Obama aide in trouble over saffron links

The including of Sonal Shah, an Indian-American community activist in President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, has been proscribed by leftist Indian groups in the US, alleging her links with the saffron groups in India.

Shah has however denied these allegations and asserted she never shares the views of the VHP or RSS, arraigned in the recent Orissa violence and Malegaon blasts in the country.

In a statement, Shah said, her "personal politics have nothing in common with the views espoused by the VHP, the RSS, or any such organization", and she has always "condemned any politics of division, of ethnic or religious hatred, of violence and intimidation as a political tool''.

The reports on Internet linking her to the VHP and RSS and her family's association with such groups say Shah is "baseless and silly".

In an article last week, Vijay Prashad, chair of South Asia history at Trinity College in Connecticut, described Shah as "an active member of the VHPA, the US branch of the most virulently fascistic outfit within India''. He also linked her to Ekal Vidyalaya, an outfit which he said, was a trigger for the attacks on Christians in India.

Responding to this, Shah said, "I do not subscribe to the views of such Hindu nationalist groups, and never have."

Prashad said he confronted Shah in 2004 at the South Asian Awareness Network conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he questioned her links to the Hindu right.

"She was furious, and we had a bitter exchange in the Green Room. But at no point did she deny her active connections to the Hindu right,'' Prashad writes.