[sacw] URGENT:Call for signatures for Petition to organisers of UN summit

Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Sun, 27 Aug 2000 01:42:13 +0200


Please sign this petition and return with names to: aiindex@m... before
Monday 28 August 2000. all the signatures will then be forwarded to the
group in New york submitting the petition to the UN summit organisers
best
(South Asia Citizens Web)

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To: The Participants/Partners/Organizers
Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and
Spiritual Leaders

It is with great concern and anguish that we the undersigned
write to you today. Even as the Millennium World Peace
Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, an important and
historic effort is inaugurated, it is also being fully undermined
by the participation of "leaders" associated with the hate-
mongering neo-fascist Hindu right wing organizations of
India - namely the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP - the World
Hindu Council) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS
- the National Volunteers Corps). We have received reliable
reports from some Indian advocacy groups that "leaders"
such as Sadhvi Ritambara and Ashok Singhal and a number
of so called "religious leaders" of the VHP/RSS are
participating in the summit. The VHP has itself announced
that it intends to send at least seventy of their leaders to the
summit, each with a party of four/five disciples. It is indeed
regrettable that such a group has been allowed to participate
in this summit. Further, it is very likely that they could during
this summit make a coordinated effort to enter the leadership
of your valuable inter-faith peace effort. We urge you all to
reject such an effort by a group of intolerant and violent
organizations to enter a space of peace that all of you have
worked so hard to create.

The VHP is more than thirty years old and has a record of
inciting and participating in religious violence across the
country. The RSS is much older, more than seventy years old
now, that is the ideological fountainhead of the neo-fascist
Hindu nationalism in India. Over the last two decades these
organizations have grown very powerful in India through a
series a hateful campaigns wherein they have engineered and
led violent mobilizations against India's Muslim and
Christian minorities. From the early 1990's the VHP/RSS
campaigns have risen to new levels of open violence against
minorities. For instance, its leaders Sadhvi Ritambara and
Ashok Singhal campaigned around the country in the early
1990's calling Hindu men to arms against the Muslim
minority using the most intensely hateful rhetoric that
compared ordinary Indian Muslims to everything from dogs
to Satan (copies of Sadhvi Ritambara's speeches during this
period are available for your records). This mobilization
culminated in the destruction of a sixteenth century mosque
called the Babri Mosque in the town of Ayodhya, India by a
large mob of VHP/RSS supporters on the grounds that the
mosque stood at the very same spot as the birth place of the
Hindu god Rama. The destruction of the mosque was
followed by large scale violence across India where large
numbers of Muslims were openly massacred and Muslim
women were the target of rape. (For a detailed account of
this period two documentary films and numerous other press
clippings can be submitted). The current Indian government
led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP - Indian Peoples
Party), the parliamentary face of this neo-fascist formation
has for the last many years consistently blocked the delivery
of justice since many of the cases registered were against its
party members/affiliates.

In this important summit that seeks to promote peace are
organizations and individuals who have not hesitated to use
the worst modes of violence against religious minorities in
India. They are organizations and individuals who have
systematically worked to tear apart the fabric of a tolerant
Indian society. We are deeply committed to religious peace
and tolerance and understand that all the worlds religions,
including Hinduism in its diverse forms, spread the message
of love and peace. For this reason we are convinced that an
effort such as yours is very valuable. We write this letter
both to protest and to urge you to take action to ensure that
your deeply committed efforts are not undermined by the
presence and participation of a small group of organizations
and individuals who have not hesitated to use religion for
narrow and divisive political ends.

Your signature including name and affiliation/title