RSS Invitation at Penn

We, the undersigned graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, unequivocally denounce the invitation of Ram Madhav, spokesperson of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), to speak on our campus on October 4, 2004. While we have immense respect for the work of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, we object in the strongest possible terms to the welcome it has extended to a proponent of communal bigotry. The politics of the RSS in India has sanctioned atrocious forms of violence against minority communities, its ideology of hatred gravely endangering the fabric of Indian pluralism. This is not about freedom of expression: by hosting Ram Madhav as a guest speaker, CASI normalizes and legitimizes the fascist agenda of the RSS. Let our opposition to such profound irresponsibility be duly noted.