September 29, 2004
Professor
Francine Frankel
Director
Center for the Advanced Study of India
University of Pennsylvania
Dear Professor Frankel
As your colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, and as
concerned academics, we write to register our astonishment, and our protest, at
your decision to invite Ram Madhav, the official
spokesman for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh of India to speak on
our campus under the aegis of the Center for the Advanced Study of India. As you, and literally millions of people in India who have been
taught to fear the murderous militancy of RSS cadres know, this is an
organization which was founded with the sole purpose of fabricating a Hindu-rashtra, a Hindu state and nation, out of the
multi-religious communities or India. Its history,
right to the present moment, is a history of orchestrated violence against
non-Hindu communities, and it has, along with its brother organizations in the Sangh Parivar like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, been responsible for
the most reprehensible forms of communal violence and political thuggery seen in India. (Just in case
you have missed hearing about these activities, we are appending three news
reports on very recent attacks on Christian missionaries by cadres of the RSS).
That the RSS and the Sangh
Parivar have been politically successful, and have
helped elect coalition governments led by their functionaries does not in any
way mean that the RSS is any different from the fascist organizations that led
national governments in twentieth-century Europe. Indeed, as is
well documented, the founders of the RSS modeled themselves on Nazi practices,
particularly their genocidal violence against Jews. Thus, the bland, even
celebratory prose with which CASI announces Ram Madhav’s
visit is disingenuous at best and at worst, an outright dissimulation of the
reality of the RSS.:
The
RSS, or “National Volunteer Corps,” believes that India’s national and
global
identity should be based on the concept of Hindutva,
or “Hindu-ness.”
Since
2002, Mr. Madhav has been the organization’s key link
to the Indian
press, and
has spoken candidly of its relationship to the Bharatiya
Janata
Party
(BJP). He represents a younger
generation of RSS pracharak (functionary)
and a new
face of an organization that traditionally has not emphasized public
relations.
This
announcement makes Ram Madhav sound like a young
public relations officer for a hitherto quiet organization of socio-cultural
“do gooders” rather than describe him accurately as
the public face of an organization that has vitiated public and political life
in India for over half a century now.
Nor
should our protest be understood as an attempt to quell free speech on our
campus, but we are clear that, just as the McNeill
Center for American Studies would not lend legitimacy to a
spokesman for the Aryan Nations or some such US racist and fascist organization, CASI ought not to be
legitimizing the RSS and its functionaries. If CASI wished to stage a political
debate, or indeed offer equal time to a non-RSS speaker to make available to
the audience an accurate account of the RSS and its crimes, then we might think
the forum more appropriate. However, we would still wonder why our university
should play host to the spokesman of an organization that has also vandalized
art exhibitions, movie theaters, and auditoriums in India only because the art
or movies or talks being staged interrogated the violence of the values and
ideals propagated by the RSS, or, in some cases, simply enacted the secular
values and ideals incorporated into the Constitution of India.
We
hope that our letter will cause you to rethink your invitation to Ram Madhav and to the RSS. Unfortunately, at least two of us
are on leave and will be not be here in Philadelphia when Madhav is slated to speak
here, or else we would have found ways—as interlocutors and protestors—to let
him know how abhorrent we find all that he stands for.
Sincerely,
Suvir Kaul
Professor
of English
Ania Loomba
Catherine
Bryson Professor of English
David Ludden
Professor
of History
Ritty Lukose
Assistant
Professor of Education
Six
missionaries injured in mob attack
The
Hindu, India - Sep 25, 2004
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/001200409252121.htm
RSS
men held for attacking missionaries
Times
of India, India - Sep 27, 2004
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/864589.cms
Deccan
Herald - September 28, 2004
| Editorial
RELIGIOUS
INTOLERANCE
Seven
Christian missionaries were attacked allegedly by RSS workers at a Scheduled
Caste colony on Saturday in Kerala, for providing
material assistance to a Dalit family. This certainly
indicates a growing trend of religious intolerance in the country and in the
state. The missionaries were targeted allegedly for their attempt to proselytise Hindus. Hindu fundamentalist groups have been
active in the state for a long time and there have been many cases of violence
and breach of peace in the recent past. The acts of violence only discredit the
state of Kerala which enjoys the highest literacy
rate in the country. The concept of conversion through coercion has a
fundamental flaw, especially in a democracy, since citizens are endowed with
their own free will and have to decide about their choice of religion.
Moreover, unlike in a totalitarian system, they have a right to freedom of
expression to highlight coercion, if any.
Orissa, Bihar
and Madhya Pradesh have also witnessed religious violence in recent times. For
instance, there was the killing of an of an Australian
missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa five years ago. An American missionary, Bishop
Joseph W Cooper, who belongs to an evangelist denomination, was attacked in
January 2003 in Kerala for similar reasons and was
asked to leave the country. The victims of religious violence in Kerala include a Kenyan national who, like Cooper, entered
the country on a tourist visa. Some arrests have been made in connection with
the attack on the missionaries last week and there is need for investigation to
unravel the full conspiracy. It is for the state government to ensure that
there is complete religious freedom in the state and all those responsible for
the attack are brought to book. The free exchange of spiritual messages should
transcend national boundaries and people should have the unfettered right to
pursue the religion of their choice. India is traditionally known for its tolerance and hospitality
for every major religious stream running through the country from Judaism to
Christianity and Islam to Zoroastrianism. There is need to be vigilant against
attempts to vitiate this great tradition