Team Clarion
NEW YORK – Several human rights groups in the United States have expressed concern over resurfacing of Sonal Shah, a Hindutva-aligned activist, as the founding president of The Asian American Foundation (TAAF), launched on May 3. TAAF describes Shah as a “foremost global leader on social impact and innovation”.
The Alliance to Save and Protect America from Infiltration by Religious Extremists (ASPAIRE), Coalition of Americans for Pluralism in India (CAPI) and Coalition to Stop Genocide in India have relentlessly been exposing her and others associated with the far right Hindu extremists groups in India. These human rights groups say that people like Sonal Shah have neither denounced the hate groups nor publicly renounced their affiliations with them.
They believe that efforts seem to be on by Sonal Shah to connect with the larger and influential Asian American community, leaving behind the narrower Hindutva identity.
Shujat Khan, a leader of CAPI, has called on CNN host Fareed Zakaria and other leaders in TAAF that they should not allow themselves to be “fooled by Sonal Shah”.
Zakaria, along with Indra Nooyi, former CEO PepsiCo, is amongst some of TAAF’s American Indian advisors.
Sonal Shah is the only Indian in the top management of TAAF. There are other prominent and accomplished Asian’sin TAFF including Li Lu, Founder and Chairman of Himalaya Capital, a multi-billion-dollar investment firm and Joseph Y. Bae is Co-President and Co-Chief Operating Officer of Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts (KKR), a global investment firm with over $365 billion in assets under management.
“The right way to reinvent herself would be to publicly denounce all her links with HIndutva and publicly denounce the atrocities being committed in India on the minorities and other marginalized people, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Associating with an organization like this, with a mission to address and protect the rights of the Asian Americans, is nothing short of hypocrisy, if she cannot call out the human rights violations, in her ancestral country first”, said Dr Ubaid Shaik, co-chair of ASPAIRE and a founder of Coalition to Stop Genocide in India.
“Second generation Indian Americans like Sonal Shah, cannot claim to be unaware of the hatred and violence spread by the HIndutva groups in India and in the US, when they are associated with these groups, in leadership roles, carrying on the hateful legacy of their parents, despite leading a privileged existence in the US,” said Masood Rab, Founder of the CAPI and also co-chair of ASPAIRE.
