TOI report on Ram Madhav and JHU speaking engagement

[Guest guest]

Psecs in city: see red over saffron

 

CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2004

04:30:32 AM ]

 

WASHINGTON: Secularists are seeing red over saffron in the United

States. As if the Republican-Democrat scrap in an overheated election

season isn't enough, some Indian activists have brought their spat

against the Sangh to Washington this week. Some of the so-called

secularists have launched a petition to stop Johns Hopkins University

from hosting RSS spokesman Ram Madhav, who is currently on a

month-long tour of the United States, at a speaking engagement on

Wednesday. "We deplore the fact that an American university is

granting unprecedented legitimacy to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

(RSS)," reads the petition by an organisation called Campaign to Stop

Funding Hate, before going into the familiar litany of charges

against

the organisation.

 

"The fact that Madhav arrives here to communicate the ideologies of

the RSS, an organisation that has been associated with training

militia-like local groups that play a direct role in initiating or

reproducing violence in India, make him a truly disturbing presence

on

any campus in the US," the petition, being distributed over e-mail

for

signature, says.

 

Madhav arrived here about two weeks back on what he described as a

"study tour" supported by Indian and local Hindu activists. He has

toured Houston, Nashville, Los Angeles and San Francisco and is due

in

Washington on Tuesday.

 

In a telephone conversation from San Francisco on Monday, the RSS

spokesman said he was aware of the petition going around and

expressed

surprise that people who claimed to be for free speech and expression

should be canvassing to silence him.

The Sanghis have also fired back, pointing out that among the people

canvassing support for the so-called secularists is Kaleem Kawaja, a

South Asian Muslim activist who they say has previously expressed

support for the Taliban. "This is a man who has shed tears for the

Taliban I believe...so they are progressive and we are fascists?"

Madhav remarked in the phone conversation. An associate of John

Hopkins' South Asia program said the school was aware of the campaign

against Madhav but said the engagement would proceed as planned. It

will be moderated by the writer-academic Sunil Khilnani, who teaches

at the school. Incidentally, the director of the South Asia program,

recently retired state department official Walter Anderson, is also

the co-author of the 1987 book The Brotherhood of Saffron, a study of

the RSS and the Hindi Right.

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow/86

6936.cms

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