Though I was an early and vocal participant in the Great Sonal Shah Internet Debate of 2008, I am done arguing about it. This post is not about that directly.
Instead, I’d like to focus on some of the bigger issues behind the controversy, specifically: 1) how South Asian religious youth camps work and what they do, and 2) whether Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu organizations in the U.S. send large amounts of money to South Asia to support communalist organizations over there.
As always, I would love to hear personal testimony from people who went to religious youth camps, or who have been involved in any of the organizations I’m going to be mentioning. An ounce of personal testimony is better than a pound of theorizing, generalizing, and blah blah blah argument.
1. What’s at issue
These two issues are the central themes of a chapter in Vijay Prashad’s book, The Karma of Brown Folk, called “Of Yankee Hindutva.” They also feature in Prashad’s essay in Sulekha, “Letter to a Young American Hindu.”
The reason Prashad is so focused on Sonal Shah is pretty clear: to him, she seems to represent exactly the “Yankee Hindutva” he has been talking about for years. As I see it, the major things Sonal Shah is accused of are 1) being a part of the leadership of an organization called the VHP-A, which has a clear communal bias (no one seriously disputes this), and 2) speaking at HSS-US youth camps like this one (from the website, HSS-US appears to be considerably less extreme than VHP-A, though they do prominently advertise a new book they’ve published on M.S. Golwalkar). Ennis has also suggested that what is really worse than this might be 3) the fact that she waited so long to clarify her former affiliation: the cover-up is worse than the crime. I do not agree with him on that, but I do agree with people like Mira Kamdar that (1) and (2) might be concerning.
But what exactly does an association with the American branch of a Hindu nationalist organization tell us about a person? How much do we really know about the American branches of these organizations? How bad are they really?
Below the fold, I’ll raise some questions about the accounts Vijay Prashad has given of VHPA and the Hindu Students Council in his book, The Karma of Brown Folk.
Before doing that, let’s start with a personal testimony, from a person who actually disagrees with me overall on this issue. As I was browsing people’s various blog posts relating to Sonal Shah, I came across a great post and discussion thread by a blogger named Anasuya. In the comments to Anasuya’s post is another person named Anasuya (Anasuya Sanyal), who attended VHP camps years ago, and had this to say about her experience of them:
I too remember attending VHP conferences as a teenager growing up in the US and I had no idea of the political affiliations until I lived for a bit in India around age 17. Naturally, I was not in any kind of agreement with the VHP platforms, philosophy or actions and I even wrote a small piece about the American “face†of the VHP for The Telegraph!
And as a second generation Indian American, Indian politics were not a topic in the home and VHP conferences were a parentally-approved weekend outing since we were with other Indian friends. The fun part was our more responsible friends would drive us all to the place and we’d take over a cheap motel and party. Otherwise at that age, a weekend away would have been strictly forbidden.
I don’t remember too much about the conferences themselves–there were a few interesting group discussions/breakout sessions. I didn’t see any political content. If anything, the parents saw it as a way to participate in a big somewhat religious gathering, seeing as how more established religions in the US had youth events, whereas Hindus did not. (link)
As I say, Anasuya Sanyal disagrees with me overall, so this account shouldn’t be taken as a tailor-made version of what happened to support the “pro Sonal Shah” side of things.
Anasuya (the blogger) also has a great string of questions that follow from this:
Why is our analysis not able to convey the slippery slope between VHP summer schools and the genocide in Gujarat? Have we, as activists for a progressive world, so denounced a middle ground of faith, religiosity and associated ‘culture’, that we have ended up allowing the fascist right to take over that space? Is a VHP summer school the only option that a young Hindu growing up in America has for learning about her heritage, whatever this might mean? How far are we committed to having ‘youth camps’ about syncreticism, pluralism, and that most particular aspect of Indian heritage: secularism as both the church-state separation, as well as a respect for all faiths? With histories that include Hindu and Muslim worship at Baba Budangiri, or the Hindu and Christian celebrations at Velankinni? (link)
These seem like great questions, and unfortunately I don’t think there are any solid answers. Things like “Diwali Against Communalism” come off as a little weak. Inter-faith conferences and events are also great, but groups that are targeted by people like Prashad (like HSS-US) regularly particpate in them, so how much work does the “Inter-Faith” movement really do?
2. Looking at Prashad’s “Yankee Hindutva”
The only person I know of who has spent any energy investigating the American branches of South Asian religious organizations and youth camps is Vijay Prashad [UPDATE: I’ve now also been looking at some helpful work by Arvind Rajagopal], and I don’t find his account to be sufficient. I don’t say that he’s wrong, per se, but rather that I wish there were other people investigating these groups and filling out the gaps in our knowledge of them.
My first problem is with the narrow way Prashad defines his subject. Prashad explicitly states that he’s not going to look at Sikh or Muslim camps or organizations, because in his view the “VHPA is far more powerful (demographically and financially) and is far more able to create divisions within the desi community than to draw us toward an engagement with our location as desis in the United States” (KoBF 134).
In fact, I don’t think that’s true even on the face of it. Khalistani groups (now mostly defunct) and conservative Muslim groups historically have done as much to encourage self-segregation within second generation desi communities as the VHP-A. It may be true that the VHPA is more “powerful,” but without seeing membership numbers or financial statements, I don’t see why we should assume that. With his exclusive focus on Hindu organizations, Prashad seems to be employing a double standard.
I’m also disappointed in Prashad’s narrow focus on the VHP-A because, as a moderate Sikh, I’m curious to know more about how he sees Sikh youth camps and Sikh American organizations. (I attended Sikh youth camps as a child, and was even a counselor/teacher at a now-defunct Sikh youth camp in central Pennsylvania, in 1998.)
Prashad’s chapter has many long paragraphs of political commentary, as well as several pages on a figure from the 1920s, named Taraknath Das. He gets to the topic at hand about 10 pages into the chapter, when he connects the VHPA to the Hindu Students Council:
The VHPA acts multiculturally through its student wing, the Hindu Students Council (HSC), which champions a syndicated Brahmanical Hinduism (of Hindutva) as the neglected culture of the Hindu Americans. The HSC subtly moves away from the violence and sectarianism of related organizations in India and vanishes into the multicultural space opened up in the liberal academy. The HSCs and Hindutva flourish in the most liberal universities in the United States, which offer such sectarian outfits the liberty to promote what some consider to be the neglected verities of an ancient civilization.
Notice something familiar here? It’s the exact same rhetorical move that’s been made with Sonal Shah: though HSC appears to be more tolerant, accepting, and reasonable than the VHPA, that is only a front — in fact, they are really just the smiley, tolerant-looking face of a Global Hindutva Conspiracy. Actually, I am far from convinced, by either Prashad or the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, that the HSC is a problematic organization at all. They insist that they have been an independent organization since 1993, and I have seen no real evidence to doubt that.
[UPDATE/CORRECTION: Several people have suggested to me that the links between VHPA and HSC probably were more sustained than this. I have also been told that some HSC groups — Cornell especially, before 2002 — and some of the leadership have said things with a communal bent. Those are important qualifications, but it doesn’t really alter my basic point, that HSC for its members is primarily a social organization, while VHPA has a firmer communalist focus.]
Another problematic assertion arises a few pages later in Prashad’s chapter, when he finally starts to talk about money:
Between 1990 and 1992, the average annual income of the VHPA was $385,462. By 1993 its income had gone up to $1,057,147. An allied group of the VHPA, the India Development and Relief Fund, raised almost $2 million in the 1990s (some of it via the United Way). This money is discreetly transferred into India. It is common knowledge that during the way of Shilapujan ceremonies across the globe toward the erection of a Ram temple at Ayodhya, millions of dollars in cash and kind reached India. It is also common knowledge that VHP and BJP functionaries carry huge sums of money in cash or kind from the United States to India.
First, it’s nice to see some dollar amounts here, though it would be even nicer if a source for those dollar amounts was given. Second, it may well be true that the VHPA has sent money to the Indian VHP, which was used for nefarious purposes. As I hope is clear, I have no interest in defending the VHPA or (and this should go without saying) the VHP/RSS in India. But it is simply not enough to say “it is common knowledge that X is occurring.” Some direct evidence is important. Again, if we don’t have it, it doesn’t mean a progressive ought to write these organizations off as harmless.
But what that lack of direct evidence does require is a different tone — we don’t know how much money is involved, so it’s misleading to write as if we do. It could be a lot, or it could be very little. It is a real possibility that the supposed financial might of “Yankee Hindutva” might be, in the end, somewhat overblown. The Indian branches of these organizations are huge structures, with plenty of independent ability to raise money.
Towards the end of the “Yankee Hindutva” chapter in The Karma of Brown Folk, Prashad makes a point that I think is very valid — the way in which second generation South Asian youth are taught their religious traditions via religious organizations and youth camps is often rather distorted. He quotes the great C.M. Naim quite appositely along these lines:
[C.M. Naim:] “The religious heritage that is being projected here and sought to be preserved and passed on to the next generation . . . is closer to an ideology than a faith or culture. IT has more certainties than doubts, more pride than humility; it is more concerned with power than salvation; and it would rather exclude and isolate than accommodate and include.” [Prashad:] In the United States there are mosques and temples but no dargahs (shrines), “not the kind where a South Asian Muslim and a South Asian Hindu would go together to obtain that special pleasure of communion or that equally special comfort of a personal intercession with god.” [C.M Naim, quoted in Prashad, 149]
I completely agree with this, though it seems necessary to also point out that this process of religious consolidation that occurs in the diaspora has also been occurring in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The utopian vision of religious syncretism and blending is largely, now, a vision of the past. It is important to remember the history of syncretism and understand its legacy (Amitav Ghosh has often done that beautifully in his writings), but “strong” religion has largely displaced it in the Indian subcontinent in the present day.
As a Sikh growing up in the U.S., I have first-hand experience of the religious consolidation Naim is talking about. What we were taught about the Sikh tradition at Gurdwara and Sikh youth camps was often very different from what my cousins were learning back in Delhi and Chandigarh. Even the way it’s practiced — the actual ritual of visiting the Gurdwara — is a little different. (In the diaspora, most people go once a week, and spend several hours. It’s “like going to Church.” In India, the devout tend to visit the Gurdwara every day, but they only stay a few minutes. Religious practices are more concentrated here in the U.S., and also more isolated from everyday life. Ironically, through subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways, this process of Westernizing means that the relationship to religion can become more intense, and perhaps more extreme, than it is for most people in the Indian subcontinent.)
Of course, all this is a bit beside the point — as it’s a phenomenon that is interesting sociologically, but it isn’t really evidence of a rising tide of “Yankee Hindutva.” The first wave of second generation children who were raised with this uniquely diasporic version of South Asian religions are now in the their 30s and 40s, and for the most part they outgrew what they were taught in those religious camps as teenagers.
Some quick conclusions:
1) Not everyone who attends or speaks at an HSS youth camp is a fanatic, as evidenced by the example of the blog comment I quoted above.
2) It would still be nice if there were more options for exposure to moderate forms of South Asian religion in the diaspora.
3) Prashad’s decision to focus only on Hindu organizations and youth camps is overly limiting. It’s not just because it produces a political slant and a double-standard; it’s also analytically limiting, because there might be parallels and patterns among Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims (and Christians? Jains?) that this limited scope doesn’t allow.
4) I am not convinced that the HSC should be lumped in with the VHPA. The former seem to very clearly by oriented to ABDs on college campuses — and serve primarily a social function. The VHPA is, by contrast, clearly tied to a communalist concept of Hinduism.
5) I agree that second generation South Asian Americans often get a somewhat distorted (more monoculturalist) image of South Asian religions because of what is taught by religious organizations and summer camps. But I am not sure this is really our most pressing problem.
do you have a link in which they explicitly state that they wouldnt give aid to muslims? is there any direct proof of them denying aid to non-hindus? if there was, was it something practiced across the board, or was it limited to individuals acting on their own?
those that donated to VHPA probably read this message from their website from april 2001:
http://www.vhp-america.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=16
and searching around the net, i see many articles in which talk about the VHP/RSS helping minorities.
http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20010212/relief2.shtml
Uh Oh! They worked with the RSS to do something. This must mean they hate Muslims and Christians. And by extension anyone who donated to their relief efforts must hate Muslims and Christians as well!
146
I disagree. The criticism is extremely muted, if any, in the mainstream press. At best, Muslims who commit bad acts in the name of Islam are somehow said to be contrary to the spirit of Islam. Anybody who criticizes Islam can expect a fast a furious barrage of insults proclaiming him to be a bigot or racist.
I think too many people think of Hinduism as if it is a Semitic religion, bound by tenets, faith-based with do’s and don’ts.
Hinduism is personally customisable, without having to explain anything to anyone. So Gandhi singing “Ishwar Allah” is Hinduism. VHP singing “Ishwar Shankar” is also Hinduism. Denying earthquake funds selectively is also Hinduism. We’ll mirror Muslims today and behave like Catholics tomorrow. And after the second glass of wine, we’ll behave like Syrian Christians! In the morning, we’ll be back to worshipping Ganesha.
There is no limit to what we can do. Which is why, in a judgment the Supreme Court of India ruled that “no precise meaning can be ascribed to the terms ‘Hindu’, ‘Hindutva’ and ‘Hinduism’; and no meaning in the abstract can confine it to the narrow limits of religion alone, excluding the content of Indian culture and heritage.”
Hindutva is Hinduism. Hinduism is Hindutva. If folks have a problem comprehending that, they can go suck an egg. Or challenge the Supreme Court (which even the most virulent anti-Hindus have not managed).
M. Nam
Dr. Anonymous, there were indeed clear boundaries between Hinduism and other religions. Heck, there were even boundaries between Hindus themselves and that was called the caste system. Hindus and Muslims may have peacefully co-existed precisely because they did not mix closely together in life altering ways. Towns and villages were sectioned according to caste, so you better believe there would have been “muslim mohallas” back then as well. “Separate but equal (or almost)” seemed to have been the ethos if you read about life in India before the Brits came. There were clear demarcations. Hindu society is famed worldwide for it’s demarcating and hierarchal nature. While it may not have been a hot bed for communal violence, it was not a utopian itegrated society either. People knew their place and stuck with their own kind.
An added thought to my above comment. If you read texts from the era of Mughal rule in India, a common phenemona was the “loss of caste” that came about when caste Hindus did things like eat beef, sitting and eating with a muslim, drinking water from a Muslim’s hand, or drinking from a cup that had been touched by a muslim and a host of other things. They may have been in charge but they were considered “outside” of the Hindu cultural mileu with it’s “purity” ethics, caste rules, etc. There were even cases where prominant Hindu members of society worked for the Muslim government and as a result lost their caste and could not have their marriages arranged to Hindu girls. And at that time it was girls getting married, not women.
Read. Read. Read!
(and some ultra orthodox old school hindus still think like above. that’s obviously not the hinduism that lends itself easily to the west)
L&O – That is not what I said. If you declare your religion to be good for you, then obviously it is better for you than any other religion. Hence not equal to other religions.
Show me where I suggested anything other than what you just say above, other than the respect part of it. Live and let live is a good policy for me simply because I don’t care a hoot about religious beliefs. I care less about the liberal stance, however, because many liberals are indeed godless but nevertheless insist on respect for religious beliefs, while waging war on traditions (like xmas for example) at the same time. I would respect liberals if they spent their energy in creating their own set of values instead of demanding that religious values be respected. This does not mean all of these points of view cannot exist side by side – just don’t demand respect for all points of view. (Again I am not saying that you go “harm another life form” whether liberal or religious; no need to jump to extreme conclusions).
so, if i understand correctly:
hindus do bad things: it is because they are bad people (of course, only allegedly, and these bad things are always guaranteed to be u.s. friendly, as i’ve learnt on this thread) muslims do bad things: it is because islam is provably a bad religion.
got it. i don’t see why muslims just don’t understand this simple truth. would make things so much easier for everybody concerned.
131 · teasrini said
don’t know if you know anything about sapna, this clearly shows you don’t understand the meaning of borking. what is it with people using words without understanding their meaning?
Ponniyin – These folks you speak of are not seeing merit in either xtianity or islam because their adherents do not consider them to be fairy tales. Showing respect in this context means precisely that you agree with this point of view. Hinduism on the other hand is a set of fairy tales (in a manner of speaking) and talking about Hindu beliefs is again not seeing the merit of the tradition. So you cannot come up with the same reason for showing respect/disrespect for different religions because they are differnt in different ways.
But I notice that people tend to think of respect/disrespect in terms of hacking someone to death or letting them live. This level of discourse is of no interest to me.
132 · Pavan said
i think the vhp and its fellow travelers do a pretty good job of devouring the other, so rest easy, buddy.
101 · Pavan said
sure, he founded the vhp in mid 60s, but the current monstrous incarnation of the vhp only really started taking root in the mid to late 80s.
Swami Chinmayananda was a supporter of the Ayodhya movement He supported bloodshed if necessary I also have an interview wherein he called for socio-economic boycott of Indian muslims if they refused to return Ayodhya
–
http://www.chyk.net/Chinmaya_works/chinmaya_interviews.asp
“Temple in Ayodhya a Must”
” TEMPLE SHOULD BE BUILT”
(Printed and Published by Ram Madhav for PRAGNA BHARATI Andhra Pradesh 3-4-705/4, Narayanaguda, Hyderabad – 500 029, India)
Asking him whether a temple should be built in Ayodhya is insulting him personally…. as insulting as asking one his opinion on whether he should reject his wife, exhorted Swami Chinmayananda, in an hour-long interview granted exclusively to VANDE BHARAT MATARAM in January 1993. The late premier pedagogue of Bhagavadgita was occasionally irascible, particularly when a reference was made to the obduracy on the part of the Congress government as well as the Muslim leadership about Ayodhya. No mincing of words, no hiding of views…. an honest and frank Swamiji candidly answered wide-ranging questions on Ayodhya, secularism etc… in a conversation with Ram Madhav, Editorial In-Charge, Vande Bharat Mataram.
Vande : But the “minority” believes that their religion is in danger, particularly after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.
Vande : What is your opinion on Ayodhya? Must the temple be built there?
Vande : So much blood has……..
—
Vande : To bring Muslims into the mainstream, is it the only solution?
It is the mixing of religion and local/national/international politics that creates the poison of communalism in religious teachings/organizations. Reformation of religious practices is a whole different issue. If I understand it right, Amardeep’s concern is with how to avoid politicization (especially subcontinental) of American religious organizations and activities.
162 · rec1man said
if that interview is legit, wow, what a monster masquerading in the garb of a holy man. even by his own belief system, i hope he gets reincarnated as a muslim in modi’s gujarat.
It’s a rare person who doesn’t support bloodshed “when necessary.” I’m actually not that big a fan of Chinmayananda’s personal views. I never met him but I met his successor, Swami Tejomayananda, in high school and got into an argument with him over what I considered to be a very presumptuous and disrespectful tone with regard to non-Hindus. It wasn’t that he seemed violent or hateful towards them. He just seemed to think of them as ignorant children who haven’t thought things through enough. It is a bit insulting to peoples’ intelligences to claim that if only they were smarter they’d be in your group too. That’s the same smug tone that annoys me about evangelicals and missionary types.
This was back when I had a huge chip on my shoulder against the evangelical Christians who kept accosting me in school too. So if I leapt to the defense of Christianity at that point you know it was bad. But despite the tendency towards self-congratulation I never get the sense the Chinmaya Mission encouraged kids to be violent. It encouraged the development of a sort of fellowship among the Hindu kids in my hometown and it created a forum for us to discuss our concerns (and growing up in the Bible Belt we had quite a few) and learn a bit about our culture.
One of the problems with this entire discussion is all this talk of religious tolerance. What we have managed to achieve at this point in history is civic tolerance, not religious tolerance. This is a good thing. But if you are asking a sincere xtian believer (not a fanactic) to show respect to your pagan gods then you are asking him or her to disrespect their own teachings. Religious tolerance is an oxymoron, a fantasy concocted by gutless liberal hypocrites.
If you read the whole thing it doesn’t sound quite so monstrous when those quotes are put in context. At most it seems a little majoritarian, but then I’m a pretty conservative (political) guy who is distrustful of the unwashed masses in general.
Christianity has managed to weasel its way out of abiding by all those old testament laws that they found inconvenient. Emphasizing Jesus’ message of love and understanding over the megalomaniacal urge to convert the whole world over should be a walk in the park compared to the rhetorical gymnastics the early church did to avoid having to keep kosher.
Was that some sort of innuendo?
Can you break this down more simply. I think there’s a point here you’re trying to make…
Ref 164 -gba
Another founder of VHP was the sikh leader master Tara Singh
In 1947, in response to muslim atrocities and ethnic cleansing of kafirs in west pakistan, Tara Singh organised the sikh-hindu counter-reprisals and made Indian territory from the pak border to Delhi, muslim free in 2 months ( formerly 33% muslim ) Even faster than the de-islamising of Spain under Isabella
I was in Ujjain, MP recently (A BJP ruled state) and after being spent in reasoning with my folks, accompanied them to some Shakti Siddhi temple. As I don’t share their superstitious beliefs, my only interest lay in the iconography and architecture of the temple that had been recently renovated as part of the BJP state government drive. I could not miss the overlarge Swastikas that adorned the walls and the Trishul reliefs that accompanied them. What were these totems of Hindu masculinity doing on walls of a Shakti temple? On the walls of a temple it looked grotesquely misplaced, a political message – fascist iconography disguised insidiously as religious symbols. Posters here should know that back home Hindutva is supplanting traditional Hinduism and is finding many adherents. Large saffron Omkar’s adorn the rear windshields of cars, TV channels air several mythological shows, Yoga is gaining huge popularity, and even Spas play and replay the Gayatri Mantra. The least us liberals can do is to squeeze them out of western funds by shutting down front organizations like the VHP of A, and hope sans the fund the people of India will spurn this assertive religiosity that is so misplaced for ‘Hinduism’.
OH MY GOD YOGA IS BECOMING MORE POPULAR!? Seriously?
This is grave cause for concern! First people’s bodies will become more flexible. . . then their minds! Flexible enough to be bent into any shape the conspiratorial Brahmin forces choose! How diabolical!
And I can’t believe using the swastika, that symbol of Hindu Masculinity!
I mean, just look at it’s history of oppressing women!
Truly revolting!
But all kidding aside. Do you stop to research or verify any of these absurd hatchet jobs you peddle or are you going for more of a kitchen sink approach?
“Yankee Hindutva”: What is it?
I prefer ‘Redneck Hindutva’ to ‘Yankee Hindutva’. Who’s with me?
Divya,
I just said “some” of the folks and not all who want to treat all religions on equal merit. I agree that religions by their definitions are different. I clarified it with an example of the Spiderman / Superman stories.
To clarify further, If someone comes to me and claims that “my Prophet can kick your God’s a“, I’d hear him out. And another person comes to me and claims “my Gods can kick all the Prophet’s aes”, I’d hear him out too. I treat the above with same merit that they deserve. 🙂
Okay, so you have all the time in the world. Other than that, I don’t know what to glean from your comment. Spiderman and Superman don’t do it unfortunately. You ignore the thousands of years of scholarship that have gone into developing a metaphysics, a logic, a framework, culture, society, politics, even diets and your love life and god knows what else that all revolve around this beast called religion.
Sorry, Just because thousands of years of scholarship thought sun moves round the earth doesn’t really make the sun move round the earth. All that metaphysics, logic, framework , culture etc.. in the beast called religion could have been built on a base of lies and it is not un-scholarly to call that so.
Exactly my point. But a total turnaround on your part from your 176 (or my reading of it).
Hmm.. I thought I said the same thing. Anyways looks like we’re in agreement.
I think you’ve taken a v sensible approach with this, Amardeep. If I buy an HDTV made in China, am I not providing financial support to its dictatorial regime. And the dollars I spend on the oil I buy might well be making their way to the Taliban, or at the least supporting immoral dictatorships in the Arab world. Are these things supposed to keep me awake at night? I don’t see how this case is any different. The HSC provides a service to ABDs who want a sense of cultural rootedness, and gets something in return. The ABD can be apportioned some blame, of course, but maybe we should just admit that in an increasingly globalized world everyone is morally culpable to some extent, and move on from this shrill moral signaling.
Thanks, Saskhi. I keep getting emails from left-leaning friends (and even some strangers) along the lines of “have you lost your mind? Why are you trying to defend these people?”
It’s helpful to hear someone respond in a non-polarized way.
Hi Amardeep, I agree with you that it would be interesting to see what social functions non-Hindu campus groups – and others in their ilk – perform in/for the diaspora. It would be even more fascinating to understand what role – re funding and branding, for instance – they assume for communities back in India, since this is my key analytic interest in them (not to belabour the point!). It would be useful to ask Prashad precisely the question you pose: less about the significance of Hindu groups (because the importance of their role for activities back in India is fairly well established now, and I think that’s the tack he takes), but more about why not the others, particularly, as you say, the Sikh groups, that might be more analogous to the Hindu ones than Muslim groups? I wonder if his lack of interest is for a less sinister reason than you think: the exigencies of an academic life and the limited time available for research?! I haven’t a clue, just a conjecture from the depths of my own doctoral despair. :-))
newbie: I find it a little hard to believe that support for Hindutva here could be solely a reaction to certain left intellectuals’ engagement; from the tenor of much of this discussion and others, it doesn’t appear to me that people lack independent judgement or agency… I agree though, that the ways in which issues are posed can be almost as important as the issues themselves – and being open to challenge is critical to that – but surely we are able to sift the (analytical) wheat from the (rhetorical) chaff?? I myself didn’t agree with the manner in which Prashad wrote his original essay, and I say so in my post, but I could disagree with that while agreeing with the validity of some of the issues he was raising.
Divya: Religions, and cultures of/around religion, constantly evolve, as I’m sure you will acknowledge. The fact that deities of Vishnu and Shiva sit by side in some of today’s temples (or puja rooms), doesn’t preclude histories of conflict. In Karnataka, for instance, the whole Basava-Bhakti movement of the 12th-14th century was precisely a reaction to Vaishnavism and the indignities of the caste system; unfortunately Lingayats or Veera-shaivas became assimilated into the caste hierarchies of the region once more, but not before leaving us some extraordinary artifacts of their activism then, including Basava’s and Akka Mahadevi’s vachanas. And the distinctions are more subtle today, but continue to be practised to some extent: on a lighter note, having a mother from Tamil Nadu/Kerala, I can tell you that a family joke is about the three degrees of Tamil Brahmin ego: I, Iyer, Iyengar. Iyers are Shiva worshippers while Iyengars are Vaishnavite. 🙂
Traditionally the swastika has been used as a symbol of good luck, welfare, prosperity or victory.
The Swastika has also been traditionally used against a red and white background as iconography in the murder of 6 million Jews. So a lot of sane people do find overlarge Swastika reliefs on Hindu temples to make for discomfiting portents. Add to it the fact that the RSS dwaj has the Swastika on it. Also RSS parades have special ‘Swastika’ formations. Check youtube for Bangalore Ghosh Shibir and its so surreal you won’t be able to tell it apart from a Reich parade. Also Himmler was a huge fan of the Bhagwat Gita. Nazi and Hindutva ideology complement each other beautifully.
Oh, come on, a google search yields his CV. and looks like he is currently guiding someone on Dalits and Christianity. He could at least write about that. 🙂
BTW, is that Priya Gopal the one who writes in Guardian. Looks like these guys have a good network and a quick way to fame.
http://internet2.trincoll.edu/FacProfiles/CVs/1000767.pdf
kayastha_lady,
Nazi and Hindutva ideology complement each other beautifully.
You are a goddamn buffoon. I mean the crap you come up with is incredible. Give it a rest. If you hate Hinduism, then please convert.
That’s unfortunate. From what I understand, you are not defending the VHP/RSS at all. However, lumping everyone on the right as one big fascist beast is extremely counterproductive, and unfortunately that kind of polarization (on both sides) seems to have become the norm. For whatever my opinion is worth, I think this post is a much needed move in the right direction.
2 · L&O special desi unit said
Objection milord. 1. I think most religious “giving” by the Hindus in the US is motivated directly by reactionism against minorities in India. 2. It is extraordinarily naive to even conjecture that VHP in India has any other motive than causing harm to the lives and rights of minority Indian citizens. The VHP has a single point agenda – to convert India to a Hindu Pakistan. And the VHPA is NOT one big benign desi social mixer, unless your definition of Desi is “North Indian Hindu”. Ever notice any Desi Christians or Muslims being invited to participate in a VHPA do? Benign social mixers do not invite the likes of Sadhvi Ritambhara to speak in public. It is as benign as the pro-Nazi German-American leagues in the 1930s, or the pro-IRA sections of Boston’s Irish diaspora. Wise up.
183 · Anasuya Sengupta said
I thought there are four degrees: I, Iyer, Iyengar, I-banker (Doh!)
187 · sakshi said
Damn right.
Ansasuya – I didn’t quite get the joke but I doubt that Iyers and Iyengars fight over Shiva and Vishnu. There is no history of conflict, unless you choose to include any petty squabble. Nitpickiness is the essence of being a Brahmin and hopefully you are not referring to that.
I cannot agree with any part of your comment above. You are simply reproducing the standard stereotypes, although your motives may not be malicious. I happen to cyber-know someone who is doing his Ph.D on the Lingayats back in Karnataka. Being a northie, I had no clue about any of these things at the time, and even now what I say below is secondhand information, never having delved into any of this personally.
Anyway, there are 18 volumes of Basava’s vachanas out of which only a handful of verses contained in these volumes speak about jati and kula (concepts generally translated as caste). Not a single one of these vachanas speaks about the eradication of the caste system (ditto for Buddhist literature, by the way). There are many versions of the same story – that he refused to get initiation as a protest against Brahmins. Other versions say that he did indeed get initiated. Why is it that one set of stories has been taken to represent the tradition and the others not?
This brings us to the point of the research which is about colonial consciousness among Indians. Our (Indians’) understanding of Indian traditions is shaped by European stereotypes about these traditions. (Hopefully, you are familiar with and love Edward Said). These stereotypes render some communities such as Lingayats, Buddhists as completely progressive and others, such as Brahmins, as completely corrupt. While the traditional vachana literature devotes a handful of stanzas on protest stories, modern scholars have blown them out of all proportion. Secondly, while these stories function as just one or two of the several stories that the tradition consists of, in the accounts by postcolonial scholars they are positioned front and center if not as the only aspect of these so-called progressive traditions. Basically, whatever is maximally consistent with western stereotypes is selected as true and goes on to represent the tradition. In a moment of grand magnanimity they must have decided to grant Indians the capability of effecting social reform once in a while, so you find some neatly packaged versions of such endevors. That’s the space you seem to be coming from and that’s the account you have reproduced above.
Yes, these things are supposed to keep you up at night. If you pay American or British taxes, you are paying for a lot of things, including murder and torture. The question is what you do in response, the level of violence you would face in not complying, the alternatives you have, whether to pursue something individually or socially, etc. But the argument that consumption and politics are separable is not a defense – though we all draw lines for our personal standards – compromise pragmatically rather than morally – in order to stay sane in a pretty insane world. But that doesn’t undermine the moral and politicomoral case for paying attention to these things at all, though it does mean that a sense of balance is perfectly defensible (as it almost always is).
What you’re describing is social movement building – but you’re not talking about the ideology of that movement, of its uses or not. Your second paragraph is a very good explanation for WHY this works, but it doesn’t talk about what it works towards or what the consequences of it are. You don’t describe alternatives (like Sepia Mutiny!) to provide a sense of cultural rootedness that isn’t steeped in networks with Hindutva groups. Again, I’m not saying that in order to make the argument that HSC is part of Hindutva. But it is, in essence a soft defense, even if what drives it is annoyance with the style/tone of the critics.
In essence, it boils down to this – and I think on this I agree with you – shrill moral signaling has lost its power among some groups. But once we leave that space, there is an enormous amount of room for severe analytical questions on the political, social, and other consequences of what people do. Including, but not limited to, critics of the process. I see a much harder line taken on Vijay Prashad’s critique of Sonal Shah by ‘thoughtful people’ than I do on Sonal Shah’s statement which was replete with doublespeak.
What if the alternatives (including SM) are not providing the sense of cultural rootedness that is being seeked? Ya can’t blame people for attempting to solve their own problems in a manner they deem fit.
M. Nam
187 · sakshi said
Here is why it may not constitute a defense, but is certainly assisting people who don’t want to talk about what I think are the key questions on the Hindu right in India and its arms in the U.S. and particularly people who don’t want to talk about the intersection with American politics that the Sonal Shah appointment has raised:
There was a debate on a particular Obama transition member official, Sonal Shah. This person has been accused of a variety of things ranging from soft support of Hindutva to having some responsibility in the Gujarat massacres. Obviously, some of these arguments are far stronger than others (e.g. it is now established fact that the VHP has said that Sonal Shah was on the VHP-A governing board for 3 years through 2001, whereas the argument that she is personally responsible for the Gujarat massacres seems like a misreading of who she is and what she does, though I would still like to know in detail what happened to the money she raised for VHP-A in 2001 for Gujarat). In response, Sonal Shah and her allies have attacked the critics as being misleading and without foundation in their claims and issued a statement that is insincere, at best, in hopes of making all this go away.
In that context, Amardeep has chosen to 1) say he is no longer participating in the debate and shift it to a different realm 2) focused on a critique of Vijay Prashad’s central claims about 2nd gen South Asians, who has been pigeonholed as the anti-Sonal Shah arguing that it, like other critics, are too polarizing, while basically ignoring the intent of Prashad’s own “Letter to a Young Hindu” that he published on PTR (not Sulekha 😉 or the moves that other critics of the Hindu Right have made to be careful, to be fair, and still be questioning; 3) chosen a set of questions to look at, but avoided other questions – like what do we do with this new information that the VHP says that Sonal Shah was on the governing board of the VHP-A for three years? What do we know about this? What implications does this have? How does this affect how we view things?
It’s #3 that seems to be at the heart of my own desire to shift outwards from the narrow debate to something broader while still remembering to think about the original debate and what it means. This is: how does the Hindutva social movement work, particularly transnationally. But instead of radically breaking with the terms of the initial conversation and moving to this question, Amardeep’s stayed within them to some extent, and as a result, has opened himself up to the charge of taking sides, albeit in a more convoluted and subtle way. Moreover, the shift itself is unquestionably beneficial to Sonal Shah and something I’m conscious of as much as I’m conscious of the different ways in which many of the criticism of Sonal Shah have been overwritten or unfair, including my own at points.
And in the process of all this…well, what happened to figuring out what we think about a former VHP-A governing council member serving on Obama’s transition team and potentially in his administration? Uncomfortable question? Yes. Avoidable question? No. Or, rather, shouldn’t be.
Anyway, some thouhgts – i’m sure they’re not perfect…hence dialogue.
194 · Dr Amonymous said
An open ended question, Dr. A: how you square this with the spectre of McCarthyism? Surely you see the //’s, and I’m not coming from the perspective that these //’s are all bad.
194 · Dr Amonymous said
The Gujarat riots happened in Feb and May 2002 and Sonal Shah’s defense can claim that she can’t be accountable for what happened after she left the board.
There are some valid concerns about the VHP-A, but the PTR/ASATA/FOIL crowd doesn’t have the moral authority to demand answers. ASATA rejected the Hindu American Forum’s rights report without serious consideration because any group with the word “Hindu” in it is automatically fascist. Many of you are incurious about rights violations against Hindus because you will get the Sonal Shah treatment even if you were to ask “what happened to several hundred Bangladeshi-Hindus in pogroms earlier in this decade?”. If you look at India in isolation, Muslims & Christians will tend to be victims. And looking at it purely in the self interest of Hindus I don’t want what VHP-India is offering (i.e. adopting Abrahamic absolutism). But last time I checked South Asia includes Bangladesh and Pakistan. Dr. A can remain curious about the VHP-A, it is quite clear where he is coming from.
The doublespeak was a response to a mud-slinging article, so there is not much point in talking about the latter. It is a Garbage-In-Garbage-Out situation, and in such cases most sensible people try to examine the input, not the output. Though in this particular case, examining the input is not much useful either, as the input system involved doesn’t seems to produce nothing much else.
I liked Sakshi’s example of buying a Chinese TV. Looks like there are some uber-moral folks in this world, who wake up at night screaming because they didn’t really look at each item they bought from the Indian store, to see whether it came from Gujarat, or was made by a VHP-sympathiser.
Boy, the things some people will say and do to get attention and tenure.
A sense of balance is all I ask for.
I am not defending hindutva, it is disgusting through and through.
I’ve never been to an HSC meeting, but I assume the discussions are more hinduism-centric than the ones, say at Sepia Mutiny. Some people are pretty serious about their religious identity. You won’t convince them by saying ‘why can’t you be more like us’. If the VHPA is using such people to fund their dirty deeds (assuming VHPA and HSC are actually linked), then they are being duped by the VHPA. Given the lack of clear evidence, they are actually more in the clear than someone who buys a Chinese TV set.
I guess I am a little late to the commenting, but here’s my semi-rant and flame-bait…
To expound a little more on Saheli’s original comment (#13), yes there is a history of religious conflict in India (duh!), and we need to get beyond it, but the only way to do that would be to take an honest look at the situation. Unfortunately, people like Vijay Prashad don’t help.
My issue with is with the “leftist” intelligentsia talking about India. Unlike the left in the US, which is by-and-large progressive in nature, the “left” in India is often Marxist, sometimes explicitly, sometimes not. I don’t mean “Marxist” as a slur – we do in fact have real live Marxists in India, see CPI(M).
The problem is that these people want to see everything through dialectical materialism, that everything is a result of class struggle. See Vijay Parshad’s creative understanding of how good things in Hinduism came about because of the oppressed fighting against Brahmanism.
Add to that the fact that they think religion is to be fought against because it is too dominating. So they just blindly stretch their theories to fit India, and rail against Hinduism because it is the dominant religion in India, and not because they necessarily have genuine desire to improve people’s lives. As part of their “struggle”, they align with vocal Muslim leaders against Hindus, and often defend the Muslim side quite dishonestly. For example, we have had situations where “leftist” historians try to deny that Muslim massacres took places in medieval India.
The culmination of this mindset is the painting of Hindus as chauvinistic and fascistic, which is quite contrary to the lived experience of most Hindus in India or abroad. It is similar to the situation where people might rail about Muslims being terrorists, which is contrary to the live experience of most Muslims.
So the point is that we need to acknowledge that there has been much conflict in the past, but we need to come to tems with it and move beyond it. But the the hateful and dishonest rhetoric of people like Vijay Prashad is setting us back. Not that people like Ashok Singhal are capable of intellectual honesty, but the “left” has been in positions of state power for most of independent India, and are correspondingly corrupt.
I just think we need to reject hatemongers if we are to move forward.
Sincerely, A long-time lurker enthused enough to comment on this…