Meet Canadian Hindu Advocacy

Yeah, that's both of them right there.  Bannerjee to the left and, presumably, Naresh Patel to the right.  And you can tell its all of them because when the interviewer, at about the 1:30 mark, challenges Bannerjee to scare up another Hindu from the crowd, he can't.

They are, incidentally, protesting the prayer sessions offered each Friday at Valley Park Middle School for their Muslim students.  Most of the media outlets put the crowd at about 50.  You can see the JDL's Meir Weinstein briefly, I think, looking dapper in a black suit.

Canadian Hindu Advocacy = 2 Skinny Hindi

 ...Naresh Patel and Ron Banerjee, so their promise to erect "massive pickets" outside Valley Park Middle School, which brings in an Imam for Friday prayer services , can safely be met with wild gales of laughter.

 As for whether the service offends the notion of  public schools as secular space, I am of two minds.  There may be a slippery slope here, although Joe Warmington's arguments aren't terribly compelling: putting up a nativity scene around Xmas seems far more peripheral to the Christian religion than weekly prayer services do to the Muslim one.  Furthermore, does anyone really expect the school to hand out late slips every week to upwards of 400 students for running off to pray?  That sounds impractical.

JDL History Rewritten

As I mentioned yesterday, the only official account of events by any of the participants in the Jewish Defense League/English Defense league meet-up on January 11th has come from Canadian Hindu Advocacy, a small Hindu Nationalist group allied with the JDL. In their original news release, the CHA strongly suggested that CHA/JDL members had physically confronted ARA protesters and "repelled" them. Furthermore, their release suggested that "security teams" from these two groups had "assisted Toronto Police in making a number of arrests as several masked attackers blocked roads and violently assaulted police."

After some poking around on my part, during which I suggested that this story might contradict the JDL's claim to have practiced strict non-violence at the event (and might also be bullshit), a second news release appeared on CHA's website. This one reads:

TUESDAY ARA VIOLENCE

On Tuesday evening, Toronto Police arrested numerous violent attackers who had congregated outside the Toronto Zionist Center with weapons and violent intentions.

A Canadian Hindu Advocacy delegation had joined with JDL security to assist. CHA and JDL assisted Toronto Police in maintaining order.

Our staff repelled the violent assault by pointing out to Toronto Police the location of the perpetrators of violence. Toronto Police then made lawful arrests, based partly on our valuable observation skills.

The assistance did not include ‘knocking heads’ or perpetrating violence or racism, as suggested by certain radical Islamist sources. Violence and aggression is the stock in trade of our Islamist and ARA opponents and is not perpetrated by our organizations.

CANADIAN HINDU ADVOCACY

So instead of fighting it out with the ARA, the JDL and CHA bravely pointed at the young people carrying banners and suggested that police go talk to them. Powerful stuff. And since I'm the only one that suggested heads might have been "knocked together", I guess I am the radical Islamist source noted in the release. Mom will be so proud.

EDL/JDL Love Fest Attracts Counterprotests, and Hindu Nationalist Security Detail!

The English Defense League/ Jewish Defense League cross-Atlantic meet-&-greet, scheduled for tonight at the Torontio Zionist Centre, will see counter-protests. The ARA plans to be there, and there will be a candlelight vigil held outside the nearby subway station.

More ominously, or perhaps hilariously, Canadian Hindu Advocacy--a Hindu Nationalist outfit consisting almost entirely of Ron Banerjee and Naresh Patel, will not only be in
attendance, they will will

...be sending a special security team to join JDL and deter any ARA and Islamic disruptors.

...which will presumably consist of Ron Banerjee and Naresh Patel.

Things should get hopping in front of the Zionist Center tonight! Someone's specs might get busted!

Interestingly enough, Banerjee is a supporter of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) whose leader in the state of Gujurat, Narendra Modi, is...wait for it...a huge admirer of Adolf Hitler, and history texts in that state glorify Hitler as a great nationalist while making no mention of The Holocaust. So when JDL leader Meir Weinstein writes "Never Again!" well, hey buddy, your pals support people who aren't so sure it happened the first time.