Foreign
Direct Investment In Hatred
By Kalpana
Wilson
The Hindu
26 July, 2003
On
a bitterly cold and rapidly darkening evening in central London, a crowd
has gathered for a candlelight vigil to "Remember Gujarat".
The banners and placards of the protestors, mainly Indians from different
communities, read "2,000 murdered ... 200,000 dispossessed, still
no justice! And "Gujarat genocide never again". But
the vigil, which is taking place outside the head offices of Britain's
Charity Commission, the body which monitors the activities of all registered
charities in this country, is also demanding action against the pro-Hindutva
organisations whose fund-raising activities in the United Kingdom finance
the "foreign direct investment" in communal hatred. Because,
ironically, it is the Sangh Parivar, with its constant evocation of
a (fabricated) Indian "tradition", which constitutes the most
globalised political force India has yet seen. Today, the Sangh Parivar
has come to rely on the moral and more importantly, material
support of the Indian diaspora which, as has been well-documented,
runs into millions of dollars.
Some of the most
direct routes by which donations in Britain reach the hands of killer
gangs in Gujarat were exposed on a Channel 4 News Report broadcast here
on December 12, 2002. The programme revealed how one organisation funded
by British charity Sewa International the Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram
in Gujarat is directly implicated in the February-March 2002
pogrom. Forensic evidence implicates a leading member, currently absconding,
as "leading a mob of 2,000 tribal people" in an attack on
Muslim minorities.
The programme also
reported that a Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram leader "threatened the villagers
saying that if they didn't join in provoking the Muslims and burning
them, they would also be treated like Muslims and burnt", while
another activist told the reporter: "the Christians have made a
church in our village. We have thought several times of destroying it.
One day we will definitely break it down". But while the British
Charity Commissioners have been investigating the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh's (RSS) international wing, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh or HSS
(a registered charity in Britain and the founders of Sewa International),
since last September, there are little signs of action. The commissioners
privately admit that nothing will be done to stem the flow of funds
without the go-ahead of the Foreign Office.
So where does this
money come from? While the Gujarat earthquake provided an opportunity
for Sewa International and other Sangh Parivar groups to fundraise on
a massive scale from the general public, (with Sewa International winning
the praise of Prince Charles and other prominent figures), the major
long-term source of funding is Britain's Gujarati communities. Many
people, particularly women, are unwittingly, drawn into the Sangh Parivar
networks through the latter's "social work" activities, and
via temples. But the Sangh Parivar has also succeeded in putting down
strong ideological roots in these communities in Britain.
In contrast to the
situation in the United States, Gujaratis in Britain are still predominantly
working class or petty bourgeois. In the 1970s, factory workers from
these communities, particularly women workers, waged some of the most
militant industrial actions including the well-known Grunwick's strike
led by Jayaben Desai, in the process forcing the racist trade union
establishment to take up the demands of Asian and other black workers.
However in the 1990s, with most such factories closed down, and many
Gujaratis entering family-run small businesses (mainly shops), the Sangh
Parivar has established a strong presence, channelising experiences
of racism and alienation into virulent Hindu chauvinism.
The fact that Gujarati
Hindu communities are dominated by those who migrated to Britain from
East Africa has also been an important factor in this process. First,
this community's role as "middlemen" under British colonial
rule in East Africa gave it a particular susceptibility to fascist ideology.
At the same time, there is a strong sense of Gujarati pride and
Gujarat is invariably conflated with India (in fact, in Britain, Indian
has become synonymous with Gujarati in many areas). Second, the community
has from the outset been organised along caste lines, with migration
to Britain itself taking place through caste linkages. There is, therefore,
an established pattern of people in Britain donating money to be sent
back to Gujarat for welfare purposes, via caste associations. But during
the last decade, the Sangh Parivar groups have usefully incorporated
many of these caste organisations into their own networks and effectively
taken control of this flow of funds.
The ideas of Hindutva
have also slotted in comfortably with the repackaging of Indian culture
for NRIs as something globalised and "modern" in terms of
consumption patterns, and "traditional", patriarchal and implicitly
communal in terms of values. Bollywood hits like "Hum Aapke Hain
Kaun" and "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham'' not only epitomise this
repackaging and commoditisation of culture, but are also notable for
their targeting of British and North American NRIs as both subject matter
whose perceived lifestyles are glamourised and simultaneously
ridiculed and an important potential audience. And when British
Asian primary school girls in West London are taught dance routines
from "Kabhi Khushi Gham" in school as an example of Indian
culture (and in the name of multicultural education), this process appears
to have come full circle.
But the British
State's multicultural policies have also played a more direct role in
the rise of the Sangh Parivar in this country. A number of Sangh Parivar
organisations across the country receive large grants from local government,
ostensibly for their "community work" activities. The funding
of pro-Hindutva groups by the government is a direct result of New Labour's
approach towards "ethnic minorities". This has its roots in
the attempts of the British state to undermine the anti-racist struggles
of its black population which began in the 1970s State funding
for community organisations was used to successively divide these communities
firstly between those of Asian and African-Caribbean origin, then according
to linguistic group (Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, etc) and finally, since
the late 1990s, according to religion or what New Labour terms "faith
communities". This promotion by the British government of the notion
of "faith communities" has strengthened a variety of right-wing
religious forces, giving them legitimacy as self-styled "community
leaders". In the case of Hindutva, it has meant that by setting
up local groups, claiming to represent Hindu "faith communities",
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and HSS have direct access to British
government funding for their activities.
At the same time,
since the end of the 1980s we have seen Islam come to be identified
as the primary enemy of the U.S. and its allies. The demonisation of
Islam in the discourse of America's global strategy fed into existing
images of "ethnic minority communities" in Britain to generate
a specifically anti-Muslim racism, promoted and intensified by the state
and the media. Key events in this process were the Rushdie Affair, and
the Gulf War in 1991. The construction of the "Muslim" as
fanatical, fundamentalist, violent, and, crucially, owing allegiance
to political forces external and hostile to Europe has
thus come to the forefront of racist imagery. Today state racism and
its anti-Muslim aspect have gained new legitimacy in the context of
September 11 and the "war on terror".
One effect of this
is to further deepen the divisions among South Asian communities, as
the discourses of the state, the media and the Sangh Parivar "community
leaders" intersect. In Bradford for example, where Asian youth,
mainly of Pakistani and Kashmiri origin, fought pitched battles with
the police in riots caused by years of poverty, unemployment and racism,
a recognised "leader" of the "Hindu community",
Hasmukh Shah, is also a VHP leader. Early on, Shah attempted to project
the disturbances as having a communal character, while he later actually
aligned himself with the white supremacist British National Party.
On a day-to-day
level too, communal divisions have intensified. As ever, these divisions
are sought to be reinforced by controlling and policing the behaviour
of women. A group of Indian schoolgirls in North London explained that
their fathers' rule about boys they associated with, was "No BMWs
No blacks, Muslims or Whites but a Muslim would probably
be the worst". Meanwhile, Indian boys in their (state) school attended
HSS shakha meeting which were held regularly and rent-free in the school
premises. As in India, the Sangh Parivar's youth organisations, which
include a network of student groups, the National Hindu Students Federation,
have focused on "protecting" Hindu women from relationships
with Muslim men.
South Asian women's
groups in Britain have always organised along secular lines bringing
together women from different communities in campaigns against violence
and oppression in the home, the community and in wider British society.
Today more than ever, their struggles against patriarchy involve confronting
communalism within their own communities. This year's International
Women's Day on March 8 saw the first national South Asian women's conference
to be held in Britain. Along with domestic violence, State racism and
the impending war, the participants discussed ways forward in an ongoing
battle against communalism including an increasingly globalised
Hindutva.
Kalpana Wilson
is a research fellow in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS,
University of London.