Converting Immigrant
Guilt Into
Funds For Hindutwa
By Gaiutra Bahadur
Ten years ago, in a small
town in north India, Ashok Singhal spearheaded the destruction of a
16th-century mosque, sparking the worst religious riots since the country
won independence. His supporters tore down the Babri Masjid brick by
brick. A week ago, in a basement in suburban New Jersey, Singhal courted
the hearts and pocketbooks of Hinduimmigrants to the United States.
This American visit and dozens
before it, critics say, are part of a campaign to tear down India's
secular political structure - not brick by brick, but dollar by dollar.
The movement Singhal belongs
to - Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva - is rising in India. And some say
it has risen with the sometimes unwitting help of Indian Americans who
have contributed millions to charities in their native country, particularly
schools in tribal areas that the Hindu right views as key to its
agenda.
Singhal's visit coincided
with the end of an unprecedented government-sponsored conference in
New Delhi of prominent Indians living abroad. The country is trying
to tap into the guilt, nostalgia and financial resources of its diaspora.
That strategy explains the
unlikely spectacle of the silver-haired leader of the World Hindu Council
holding forth in the basement of a Voorhees physician last Friday night.
Sixty people listened to a man one called "a saint in street clothes."
Two police officers stood
sentinel, since there are some for whom Singhal, whose group has reshaped
Indian politics in the last decade, conjures Hitler more than he does
a saint.
The 77-year-old - an ally
of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee - spoke of the ongoing
effort to build a temple over the ruins of the Babri mosque, where Hindus
believe the warrior god Ram was born. "We need the Hindus to unite
throughout the world," Singhal said in an interview, "...
because there is a
cultural onslaught against the Hindus."
"People can understand
more because of Sept. 11," he said. "America has suffered
the first onslaught by the jihadis. We have been suffering this onslaught
for the last 1,000 years."
According to Human Rights
Watch, Singhal's group helped stoke religious riots in Gujurat state
last spring that claimed 2,000 lives, as well as attacks on Christians
in 1998 and 1999.
After Singhal's speech, his
host, gynecologist Veena Gandhi, made a pitch: "$365 a year for
one school. A dollar a day, for which we can't even buy a Coke in New
York. Talk to your friends. This is our debt to our country where we
were born."
Gandhi is a leader in the
U.S. offshoot of the World Hindu Council and a coordinator for a group
devoted to starting tribal schools, the Houston-based Ekal Vidyalaya
Foundation of USA.
Since the group began, Indians
in the Northeast have raised about $500,000 for 1,400 schools, most
of it from the Philadelphia region, said Sanjeev Jindal, a coordinator
and a Merck scientist from Lansdale. He says the schools' main purpose
is to combat illiteracy. Critics say more is at stake.
"The schools... help
to create a cadre of foot soldiers to fight against the constructed
enemies of Hindutva, in this case Muslims and Christians," said
Smita Narula, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
She said more tribal people
took part in last year's Gujurat riots than ever before in the state's
history of religious tensions - a fact viewed by many as a sign of Hindutva's
success in areas where Christian missionaries once held sway. Gandhi
dismissed critics of the schools, saying, "They find this an obstacle
to the spreading of their own religion."
She said the Hindutva agenda
was not meant to exclude Muslims, Christians, or other religious minorities:
"Hindus have always taken a beating because we are supposed to
forgive... . You cannot be tolerant to the point of being a coward."
A report last year by a group
of activists - the Foreign Exchange of Hate - revealed that the bulk
of $5 million raised by one U.S.-based charity for relief and development
projects in India went to a network of Hindu nationalist groups - including
the Ekal
Vidyalaya schools.
It came largely from unsuspecting
workers with origins
in India and from U.S. employers providing matching
funds. Just as many
contributors did not realize how their
dollars were being used, members of Hindutva groups
here seem to join for reasons different from their
counterparts in India.
"There's a whole generation
of people who emigrated
out - sort of 'brain drain' types - who feel guilty for having left
India," said Gautam Ghosh, an assistant professor of anthropology
at the University of Pennsylvania.
The dozens gathered in Gandhi's
basement are battling
cultural loss in a nation where they are a minority.
The World Hindu Council hooks them on heritage, with
14 U.S. chapters that run summer camps, cultural
centers and temples.
That was how Jindal, the
Merck employee, got involved. "I thought it was a neat project,
and I wanted to volunteer my time," he said. "It would be
a shock to me that these kids are being taught to hate Muslims or Christians
- and to the extent that they should go and
become soldiers. Nothing would shock me more if that would be the case."
Contact Gaiutra Bahadur
bahadug@p... or 856-779-3923.
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER,
Posted on Fri, Jan. 26, 2003
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/4966007.htm