Diaspora groups raise eyebrows: Top US non-pofit newsroom has VHP influencer as CEO

By A Representative
One of the United States’ biggest nonprofit newsrooms, The Texas Tribune, has run into controversy over the appointment of Sonal Shah as the organization’s chief executive officer because of her alleged links with the Vishwa Hindu, Parishad (VHP), whom diaspora rights groups call Hindu supremacist, citing Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) categorizing it as a “religious militant organization”.
Shah, who reportedly has extensive experience in social innovation and nonprofits, will take over from Evan Smith, who was a founder of The Tribune since 2009. It is a free to read news portal with 10,000 paid subscribers and 175,000 newsletter subscribers. She will take over from Smith in January 2023.
Shah has been an active member of Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), the US counterpart of VHP, which rights groups say is one of the principal non-state actors responsible for whipping up anti-Muslim and anti-Christian hate, bigotry, and violence.
The US Department of State, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International are known to have implicated VHP in numerous incidents of “deadly” anti-minority violence in India.
Last year, VHPA invited Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati for a virtual event. Saraswati is a Hindu militant priest spearheading a pan-India campaign to commit genocide of the country’s 200 million Muslims.
During Shah's stint with VHPA, internal emails are cited to suggest, she often advised the group about its image management.
Shah has supported Ekal Vidyalaya, another VHP-led project in India, which has been accused of spreading the RSS agenda of Hindu supremacy and of promoting anti-minority hate among young children.
Shah has also volunteered for Sewa International USA (a charity group currently chaired by Ramesh Bhutada, the Vice President of Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh, the international wing of RSS in the US.) Sewa International is the foreign service wing of RSS’s Sewa Bharati India.
Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), claiming to be the nation’s largest advocacy organization for Indian American Muslims, urging The Tribune to reconsider its decision, said, her links with India’s Hindu supremacist groups are “well-doumented.”
“If her appointment is not rescinded, it will demonstrate a total disregard by The Tribune for the sentiments of the American Muslim community, especially Indian American Muslims and Indian minorities who are facing an onslaught of hate from Hindu extremist groups like VHP and RSS in India,” said IAMC executive director Rasheed Ahmed.
“The Texas Tribune’s board of directors must reconsider its decision and revisit its vetting process for candidates to be appointed for such important positions in the organization,” he added.
In 2008, Shah’s appointment to the then-US President-elect Barack Obama's transition team advisory board prompted condemnation for her “Hindu extremist links.”
Her recent appointment as Chief Commissioner of President Joe Biden’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders and later to the Advisory Council of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was also marred in controversy, prompting more than 20,000 people to sign a petition calling for her removal.

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

Jayanthi Natarajan "never stood by tribals' rights" in MNC Vedanta's move to mine Niyamigiri Hills in Odisha

By A Representative The Odisha Chapter of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), which played a vital role in the struggle for the enactment of historic Forest Rights Act, 2006 has blamed former Union environment minister Jaynaynthi Natarjan for failing to play any vital role to defend the tribals' rights in the forest areas during her tenure under the former UPA government. Countering her recent statement that she rejected environmental clearance to Vendanta, the top UK-based NMC, despite tremendous pressure from her colleagues in Cabinet and huge criticism from industry, and the claim that her decision was “upheld by the Supreme Court”, the CSD said this is simply not true, and actually she "disrespected" FRA.

UP tribal woman human rights defender Sokalo released on bail

By A Representative After almost five months in jail, Adivasi human rights defender and forest worker Sokalo Gond has been finally released on bail.Despite being granted bail on October 4, technical and procedural issues kept Sokalo behind bars until November 1. The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and the All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP), which are backing Sokalo, called it a "major victory." Sokalo's release follows the earlier releases of Kismatiya and Sukhdev Gond in September. "All three forest workers and human rights defenders were illegally incarcerated under false charges, in what is the State's way of punishing those who are active in their fight for the proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006)", said a CJP statement.

Stands 'exposed': Cavalier attitude towards rushed construction of Char Dham project

By Bharat Dogra* The nation heaved a big sigh of relief when the 41 workers trapped in the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel (Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand) were finally rescued on November 28 after a 17-day rescue effort. All those involved in the rescue effort deserve a big thanks of the entire country. The government deserves appreciation for providing all-round support.

Epic war against caste system is constitutional responsibility of elected government

Edited by well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, the book, “Bhed-Bharat: An Account of Injustice and Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-18)” (available in English and Gujarati*) is a selection of news articles on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-2018) published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, Ahmedabad. Preface to the book, in which Macwan seeks to answer key questions on why the book is needed today: *** The thought of compiling a book on atrocities on Dalits and thus present an overall Indian picture had occurred to me a long time ago. Absence of such a comprehensive picture is a major reason for a weak social and political consciousness among Dalits as well as non-Dalits. But gradually the idea took a different form. I found that lay readers don’t understand numbers and don’t like to read well-researched articles. The best way to reach out to them was storytelling. As I started writing in Gujarati and sharing the idea of the book with my friends, it occurred to me that while...

Search This Blog