Sangh discreetly expanding base in US: CSFH report

New Delhi, Jan 17 (UNI) The Sangh Parivar is fast expanding its base among the student community in the United States through ''clandestine'' organisations such as the Hindu Students Council (HSC), according to a report released here today.

The latest report by the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH) points out to the alleged growing Sangh-Student network in the US.

After releasing the report, Biju Mathew, one of the co-authors of the report titled ''Unmistakably Sangh: The National HSC and its Hindutva Agenda,'' said various factors draw the Indian-American youth towards these organisations.

''Racism and oppression force the Indian-American youth to take shelter in organisations such as the HSC. Many times they join the HSC without an awareness of the invisible connections between the outfit and the Sangh Parivar,'' he said.

The report documents a ''long and dense'' trail of connections between the Sangh and the HSC from 1990 to the present. ''The HSC exists on American university campuses because of the liberal policy of multiculturalism that allows for diversity of culture and tolerance,'' it says.

The report also claims that the HSC had promoted divisive and sectarian speakers such as VHP leaders Ashok Singhal and Sadhvi Rithambara.

The HSC, a national network of university-based organisations in the United States to teach about Hindu heritage and culture, was founded in 1990 as, according to the report, a project of the VHP of America.

The report claims to provide the first comprehensive documentation of the origins, methods and practices of the HSC. It also directly seeks to counter HSC claims that ''it has been independently run since 1993''.

Mr Mathew said they have used documents from ''Sangh sources'' such as VHPA tax returns, filings with US Patents Office, internet domain registry information, HSC archives and publications of the Sangh Parivar in North America and elsewhere to ''establish that the Council was and remains an arm of the Global Sangh Parivar''.

The report claims to establish the Sangh's interest and activities in the US go far beyond funding, and that the HSC represents a ''grooming place for young Sangh leadership and the entry of the Sangh ideology into second generation Indian American spaces.'' The CSFH, an organisation of diverse group of people living and working in the United States, was formed in 2002 in the aftermath of Gujarat violence.

It says the report is part of its ''Truth Out on HSCs'' campaign aimed at educating Indian-Americans on the Sangh Parivar and its operations in the US.

UNI AG MSJ KP1721