WSO & NCCM: Canada India Foundation (CIF) And The RSS Network In Canada
"Moreover, the CIF has held several online events throughout 2022 that featured speakers from India who have ties to the RSS and who have made a number of inflammatory and often violent remarks..."
World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) & National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM)
March 14, 2023 | 5 min. read | Excerpt
This excerpt comes from the “RSS Network in Canada” report by the WSO and NCCM. The full report and citations, which traces RSS-affiliated groups in Canada and the permeation of RSS ideology in Canadian civil society, can be found here.
The Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation (EVF) is another organization with operations here in Canada, with roots in the RSS’s single teacher schooling and missionary network in India’s tribal regions, known as the Ekal Abhiyan, which the VHP and other related groups have used as a model to make similar inroads into rural, tribal India. In the same vein, EVF Canada’s mission includes the “holistic development in the remote villages and tribal areas of India and developing neighboring countries through well-designed, effectual education….”
The lessons imparted within these single teacher set-ups (of which there are over 100,000 in India and Nepal) align with the RSS’s overall ideas and messaging. The BJP’s electoral results have markedly improved where such networks have taken root.
Additionally, Ekal Vidyalaya and the HSS logos were imprinted on a poster advertising an online event in November 2020, organized by the Canada India Foundation (CIF), another registered non-profit in Canada that, among other things, wants to transform “Canada’s relations with India by emphasizing India’s criticality to Canada’s future” and to “promote Canada’s interest in India.”
The event, titled “Hindu Philosophy and Its Relevance,” was part of 2020’s Hindu Heritage Month. It was presented as a way for all Canadians to learn the tenets of Hinduism, its roots, and contemporary relevance. Yet the HSS and Ekal Vidyalaya, two groups tethered to the RSS’s highly exclusivist, supremacist, and politicized version of Hinduism, were listed prominently as co-sponsors (among other organizations).
Moreover, the CIF has held several online events throughout 2022 that featured speakers from India who have ties to the RSS and who have made a number of inflammatory and often violent remarks towards India’s minorities, sometimes leading to deadly consequences.
These include Anurag Thakur, a BJP parliamentarian in Himachal Pradesh who also serves as India’s Minister for Information and Broadcasting, as well as the Minister for Youth Affairs and Sport. He was featured in an August 2020 CIF webinar encouraging investment in India.
Thakur was widely reported in January 2020 to have yelled the inflammatory chant, “desh ke gaddaron ko” to a crowd of supporters. The phase roughly translates as “What should be done to the traitors of the country?” The crowd responded with, “shoot them!” This exchange unfolded as Thakur, then Minister of Finance, was campaigning in New Delhi for another BJP candidate, right as protests were being held against the party’s amendment to the Citizenship Act—an bill that has been roundly condemned for making it easier to deport Muslim refugees in India.
Thakur and other BJP figures have been widely criticized for this incitement of angry Hindu mobs right before bloody riots unfolded in the streets of New Delhi, resulting in around 50 dead, mostly Muslims. Amnesty International documented and investigated the riots, noting that the BJP figures’ “hateful” speeches fed into the waves of riotous attacks on the city’s Muslims. Human Rights Watch have also done a thorough investigation and report that specifically names Thakur as one of several BJP leaders who advocated violence in the lead-up to the anti-Muslim pogroms. Thakur appeared on the CIF webinar just months after the riots happened.
Another webinar speaker invited by the CIF was Pratap Chandra Sarangi (this time in June, 2022), a BJP parliamentarian from Odisha and former Junior Minister under PM Modi. As the BBC reports, Sarangi “was the leader of the Bajrang Dal, a hardline right-wing group [and the youth wing of the VHP], when a Hindu mob brutally killed Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two children in 1999.” In the end, no single group was officially held responsible for the murders (the victims were burnt alive), though a man with multiple links to the Bajrang Dal was ultimately charged and convicted.
Just three years later, Sarangi was arrested, as the state president of the Bajrang Dal, for on charges of rioting, arson, assault and damaging government property. A large group of far-right Hindu militants attacked the Odisha legislative assembly, including individuals from the Bajrang Dal and the VHP.
The VHP, as we noted, has been implicated by international human rights organizations in the 2002 anti-Muslim massacres in Gujarat. This led to a chill or even breaking of relations between Gujarat, then run by current PM Narendra Modi, and various other governments around the world.
The CIF, on their website in 2010, posted four issues that they wanted to explicitly “lobby” Ottawa on, from free trade to more visa offices. But one of these four issues, as explicitly listed, is the restoration of relations between Canada and the senior government officials of Gujarat.
The CIF has also been a vocal opponent of the recognition of the state sponsored 1984 Sikh Genocide in India. The Sikh Genocide was recognized by the Ontario Legislature in April 2017 with the passing of a Private Members Motion tabled by then Ontario Liberal MPP Harinder Malhi.
Although the 1984 Sikh Genocide has been recognized by several highly ranked elected Indian officials, the Delhi Legislative Assembly, and the Delhi High Court, the CIF still strongly opposed the recognition of the Sikh Genocide in Canada and issued a joint press release with other Indo-Canadian organizations condemning the Malhi’s motion.
Similarly, when then NDP MPP Gurratan Singh introduced a private member’s bill, “An Act to Proclaim Sikh Genocide Awareness Week,” in February 2020, the CIF once again led the opposition. The CIF and other Indo-Canadian organizations released another joint press statement condemning Singh’s bill.
In the release, the CIF’s National Convener Satish Thakkar said: “There is only one way to heal a historical wound – by applying a soothing balm of peace and reconciliation on it, and not be periodically scratching it for petty political gains.”
Moreover, in a letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford dated March 5th, 2020, the Board of Governors of the CIF stated: “Politicians in Canada who continue to claim the victimisation of Sikhs in India are unaware or unwilling to accept the present Indian reality where a majority of Indians including Sikhs are focused on pursuing economic goals and the Indian state is enabling this wish fulfillment by doing its best to usher in policies that help rapid economic development.”
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