America, has repeatedly, and most recently
in 2003, said that the HSC was its project.
Here is an extract from an archived VHPA page
from 2003: "The programs and projects are
defined by the local community needs within
the broad framework of the Parishad mission.
The ongoing projects are: Hindu Student Council:
It is the youth wing of VHP-A functioning in
50 universities and colleges in the USA."
Given the official HSC position that it severed
all links with VHPA in 1993, this amounts to
a minimum of ten years of deception. Does the
HSC deny that this link existed at least until
2003 officially? The VHP-A website still lists
the HSC as an "Organizational Component"
that it "facilitates and promotes".
Is the VHP-A website also "based on inaccuracies"
and "outdated information"?
There are many more such examples in our report.
The fact is that M/s Bhutada and Trivedi of
the HSC National (who issued the HSC's press
release) are still trying to hide the connections
between the HSC and Sangh. "The National
HSC's inability to contest even a single piece
of evidence outlined in the report is nothing
but an attempt to cover up with a hope that
the chapters will not ask too many questions"
said Ashwini Rao, a CSFH coordinator. "The
report" he continued, "is spot on!"
The HSC National leadership does not owe the
Campaign to Stop Funding Hate any explanation.
It owes its members in all the universities
across North America an explanation as to why
these affiliations were not revealed to them
and why their futures were being endangered
by associating them with an extremist group
of organizations. We would urge members of every
HSC chapter across the US and Canada who was
not aware of these links to demand an explanation
of the National HSC. The members of HSC who
were not told about these connections were certainly
duped.
One other matter raised in the HSC press release
deserves comment. The HSC National leadership
accuses CSFH of insensitivity in launching such
a campaign at a moment when they are busy offering
solidarity to the Virginia Tech HSC chapter
after the tragic events of April 16. We find
this diversionary tactic most hypocritical,
for the HSC has stood by in stony silence after
each riot carried out by its sister organizations
in India. In 1993, the HSC rationalized and
celebrated the destruction of the Babri mosque
(and the anti-Muslim violence that followed)
as "the beginning of the new age of Hindu
Renaissance, a new Hindu Revolution". Again,
after the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, the National
HSC promptly (and rightly) called for apprehending
the perpetrators of the Godhra carnage, but
was understandably silent about justice for
the families of the more than 2000 Muslims massacred
in what was probably the worst carnage since
1947. In fact, in the post-genocide days, the
National HSC was busy oiling the machinery of
the Sangh's global propaganda network (by maintaining
the electronic infrastructure of the Sangh).
Is the National HSC not complicit in the cover
up that has ensued since 2002?
CSFH urges a public debate and discussion on
this within the South Asian community, especially
among Hindu-American youth, whose trust has
been betrayed by the National HSC leadership.
There could be no better starting point for
a collective sorting out of the truth from the
lies than with the HSC national leadership answering
the challenges to the three very concrete and
specific points we have raised above. The LyR
report is replete with such evidence and if
needed CSFH will break this down release-by-release
for the benefit of the Indian-American community.
CAMPAIGN TO STOP FUNDING HATE
