---------- Forwarded message ----------
<http://www.counterpunch.org/>
*The Many Faces of 'Sonal Shah': * *Obama's Indian By VIJAY PRASHAD*
*Weekend Edition*
November 7 / 9, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad11072008.html
Barack Obama has appointed John Podesta to run his transition. During the
lean years of the Bush administration, Podesta, native of Chicago, ran a
shadow cabinet for the Democrats. Since 2003, the home of this
government-in-exile has been the Center for American Progress (CAP), a
liberal think tank set-up to rival the Heritage Foundation and the American
Enterprise Institute. The money, about $10 million per year, came from
George Soros, Peter Lewis, Marion Sandler and Herb Sandler – the main
liberal financiers. CAP has its set of fellows. Many of them worked in some
capacity within the Clinton administration (where Podesta was Chief of
Staff). There are hard-nosed people like Rudy deLeon (who went through every
Defense secretariat in the Clinton years) and Jeanne Lambrew (who served as
a health analyst in the National Economic Council during the waning years of
the Clinton administration). But there are also the fresh faces, young
people who came to Washington with glowing references from the Ivy League.
Others marched over from the Hill, after serving various terms as staff
members for the Democratic warhorses. They have been groomed to be part of
the next Democratic administration. Their hibernation is over. Obama has
called.
The likely suspects have picked up the phone and moved to the transition
headquarters. Among them is a former CAP fellow and now Google employee,
Sonal Shah. Shah is well known in the South Asian American community, and is
a fixture in the Washington liberal circuit. The latter know her for her
Democratic credentials, most of which seem to lie somewhere between
neo-liberalism and welfare liberalism. The bleeding heart pauses, but then
ticks again to the tune of pragmatism. This is perfect material for the CAP,
which is hardly enthusiastic about the Democratic Leadership Council's total
commitment to triangulation (which means capitulation to conservatism), but
it is not averse to a little political calculus itself. Shah, a product of
the University of Chicago, shined her corporate shoes at Anderson Consulting
(who was Enron's accountant), which probably made it easier for her to go
into Clinton's Treasury Department, where she helped Robert Rubin put a U.
S. stamp on the post-1997 Asian economic recovery. The corporate side was
balanced with an interest in the ideology of "giving back." When Bush took
office, Shah went to the Center for Global Development, and while there
joined her brother Anand in forming Indicorps. Knowing full well the desire
among many South Asian Americans to give back to their homeland, the Shahs
created an organization to help them go and volunteer in India, to do for
them what the Peacecorps did for young liberals in the 1960s. Shah left the
CAP to work for Goldman Sachs, and then went to Google. Shah's story is not
unlike that of most of the CAP fellows, many of whom honed their dexterity
at trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, capital and freedom, private
accumulation and human needs.
But there is a less typical side to the Shah story. Born in Gujarat, India,
Shah came to the United States as a two-year old. Her father, a chemical
engineer, first worked in New York before moving to Houston, and then moving
away from his education toward the stock market. The Shahs remain active in
Houston's Indian community, not only in the ecumenical Gujarati Samaj (a
society for people from Gujarat), but also in the far more cruel
organizations of the Hindu Right, such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP),
the Overseas Friends of the BJP (the main political party of the Hindu
Right) and the Ekal Vidyalaya. Shah's parents, Ramesh and Kokila, not only
work as volunteers for these outfits, but they also held positions of
authority in them. Their daughter was not far behind. She was an active
member of the VHPA, the U. S. branch of the most virulently fascistic outfit
within India. The VHP's head, Ashok Singhal, believes that his organization
should "inculcate a fear psychosis among [India's] Muslim community." This
was Shah's boss. Till 2001, Shah was the National Coordinator of the VHPA.
In 2004, I ran into Shah at the South Asian Awareness Network conference in
Ann Arbor, Michigan. At an earlier panel I questioned her links to the Hindu
Right, and so asked people to be wary about her organization, Indicorps. She
was furious, and we had a bitter exchange in the Green Room. But at no point
did she deny her active connections to the Hindu Right. Her brother, Anand,
wrote to me not long after, concerned that Indicorps, which he runs
full-time from India, would be tainted by our tussle. "I was curious about
Sonal's own personal relationship with the VHPA," I wrote back, "That
sparked some concern for me. Of course we are free to have our multiple
associations, and there is no expectation that all our affiliations
necessarily influence each other. That necessity is granted, although it is
my understanding that the VHPA is a very disciplined organization that
demands a lot from its members – notably congruence in all the work that
they do. Which is why I raised the question."
And so I raise the question again.
*Don't Cry for her, Gujarat.*
Gujarat was once a tolerant society, made vibrant by its role in the Indian
Ocean trade. People of all faiths lived there with the kind of pre-modern
conviviality that did not always include respect for each other, but which
did not at least dissolve into the kind of virulence on display in recent
years. Certainly, oppressed castes bore the full brunt of an unequal social
order, but even for them there was escape into Islam and there was a history
of protest against the madness of caste rigidity. Gujarat gave us Gandhi,
who went off to South Africa to learn his politics and returned to his state
in 1915 to incubate the massive nation-wide movement he was to lead. In
November 1917, Gandhi launched a major campaign among the Gujarati peasantry
at the town of Godhra. He began his meeting there by tearing up the oath of
loyalty to the King, making it clear that the new grammar of Indian politics
did not require such obescience. From Godhra, charged Gandhian activists
went into the villages of Gujarat to organize the peasantry against the many
abuses of colonialism. The uprising that resulted, historian David Hardiman
points out, made the area "the strongest center of rural nationalism in
India." From Godhra, in 1917, went the quiet fury of freedom.
In 2002, other elements came out of Godhra, showing us how different today's
Gujarat is from its own history. This time Godhra was the flashpoint not for
rural protest against tyranny, but for the forces of Hindu fascism. A
disputed train fire that killed fifty-eight people (most of whom were
activists of the Hindu Right) led to a massive pogrom against impoverished
Muslim families and modestly well-off Muslim merchants. Even the normally
reticent Human Rights Watch could not hold back, and its report's title
revealed not only the anger of the investigators but also their own
principle finding, "We have no orders to save you" State Participation and
Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat (April 2002). The Hindu Right let
loose its warriors who killed two thousand people and displaced several
thousand more. The state apparatus either stood by or actively participated
in the torment. Investigators who traced the line of violence routinely met
people who told them, "They killed my whole family." The carnage was
ghastly. Historian Tanika Sarkar wrote of a "breathless climate of terror,"
as people fled their homes for poorly managed relief camps, afraid not only
of the organized mob but also of the police. People couldn't sleep, afraid
that their tormentors would come again. Chief Minister Narendra Modi came to
one area and told the terrified residents, "You will be taken care of." The
language chills: he might have meant that the state will protect them, or
that it would punish them. His scowl and his brazen defense of his mobs was
no comfort.
Gujarat remains a manufacturing center, but in the 1970s the social basis of
industry changed. From the 1910s to the 1970s, the textile factories hired
large numbers of workers, most of whom were members of the Gandhian trade
union, the Majoor Mahajan Sangh (MMS). They had their various grouses with
the system, but most had grown accustomed to the rhythms of industrial
society. When a major riot between Hindus and Muslims broke out in the
Gujarati city of Ahmedabad in 1969, the police moved their headquarters to
the MSS office, and the union and the state jointly helped to calm things
down. But in the 1970s, the large textile factories snuffed their fires,
sending their workers from the formal into the informal economy. The social
infrastructure of the towns and cities collapsed. Workers went into the
piecework economy, driving the economic fortunes of the big businessmen
through the roof but at the cost of the workers' health and social dignity.
Globalization arrived in Gujarat.
The disgruntled workers regrouped out of the MSS into the arms of the newly
aggressive Hindu Right, which welcomed their grievances and reshaped their
dignity around hatred of Muslims and oppressed castes. The riot of 1993 was
a dress rehearsal for the pogrom of 2002. Lumpen-capitalism led to the
social collapse of Gujarat. In mid-March 2002, a few weeks after the pogrom,
sociologist Jan Breman went to meet MSS's secretary general, who sorrowfully
recounted his inability to reach the police during the killings. It is a
sign of the eclipse of the Gandhian platform in favor of what has been
called the Vedic Taliban.
The Vedic Taliban includes not only the BJP, the party in power during the
Gujarat killings, but also a host of organizations known as the Sangh
Parivar. These include groups whose U. S. affiliate drew in Sonal Shah's
parents, and to which she also gave her time and energy. This is not in the
distant past. In 2004, while at the CAP, Sonal Shah gave the keynote address
in Miami for the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of the USA. The Ekal Vidyalaya is
an organization given over to "education" in tribal areas of India. It is
the policy of the Ekal Vidyalaya to organize tribal peoples into the "Hindu
community" and to eschew the Christianity and animism that many practice.
The climate created by the Ekal Vidyalaya and the VHP in the tribal areas of
India led to the recent massacres of Indian Christians. Sonal Shah's father
Ramesh is in charge of the Ekal Vidyalaya in the U. S. She didn't take the
time in Miami to raise these concerns. Rather she talked about her Indicorps
project, which has sent volunteers to work with groups like Ekal Vidyalaya.
The language of social justice and cultural rights work well to cover over
the fascism that is otherwise being promoted.
In 2004, the hard Right government in Gujarat honored Shah with the Pride of
Gujarat (Gujarat Garima) award. Sonal Shah could not attend, but her brother
was there, to get the award from Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the
presence of the venomous Narendra Modi.
*Hold It In Your Heart.*
Obama's campaign was monumental. The energy unleashed within the country was
something to behold. The small dissident wings of the anti-war and anti-free
trade movements had not been able to cultivate such a massive wave, and even
as many of us had our doubts about this or that element of the Democratic
agenda, it was hard to be unmoved by the urgent enthusiasm of the people.
Obama himself was super, a disciplined candidate who not only carried the
weight of history lightly, but also made sure to remain unruffled by the
riotous attacks of the Republicans. Coming to power with an incredibly
efficient campaign, it is therefore all the more surprising that he had to
turn to the likes of Podesta to form his governing team.
But this is also no surprise. Podesta played a role in the mysterious
Democracy Alliance, the group of high rollers around the Democratic Party
who were frustrated with the Clinton theory of triangulation and wanted a
more robust liberalism to command their party (it was for a time presided
over by Rob McKay, the Taco Bell heir who gave some of his millions to
finance the San Francisco living wage battle). The Democracy Alliance came
together to bridge the gap between the two arguments that tore at the
Democratic Party in the Bush years. The principled argument ran between
those who pushed a more liberal strategy and those who wanted to take
Clintonian pragmatism to its limit. The organizational argument took place
between those who felt that the Democratic Party should compete in all fifty
states (Howard Dean) and those who wanted to maintain the focus on the
fourteen competitive states (Rahm Emanuel). This was a bitter battle.
Podesta's calmness usefully held these two sections together. His CAP, in
fact, not only became a neutral ground for these two sections of the
Democratic Party, but it also had ambitions to link the Party to the various
progressive movements that lay on its outer rim and beyond.
Many of the Centers' ideas, however, strayed far from progressivism, keener
to be bold against its base (such as teacher's unions) than against the
world of finance. A recent study complained about teacher absence in the
public schools (ten days a year), something that disproportionately impacted
students in low-income neighborhoods. But not a word about the ruin of
social welfare by the Clinton White House that resulted in the lack of
institutions to shore up parents, teachers and students in these
neighborhoods. For our intrepid liberals it is far easier to utilize their
calculus of triangulation to blame the teachers.
On foreign policy, the champions of humanitarian interventionism based at
the CAP remain confident, regardless of the failures in Afghanistan and
Iraq. These are blamed on Bush's incompetence rather than on the exhaustion
of U. S. imperialism. To revive their interventionist fantasies, the CAP
liberals use Darfur. It stiffens the spine. John Prendergast holds the reins
here, running the ENOUGH project of the CAP. He is committed to the merits
of doing something in Darfur, but has little sense of the role that "Darfur"
plays within the U. S. in keeping the terminally ill concept of humanitarian
interventionism alive (for more on this, look for Mahmood Mamdani's
Survivors and Saviors, coming out in 2009). Right after Obama's election,
Predergast co-wrote a letter to the president-elect asking Obama to "lead a
concerted international peace surge for Sudan." This letter went out just as
violence increased in the Great Lakes region of Africa (ground-zero for the
Cell-Phone Wars of our day; the region is the source of coltan, an essential
element for cell-phones) and as Israel's armies once more struck the
civilian populations of Gaza. Not a word from CAP on this. Nor on the
Gujarat violence, or the killing of the Christians by the Hindu Right. No
humanitarian interventionism when this affects U. S. imperial interests.
Which is why Shah's own far Right commitments in India are not contradictory
to those of the CAP liberals; many of them have similar commitments to the
far Right in Israel or in other parts of the world.
When asked to name his favorite books, Obama mentioned that one of them is
Gandhi's The Story of My Experiments with Truth. I encourage him to go to
his edition (mine is the Beacon Press one from 1957) and turn to page 155.
There he will find a simple sentence, "It has always been a mystery to me
how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their
fellow-beings." The Hindu Right thrives on the humiliation of Indian
Muslims, Christians, and oppressed castes, and it derives its social power
from those who are survivors of the failed experiment in globalization.
Those millions, like myself, who feel a joy in snubbing the Bush dynamic and
the entire history of social exclusion in the United States should demand
that our hopes be held to a higher standard. Not to the howling dogs, but to
the doves.
*Vijay Prashad* is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian
History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford,
CT His new book is The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third
World, <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565847857/counterpunchmaga>New
York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+++++++++
*Hindustan Times:*
*Obama Team Member Has 'Fascist' Sangh Links*
New Delhi, November 08, 2008
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=c92bdef7-a366-47df-bf51-daae396caeec&MatchID1=4816&TeamID1=6&TeamID2=1&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1212&PrimaryID=4816&Headline=Obama+team+member%2c+Sonal%2c+has+VHP+links
US President-elect Barack Obama may have cultivated a left-of-center image
for himself, but Sonal Shah, the Indian-American advisor in his transition
team, has well established rightwing leanings.
The 40-year-old economist has been associated with the overseas activities
of the Sangh Parivar. She was a national coordinator of the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad of America campaign to raise funds for Gujarat earthquake victims
in 2001.
Her father Ramesh Shah, a vice-president of the Overseas Friends of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (OFBJP), had campaigned for LK Advani in Gandhinagar
during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. He had also briefly traveled with
Advani during his Bharat Udaya Yatra, countrywide election tour.
Sonal's brother Amit and sister Rupal are now based in Ahmedabad, running a
voluntary organisation, indicorps. Its website says its aim is to "engage
the most talented young Indians from around the world on the frontlines of
India's most pressing challenges".
"I returned to India eight years ago," Amit told HT before suddenly deciding
not to talk any further. An SMS from Rupal said "no comments from here", and
added that Sonal be contacted through email for any queries.
A senior functionary of the fascist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS),
involved in the global activities of the Parivar, said only Ramesh is
associated with its activities. "He works with the OFBJP and supports, among
other things, the Ekal Vidyalayas," the functionary said. Ekal Vidyalayas
are single-teacher primary schools run by the RSS with the aim of
inculcating Hindu values in children, mostly in tribal regions.
The Shah family hails from Sabarkantha in Gujarat but Sonal was born in
Mumbai. Ramesh Shah moved to the US in 1970. Two years later, Sonal, Rupal
and their mother joined him in New York. The family later moved to Houston.
Sonal has worked as vice-president with Goldman Sachs and also in the US
Department of Treasury. Currently, she is with the global development team
of Google.org.
Volunteers at the indicorps office in Ahmedabad were under instructions not
to speak anything.
*Sonal Shah's Fascism Links:
*Vishwa Hindu Parishad website: Read below she is designated as National
Coordinator
http://www.vhp-america.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=13
Sonal Shah link for Modi visa
http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18415&Itemid=88
Sonal's Dad Ramesh Shah celebrating Modi victory in Houston
http://www.theindianstar.com/index.php?udn=2008-01-04&usn=2&urn=1&upn=319
http://gaboworld.blogspot.com/2006/12/indicorps.html
IDRF report of funding by NRI sanghi supporters are produced by this group
http://www.stopfundinghate.org/resources/Saff$/Jan-Feb2005.htm
Obama's Indian
http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad11072008.html
Visa Hope for Modi
http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/news/india/obama-team%E2%80%99s-gujarat-link-is-modi-visa-hope.aspx<http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/news/india/obama-team's-gujarat-link-is-modi-visa-hope.aspx>
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Nor can Goodness and Evil be equal. Repel (evil) with what is better; then the
enmity between him and you will become as if it were your friend and intimate!
Visit: sultan.org
Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Post to group: [email protected]
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
