The Many Faces of Sonal Shah Obama's Indian By VIJAY PRASHAD
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.
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.
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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.
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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, New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu
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.
***
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, New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu
posted by temporal at 11/09/2008
3 Comments:
Sonal Shah is been working with the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton. Your views seems personal in your editoral, with more of negative and nothing towards her positive developments. Being appointed by President Elect Obama is far more filtering, studying of her meerits and credits than the negative report you have showed is allarming.
As a 2nd generation Indian American I am dissapointed by what seems to be your need to make something out of nothing with the supposed controversy surrounding the appointment of Sonal Shah to President Elect Obama's transition committee.
Based on the facts, Sonal Shah is a true catalyst for change. I think its beyond amazing that she and her family have devoted their lives to service in India. This is a great time for Americans and the world and I suggest that we all take a moment and bask in the progress our world is making with the history making election and the appointment of a brilliant Indian-American to the transition committee. Lets go back to covering the real issues. Yes we can, yes we will!
We can see a big lobby of people working to discredit the amount of work sonal shah has done.This is disgrace in india.
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