In Counterpunch:

Sonal Shah
released a statement against “baseless and silly reports” on the
Internet. She forthrightly pointed out that her “personal politics have
nothing in common with the views espoused by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or any such organization.”
The VHP and the RSS are well known to spread hate and to have
participated in ghastly acts of violence within India against Muslims,
Christians, and oppressed castes, not to speak of spreading the general
misogyny that their ideology preaches.
 
Sonal Shah’s
statement is gratifying, but unpersuasive. The VHP’s Shyam Tiwari
recently said, “Sonal was a member of the VHP of America at the time of
the [2001 Kutch, Gujarat] earthquake. Her membership has expired.” This
was eight years after the 1993 Gujarat riots, when the VHP had an
active, and ghastly role. Ms. Shah was 33 years old then. Her parents
were active in Hindutva organizations. How could she not have known of
their role, and the controversy surrounding them? She was not from an
apolitical household, but an activist one. I brought up her parents
only to suggest that she cannot claim now that she was ignorant of the
VHP’s role in India. She must have known. And yet she participated in
its activities. There were a host of other agencies that raised money
for the earthquake survivors. All the earthquake survivors: credible
media reports showed that the money raised by the VHP did not go to
Muslim survivors, only Hindu ones (for example, “Communalizing Relief:
VHP seizes earthquake opportunity,” Statesman, Kolkata, 12 February
2001 and Vijay Dutt, “Discrimination in Distribution of Relief against
Dalits in Gujarat Causes Concern,” Hindustan Times, 27 February 2001).
This is hardly an act of charity.

The VHP says Ms. Shah left the organization in 2001. Three events from 2004 bear mention:       

(1)
Ms. Shah delivered a keynote address at the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh
young conference. The HSS is the U. S. branch of the RSS. The
University of Chicago’s Martha Nussbaum describes the RSS as “possibly
the most successful fascist movement in any contemporary democracy.”
The RSS “guru” (teacher) M. S. Golwalkar wrote glowingly about Nazi
“race pride,” and called it a “good lesson for us in Hindusthan to
learn and profit by.”

(2)
Ms. Shah delivered a keynote address at an Ekal Vidyalaya conference in
Florida. The Ekal Vidyalaya’s are schools set up in tribal areas. The
RSS’s Chief of Service work, Premchand Goel, said that the RSS and the
VHP run “thousands of Ekal Vidyalayas.” One Ekal Vidyalaya teacher,
Mohan Lal, told Frontline reporter, T. K. Rajalakshmi, “We go for the
RSS shakha [branch] meetings regularly. The teachers are selected only
if they subscribe to the RSS way of thought.”