I actually am more disturbed now than I was when the whole controversy began, because I was hoping that her second statement would demonstrate honesty and self-reflexivity, and be a response to the questions posed to her by a large swathe of the Indian diaspora (and, from what I gather, a great many respected academics working on South Asia; not just Vijay Prashad).

I would actually have liked to have felt uncomplicatedly proud of all that Sonal otherwise represents: a young Indian-American woman, involved in issues of development, a gatekeeper for the issues and possibly, the region, in a future adminstration… but having an ‘honest conversation’, as she asks us to do, surely needs to begin with her? Hypothetically, I would have been better pleased with even a terse *Those associations have complicated histories and I renounce them* than this statement, especially when she calls Prashad’s essay a process of ‘maligning’. Since when is the asking of valid questions (if badly constructed, as we’ve already said in this conversation), a process of maligning?

Instead of the honest conversations we hoped would begin with and from Sonal, we have a statement that seems to be a response not to the Indian-American community or to other concerned groups, but to the growing publicity the issue is getting in the mainstream media. That’s unfortunate in and of itself.

Secondly, I find it difficult to accept that she can claim that VHP-A is an independent charity organisation, when its links to the Sangh Parivar back home are clear and continued (and at the very least, coming from a family involved with the Sangh gives you knowledge by association). She denies affiliation, when she was on the governing council/coordinators’ list (http://www.hindunet.org/lists/vhpgc-l).

The 2001 watermark for dis-association is also problematic; the VHP and others of the Sangh had been associated with egregious acts of violence and bigotry far before 2001, ranging from, and not limited to, the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 to Graham Staines and his two son’s horrific murder in 1999. As Anasuya Sanyal has mentioned elsewhere in this conversation, Sonal could have not failed to know about all this.

But let’s accept (again hypothetically) that she may not have known. That someone who seems remarkably intelligent, sensitive and passionate about issues of development (from those who know her and vouch for her) may not have kept in touch with news from the sub-continent. Then WHY, Sonal, why in 2004, did your brother Anand, accept on your and his own behalf, an award for Indicorps from PM Vajpayee, in the presence of the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, called ‘Gujarat Garima’ (Gujarat’s Pride)?? (http://www.nriinternet.com/NRIappointments/USA/Politics/A_Z/S/Sonal_Shah/index.htm) For an organisation in which some members have actually worked on issues of communal harmony and ‘inter-faith dialogue’, surely accepting this award - at a time when Modi and the rest of the Sangh’s complicity was clearly established - was an act of disrespect to the values the organisation itself stood for?

In all of this noise, I find Anand Shah’s comments far more honest and reflective than that of his sister’s; he reportedly said, “If the situation wasn’t what it is, if it was someone else, I would be asking these questions… It’s not a non-serious issue; the questions being raised are legitimate ones.” But the National Journal article from which this is excerpted (link above) goes on to say: “he added that he hoped people would judge his sister by her own words and actions, and not by her associations.”

I’m trying to do exactly that, Anand, to judge Sonal by her own words and actions, and I remain both terribly disturbed and disappointed.

The article also quotes an email sent by her to her supporters, asking for help: “I need your help… This is gaining legs as the National Journal also picked it up and likely Fox. I need to moblize [sic] people against the leftists and the right wing. There is a likely chance that they will ask me to resign as team does not need my publicity.”

The text of the statement:
“I was recently maligned by a professor at a college in Connecticut who wrote an article in CounterPunch accusing me of association with Hindu extremism. Then, a few days ago, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, published an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer, to which this site linked, that echoed the CounterPunch accusations. These attacks sadden me, but they share one other thing in common: the accusations are false.

In reaction to these attacks, my closest friends — and many strangers — have rallied to my side. I am touched by this outpouring of support. And as painful as this episode has been for me personally, I welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue with the seriousness that it deserves, but the conversation should proceed on the basis of verified facts and reasoned argument, not innuendo and defamation.

Indian politics and history are contested and emotive, but also unfamiliar to most Americans. I understand why so many Indians and Indian-Americans feel strongly about religious extremism in India, because I share the same concerns.

I am an American, and my political engagements have always and only been American. I served as a U.S. Treasury Department official for seven years, and now work on global development policy at Google.org. And I am honored to serve on the Presidential Transition Team of President-elect Obama while on leave from Google.org.

I emigrated from India at the age of four, and grew up in Houston. Like many Americans, I remain proud of my heritage. But my engagement with India has been exclusively cultural and humanitarian. After the devastating earthquake in Gujarat in 2001, I worked on behalf of a consortium of Indian-American organizations to raise funds for humanitarian relief. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHP-A), an independent charity associated with the eponymous Indian political group, was among these organizations, and it was the only one to list my name on its website. I am not affiliated with any of these organizations, including the VHP-A, and have not worked with any of them since 2001.

The experience with the Gujarat earthquake did, however, teach me an important lesson. It pointed up a lack of dedicated infrastructure to help alleviate suffering in India, so together with my brother and sister, I founded Indicorps, an organization modeled on the U.S. Peace Corps that enables young Indian-Americans to spend a year in service to marginalized communities in India. The fellows come from every religious background, and have worked among every religious community in India. Indeed, some Indicorps fellows focus on inter-faith dialogue as part of their projects.

In 2002, Gujarat suffered one of the most profound tragedies in its long history, when extremist political leaders, including some associated with the VHP, incited riots that resulted in the deaths of thousands. Had I been able to foresee the role of the VHP in India in these heinous events, or anticipate that the VHP of America could possibly stand by silently in the face of its Indian counterpart’s complicity in the events of Gujarat in 2002 — thereby undermining the American group’s cultural and humanitarian efforts with which I was involved — I would not have associated with the VHP of America.

Sadly, CounterPunch and Senator Santorum have suggested that I somehow endorse that violence and the ongoing violence in Orissa. I do not - I deplore it. But more than that, I have worked against it, and will continue to do so. I have already denounced the groups at issue and am hopeful that we can begin to have an honest conversation about the ways immigrant and diaspora communities can engage constructively in social and humanitarian work abroad.”

This particular conversation itself demonstrates that: commentators are from both India and the US; discourse travels. Sometimes in unexpected ways - including your own participation! So while I understand your skepticism, I think it’s worth pushing its boundaries… I think the fact that you’ve found the discussion thought-provoking has much to do with the generosity and erudition of the commentators on this page, and how it carries forward depends muchly on the passion and will of people like you, who have the ability - and I know well, the courage - to carry the nuanced arguments into action.

I entirely agree with the anger re the lack of justice around the perpetrators of the Gujarat genocide; the Sonal Shah debate though, already seems to have caused a fundamental solidifying of opinion against them, which I think is remarkable in and of itself (including in her own statements). So perhaps that hackneyed - and ironic - phrase of ‘cautious optimism’ has some use after all?!

The larger issues you raise are fascinating. I agree that it’s about a terrain of lived and experienced ‘Hinduism’, but I certainly feel that it is that terrain from which I understand pluralism. However, re-defining the axes of pluralism more broadly is a far tougher task; I understand what you mean - I think - but in shifting vocabularies and creating new-from-old/re-defined spaces of encounter, we must be careful not to lose sight of critical issues of identity politics as they are played out. There are certain ways in which ‘Hindu’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘genocide’ get set up, yes, but there are also realpolitik reasons for that setting up of semantics; shifting the struggle shouldn’t be about dismissing the realpolitik as unimportant.

I don’t know if I’ve misunderstood the point you’re trying to make - I welcome a further enunciation from you - but overall, I certainly agree with enlarging our progressive strategies through new/renewed understandings of pluralism, and thereby limiting fundamentalists’ effectiveness.

Given that Obama’s team includes Rahm Emanuel, may include Lawrence Summers, and that the Attorney General may be Eric Holder (see article by Mario Murillo in counterpunch - http://www.counterpunch.org/murillo11192008.html), Sonal Shah doesn’t stand out. It seems a bit beside the point, at this stage, to expend energy on scrutinizing her association with VHP many years ago while giving her a pass on her current views on development. In that sense I found Vijay Parshad’s article somewhat irresponsible.
The task for us is to make sure that we do our best to inform the Obama administration about India and not leave it to the likes of Sonal Shah.

Having got that off my chest … and moving on to the larger question:

“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?”

In part, there may have been a rejection of the middle ground of faith, but I think the more important factor is that this “middle ground” has been ignored. For instance, “pluralism” is a concept which is often used so narrowly that the axes of identification of plurality are either religious or ethnic. Thus, in the post and in many of the responses, “Hindu” is used without any nuance of its immense internal diversity. This is I think is a mistake, and is playing into the hands of the VHP leaders. This may be obvious, but perhaps it is so obvious that we miss the whole terrain, where we can challenge the VHP squarely from within historical and actual “lived” Hinduism.

Now, here is a tricky point that I hope I can explain clearly enough: contrasting the VHP brand of Hinduism with traditional, tolerant Hinduism (as Martha Nussbaum does) is not what I mean by “challenging from within”.
Rather, it is an exercise of finding different axes along which pluralism is defined so that it naturally cuts through (for example) members joining the VHP-A, and as a consequence limits the spread and extent of the VHP in direct proportion to its fundamentalist agenda.

Getting back to Martha Nussbaum’s book, she describes the incidents that led up to the violence in Gujarat and used the words “Muslims” and “Hindus” as descriptors innumerable times. One exercise in seeking to find new axes of pluralism (in order to isolate fundamentalisms) would be to re-write those sections of the book conveying the full horror
of the events without using the words “Hindu”, “Muslim” (or synonyms) and “genocide”.

For further off-topic history on how we’re friends (or emailgangers, as we now call ourselves), an earlier post: http://blogs.sanmathi.org/anasuya/2008/04/11/my-yahooganger-story-whats-yours/

But what I like most, and what I take away from all of this at the moment, is that there is a greater clarification and condemnation of ‘politics of hate’, and a solidifying of a community that is willing to work on the issues of liminality that we’ve talked about, both through the post and the extremely reflective comments that have followed. Perhaps those are the conversations we should be having now, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on them.