Petition sent to Johns Hopkins University - September 28, 2004
To: Johns Hopkins University
Dr William R. Brody, President
Dr Steven Knapp,Vice-Provost
Dr Jessica P. Einhorn, Dean,
Paul H. Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies
Dr Sunil Khilnani,
Professor and Director of the South Asia Studies
Program
We, the undersigned, deplore the fact that an American university is granting unprecedented legitimacy to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) by providing an open, unmediated forum for its spokesperson, Ram Madhav. An organization inspired and modeled on the Italian fascists and the Nazis [1], the RSS has been responsible since its inception in 1925 for propagating a politics of hate and violence against non-Hindu minorities [2,3], most recently evident in the massacre of 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat [4], and historically implicated in the assassination of Gandhi in 1948. As an organization, the RSS is elusive and shadowy: it is only open to Hindu males – primarily upper caste; it maintains no membership records (thus escaping criminal charges more than once); it has no bank accounts and pays no income tax.
Gowalkar, an early political visionary who shaped the RSS, explicitly endorsed Hitler’s campaign against the Jews in Germany by calling it a form of "race pride" India should emulate [5]. While we appreciate the role of universities as places where diverse views and opinions should be discussed and challenged, and where free speech should be upheld at any cost, lending institutional credence to any ideology that supports and condones genocide is a complete distortion of the idea of intellectual debate and discourse. Given this context, we urge the South Asia Studies program at Johns Hopkins University and other institutions providing an "open forum" to RSS spokespersons to rescind their invitations and avoid legitimizing the RSS in any way in the future.
As a hardened RSS ideologue, Mr Madhav is on record as a key representative of RSS positions. For instance, his recent warning of the "very grave threat" posed by the rising Muslim population and similar scaremongering against Muslims by his colleagues is very reminiscent of the Nazi-era witchhunt of Jews [6]. While not overtly eulogistic about the massacre of 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat like some of his colleagues [VHP Working President Ashok Singhal claimed the massacre had "the blessings of Lord Rama", while VHP leader Praveen Togadia called the secularists the "impotent fringe" and threatened to "make a (violent) laboratory of the whole country"; see references 7 and 8], he has been at least as steadfast in his defence of the perpetrators [9] and critiqued "softer" stances that his own partymen took on the issue [10]. Besides, following up on an earlier RSS resolution, "Let Muslims understand that their real safety lies in the goodwill of the majority" [11], Mr Madhav recently laid down explicit injunctions for Muslims to prove their patriotism [12]. Given all this, we fail to understand how a campus community may be enlightened by Mr Madhav's views. What can students and faculty learn from one with such "intellectual" credentials?
The fact that Mr Madhav arrives here to communicate the ideologies of the RSS, an organization that has been directly and indirectly associated with training militia-like local groups that play a direct role in initiating or reproducing violence in various states in India, make him a truly disturbing presence on any campus in the United States. No educational organization which gives intellectual standards or historical truth any credence can afford to legitimate an organization like the RSS. The Johns Hopkins e-mail notice for the event describes the RSS as the "pre-eminent nationalist Hindu organization in India." This is a little like describing the Ku Klux Klan as the "premier voice of white America." Just as we would find it unseemly to invite a KKK representative to campus on such a pretext, so too, is it unconscionable to invite the spokesman of the RSS to speak at a University campus with neither opposing viewpoints offered, nor contextual information provided in the advertisement for the talk. The RSS renders all of India's history as a black and white picture of Muslim marauders and oppressed Hindus. Defying all attention to facts, it attributes all of India's contemporary problems to medieval Muslim invasions, affirmative steps toward minorities, and high Muslim birth rates. In short, it makes no distinction between historical truth and pure prejudice in its efforts to push its violent political agendas. None of its ideological positions hold up to the bare minimum levels of intellectual scrutiny that all educational institutions routinely demand of students, not to mention educators and intellectuals.
Hosting the RSS necessarily means abandoning all standards --- of ascertaining truths, providing evidence, and making judgments --- that make an educational institution different from prejudiced, fanatical organizations. Everything that the RSS represents throughout its history directly contravenes the policies of diversity and tolerance that most campuses in the United States espouse. We call on you to revoke the invitation to Mr Madhav immediately rather than poison campus communities with the hate-filled, divisive politics that the RSS and Mr Madhav will bring with them and which you might inadvertently promote in the guise of liberalism and openness to multiple views. The decision is not complicated: clearly, none of us support genocide, as the RSS did in Gujarat, 2002, when 2000 human beings were massacred. We hope you will take a stand that will affirm humanity and life rather than sustain organizations that advocate its large-scale destruction.
References:
1.http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/casolari.pdf
2.http://www.sabrang.com/srikrish/hinrole.htm
3."The Hindu organizations most responsible for violence against Christians are the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang Dal, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS). According to a former RSS member, these groups cannot be divorced from the ruling BJP party: "There is no difference between the BJP an d RSS. BJP is the body. RSS is the soul, and the Bajrang Dal is the hands for beating."
(http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/sep/christians.htm)
4."The groups most directly involved in the violence against Muslims include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that heads the Gujarat state government. Collectively, they are known as the sangh parivar, or family of Hindu nationalist organizations."
(http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/04/gujarat.htm)
5.Golwalkar, M.S.(1939), We, Our Nationhood Defined, Bharat Publications, p.35.
6.Venkaiah Naidu, the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (political wing of the RSS) said, "It is disturbing that Muslims now form 12.4% of the population" and that this was "a cause of grave concern for all those who think of India's unity and integrity in the long run." See
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FI15Df02.html
http://newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20040907141014&Title=Top+Stories&rLink=0
7.http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=33391
8.http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5905_120559,0008.htm
9.See http://www.southasiamonitor.org/india/2003/aug/ind1.html
and
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=30&page=2
10.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/742988.cms
11.http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/03/18/stories/2002031806000100.htm
12.http://www.tippusultan.net/news_index23.html
Petition sent to University of Pennsylvania - October 3, 2004
The (above) JHU petition has been modified so that we can send it to the Center of the Advanced
Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania where the RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav is speaking on October 4, Monday. We have made some changes in the petition based on feedback. They are (1) a demand to be accountable within a transnational framework (2) changes in the relevant references to the institution.
TO: University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Francine Frankel, Director, Center for the Advanced Study of India
Dr. Amy Gutman, President of University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Samuel H. Preston, Dean of the School of Arts and
Sciences
Dr. Rebecca W. Bushnell, Dean of the College and
Professor of English
Dr. Michael Meister, Professor and Director, South
Asia Center
Dr. Jody Chavez, Assistant Director, South Asia Center
Dr. Haimanti Banerjee, Outreach Coordinator, South
Asia Center We are forwarding the following public petition to you
regarding UPenn's decision to host RSS spokesperson,
Ram Madhav, at the Center for the Advanced Study of
India. Although this petition was generated over a
brief time, over 300 persons have signed it, including
organizations, directors of area studies centers, and
faculty from prestitious institutions. We hope you
will respect the seriousness of this petition and
respond to our concerns.
Thanking you,
The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate We, the undersigned, deplore the fact that a prestigious institution such as the University of
Pennsylvania is granting unprecedented legitimacy to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) by providing an unmediated forum for its spokesperson, Ram Madhav. An organization inspired and modeled on the Italian
fascists and the Nazis [1], the RSS has been responsible since its inception in 1925 for propagating a politics of hate and violence against non-Hindu minorities [2,3], most recently evident in the massacre of 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat [4], and historically implicated in the assassination of Gandhi in 1948. As an organization, the RSS is elusive and shadowy: it is only open to Hindu males – primarily upper caste; it maintains no membership records (thus escaping criminal charges more than once); it has no bank accounts and pays no income tax.
Golwalkar, an early political visionary who shaped the RSS, explicitly endorsed Hitler’s campaign against the
Jews in Germany by calling it a form of "race pride" India should emulate [5]. While we appreciate the role
of universities as places where diverse views should be discussed and challenged, lending institutional
credence to an ideology that supports genocide distorts the idea of intellectual debate. The University of Pennsylvania invitation describes the RSS as an organization which believes that India’s national and global identity should be based on the concept of Hindutva, or “Hindu-ness.” This is the equivalent of advertising the Nazi Party simply as believers in the concept of German national identity. The white-washing of the RSS subverts the democratic ideal of free speech, which is intended to give voice to victims rather than perpetrators of historical injustice. In sponsoring the RSS, the University of Pennsylvania is also forgetting its responsibility to a wider international community, and avoiding the double-edged politics of speech and silence when they are rethought in transnational terms: is it not ironic that victims of the Gujarat carnage are gagged in India at each step in the judicial process even as a first world educational institution promotes the voices of the
perpetrators? (India: After Gujarat Riots, Witnesses Face Intimidation
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/09/23/india9383.htm)
A hardened RSS ideologue, Mr Madhav is on record as a key representative of RSS positions. For instance, his recent warning of the "very grave threat" posed by the rising Muslim population and similar scaremongering against Muslims by his colleagues is very reminiscent of the Nazi-era witchhunt of Jews [6]. While not overtly eulogistic about the massacre of 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat like some of his colleagues [VHP Working President Ashok Singhal claimed the massacre had "the blessings of Lord Rama" while VHP leader Praveen Togadia called the secularists the "impotent fringe" and threatened to "make a (violent) laboratory of the whole country"; see references 7 and 8], he has been at least as steadfast in his defence of the
perpetrators [9] and critiqued "softer" stances that his own partymen took on the issue [10]Besides following up on an earlier RSS resolution, "Let Muslims understand that their real safety lies in the goodwill of the majority" [11], Mr Madhav recently laid down explicit injunctions for Muslims to prove their patriotism
[12]. Given all this, we fail to understand how a campus community may be enlightened by Mr Madhav's
views. What can students and faculty learn from one with such "intellectual" credentials?
The fact that Mr Madhav arrives here to communicate the ideologies of the RSS, an organization that has
been directly and indirectly associated with training militia-like local groups that play a direct role in
initiating or reproducing violence in various states in India, make him a truly disturbing presence on any
campus in the United States. The University of Pennsylvania invitation says it anticipates “an
interesting and provocative presentation”. Can we imagine a Ku Klux Klan presentation described in such
terms? The RSS renders all of India's history as a black and white picture of Muslim marauders and
oppressed Hindus. Defying all attention to facts, it attributes all of India's contemporary problems to
medieval Muslim invasions, affirmative steps toward minorities, and high Muslim birth rates. In short, it
makes no distinction between historical truth and pure prejudice in its efforts to push its violent political
agendas. None of its ideological positions hold up to the bare minimum levels of intellectual scrutiny that
all educational institutions routinely demand of students, not to mention educators and intellectuals.
What purpose can it serve, then, to allow the RSS room to air its views, with neither opposing viewpoints
offered, nor contextual information provided?
Indeed, we anticipate that if this talk serves a purpose, it will be one that benefits the RSS’s global
objectives. The 2002 report titled, A Foreign Exchange of Hate, has shown thorough evidence from federal tax
documents how the Sangh Parivar, the larger RSS-affiliated family of organizations, funnels out
dollar contributions gathered in the guise of charity to India to build its organizational base; similarly,
a 2003 British investigative report documents how the same Hindutva organizations channel charity funds from
the U.K. to India (www.stopfundinghate.org). If the University of Pennsylvania chooses to abide by its
decision to host the RSS, it should be aware that the record of this sponsorship will be flaunted in RSS
self-advertisements as evidence of how much credibility it enjoys in the United States. UPenn and
the Center for the Advanced Study of India will provide what the RSS urgently needs: cosmetic
legitimation to make over its image after the Gujarat genocide, to gain a rebranded identity stamped with a
U.S. visa that it can now proudly market again to raise funds in western currencies and to expand its
political base worldwide. The decision is not complicated: can we take a stand to support genocide,
as the RSS did in Gujarat, 2002, when 2000 human beings were massacred, only because we reside within
the walls of the first world academy? We hope you will take a position that is internationally accountable;
and will affirm humanity and life rather than sustain organizations that advocate its large-scale
destruction, even if it is not within the borders of the United States.
References:
1.http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/casolari.pdf
2.http://www.sabrang.com/srikrish/hinrole.htm
3."The Hindu organizations most responsible for violence against Christians are the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang Dal, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS). According to a former RSS member, these groups cannot be divorced from the ruling BJP party: "There is no difference between the BJP an d RSS. BJP is the body. RSS is the soul, and the Bajrang Dal is the hands for beating."
(http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/sep/christians.htm)
4."The groups most directly involved in the violence against Muslims include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that heads the Gujarat state government. Collectively, they are known as the sangh parivar, or family of Hindu nationalist organizations."
(http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/04/gujarat.htm)
5.Golwalkar, M.S.(1939), We, Our Nationhood Defined, Bharat Publications, p.35.
6.Venkaiah Naidu, the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (political wing of the RSS) said, "It is disturbing that Muslims now form 12.4% of the population" and that this was "a cause of grave concern for all those who think of India's unity and integrity in the long run." See
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FI15Df02.html
http://newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20040907141014&Title=Top+Stories&rLink=0
7.http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=33391
8.http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5905_120559,0008.htm
9.See http://www.southasiamonitor.org/india/2003/aug/ind1.html
and
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=30&page=2
10.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/742988.cms
11.http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/03/18/stories/2002031806000100.htm
12.http://www.tippusultan.net/news_index23.html
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