Miraj Medical Center

From Appendix H of “The Foreign Exchange of Hate”, we repeat the Sabrang/FOIL classification of Miraj Medical Center.

 

The Miraj Medical Center, which received IDRF's funding, is put in the "RSS-affiliated" category, and its main activity is declared to be welfare/health care. This center is in Maharashtra. Who really runs it? We find from [[i]] and [[ii]] that: ".. the Miraj Medical Center, affiliated with the Church of North India , is the only fully comprehensive health care entity in a 150 mile radius...  Refs. [36 &37] are the websites of the Presbyterian Church, USA, and the Church of North India, respectively. According to Sabrang/FOIL,  this Christian missionary-founded institution is an “RSS-affiliated organization”. This is most interesting, in view of the sweeping claims and allegations in Chapter 1 of Ref. [4], presented in Table 1.  We are asked to believe that the RSS, despite being the monster Hindu-Supremacist organization which seeks to exclude all other religions from India, chooses to fund an organization which was set up and operated by the Christian Church.

One typo, perhaps?  Hardly – because that’s not the end of the story. The above fact was pointed out in a 6-page mini-rebuttal of the Sabrang/FOIL report, and widely circulated on Dec. 9, 2002. The Miraj Medical Center example was posted on the LID’s web page. It was again included in a Press Release from LID around Dec. 23. To which, Sabrang/FOIL’s official response was prepared by Dr. Vinay Lal, Associate Professor of History at UCLA [ [iii]]. Excerpts:

“Everyone who is familiar with the often complex ways in which overseas funding of a large array of political and non-political organizations takes place -- and not only with respect to India - knows fully well that it will not, to take one example, suffice to exonerate an organization that is charged with promoting Hindutva by suggesting that it is supported by the Church of North India. Organizations promoting violence have everywhere learned how to camouflage themselves; their networks are vast, capillary, and polycentric.”

 

 

Thus in two convoluted sentences Associate Professor of South Asian History at UCLA,  Dr. Vinay Lal illuminates us with four definite demonstrations:

1.      That he, and since he’s the official spokesman, Sabrang/FOIL, DO MEAN to “charge” the Miraj Medical Center of  “promoting Hindutva”!!!!

2.      That even an activity rating of “w” means “promoting Hindutva” to Sabrang/FOIL.

3.      That he did not bother to think for the millisecond that it would have taken a person of normal intelligence to figure that he should check up on the Miraj Medical Center story.

4.      That his arrogance far exceeds his competence and academic standards.

Elsewhere in his learned “rebuttal” Professor Vinay Lal decried the lack of “point-by-point rebuttals” by the Let India Develop campaign, leading one to speculate on the point of trying to convey any points at all to someone with such a capacity for objective reasoning.

A glance at the Sabrang Report’s Table would have told even Professor Vinay Lal that this was a donor-specified grant. Out of respect for the donor(s)’ privacy, the rest of that statement must be left to the reader’s imagination.

Now that we have seen proof of the standards of the most “distinguished” of Sabrang/FOIL’s “South Asia Faculty”, let us look at a few more organizations which these worthies want closed down and banned. Space and time constraints prevent us from decribing all 178 organizations listed in Sabrang’s Appendix, but after all, they are just copied from IDRF’s site, and the interested reader can always go and read the true descriptions at that site: http://www.idrf.org 

 

Who wants the Miraj Medical Center shut down as a “hate-spreading” “Hindutva” “RSS-affiliated” organization?

Other than Dr. Vinay Lal, Associate Professor of South Asian History at UCLA, a partial list: Dr. Biju Mathew, Rider U., Dr.Angana Chatterji, CIIS, Vijay Prashad, Trinity College, CT, Jamal Badawi, St. Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Akeel Bilgrami, Columbia University, Deepak Kapur, University of New Mexico, Ayesha Jalal, Tufts University, Tayyab Mahmud, Cleveland State University, Muhammad Umar Memon, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Malini J. Schueller, University of Florida, Asma Afsaruddin, University of Notre Dame, Syed Akbar Hyder, The University of Texas at Austin, Sahir Imam, Adjunct Faculty, Miami-Dade Community College, Ashutosh Varshney, University of Michigan, Sylvat Aziz, Queen's University, Kingston ON , Elena Bashir, The University of Chicago, Dina M. Siddiqi, University of Pennsylvania, Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Padmini Mongia, Franklin & Marshall College Montclair State University, Shahnaz Rouse, Chair, Social Science Faculty, Sarah Lawrence College, Arjun Appadurai, Yale University, C.M. Naim, University of Chicago, Shankar Mahalingam, UC Riverside, George Verghese, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gauri Viswanathan, Columbia University, Isha Ray, UC Berkeley, Moiez A. Tapia, University of Miami, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Hamilton College, Satya Mohanty, Cornell University,  Mustaque Ahamad, Georgia Institute of Technology , Muneer Ahmad, American University, Shabbir Ahmed, Georgia Institute of Technology, Omar Atalib, Ashland University, Meena Alexander, City University of New York, Ali Asani, Harvard University, Pranab Bardhan, UC Berkeley, Milind Wakankar, SUNY Stony Brook, Bulbul Chakraborty, Brandeis University, Ainslee Embree, Columbia University, Omar Atalib, Ashland University, Nicholas B. Dirks, Columbia University, Frederique Apffel-Marglin, Smith College, Prasenjit Duara, University of Chicago, Jana Everett, University of Colorado, Shelly Feldman, Cornell University,  Dane Kennedy, George Washington University, Hans Henrich Hock, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Geraldine Forbes, State University of New York Oswego, Rajmohan Gandhi, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Paul Greenough, University of Iowa, Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University, Peter Hook, University of Michigan, Eugene Irshick, UC Berkeley, Kannan Jagannathan, Amherst College, Inderpal Grewal, University of California, Irvine; Sumit Guha, Brown University  Ron Herring, Cornell University Robert A. Hueckstedt, University of Virginia, Nita Kumar, University of Michigan, David Ludden, University of Pennsylvania, Standing President, Association of Asian Studies, Ania Loomba, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Itty Abraham, Social Science Research Council, M. A. Muqtedar Khan, Adrian College, Adrian, MI, K. V. Lakshmi, Department of Chemistry, Yale University, Velcheru Narayana Rao, Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sandra P. Robinson, Sarah Lawrence College

Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Oberlin College