HCUK Internal Dispute posing an existential threat
FAO: Hindu temples & Organisations and other HCUK stake-holders
Hindu Council UK is reverting to the original website due to an internal dispute as explained in the Accounts published at the Charity’s Commission for the year ended 31 March 2023:
The dispute is between Umesh Sharma JP and Rajnish Kashyap who has been the Chair and General Secretary since 2011/2012 respectively, whereas the maximum terms allowed are two, each of three years. There was a reset from an earlier dispute perpetrated also by Rajnish Kashyap which he lost and was ordered to discard his offshoot website hinducounciluk.net in 2016. Hence this letter to make everyone aware that we the older five trustees are reverting to the original website hinducounciluk.org.
Umesh Sharma and Rajnish Kashyap are supported by one other Trustee Mahanta Shrestha. In our camp are the other five trustees Anil Bhanot, Mrs Krishna Bhan, Chris Gopaul, Dipen Rajyaguru and Moorthyji.
The present dispute is more complicated as Umesh Sharma JP and Rajnish Kashyap have said that they do not respect the HCUK Charter which is part of the HCUK Constitution legally. Basically, Umesh Sharma and Rajnish Kashyap have refused to rotate their central positions to allow new trustees to take up their roles. HCUK being a national body only allows a maximum of two three-year terms so that there is always an upward movement to allow other Hindus to take up these top positions.
The Charter as part of the Constitution has these two clauses:
- The Chair and General Secretary can only serve a maximum of two terms of three years.
(HCUK being a national umbrella body for Govt and Interfaith representation other Hindu representatives should be given the opportunity in these leading up-front positions, where these positions receive invitations from all Govt depts, St Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, Jewish BoD commemorations, Buckingham Palace events, Lambeth Palace, Lord Mayor of City of London, and of course London Mayor City Hall and many other institutions of UK.] - Only two representatives from each temple and any Hindu organization are allowed to be members of HCUK
Rajnish Kashyap has the password for the Charity Commission which he has refused to share with any of the other trustees. The Independent Examiner of Accounts has the password for the Companies House, but he has no problem sharing it with nominated directors. Not only that Rajnish Kashyap has registered his personal Hotmail email ID with the Charity Commission and not the HCUK’s general secretary email ID.
In April 2023 Anil Bhanot the Managing Trustee asked for an AGM which was already delayed so that elections could rotate the central positions of Chair and General Secretary.
We had a system of agreeing the AGM agenda in a pre-AGM meeting of directors/trustee, so a pre-AGM meeting was held on 21 May 2023 for the trustees, but Rajnish invited his fellow colleague who were not trustees but Umeshji and Rajnish’s colleagues from Ram Mandir Southall and other non-trustee/directors. They were not kept in touch by Rajnish for years and they ended up disrupting the meeting so that there was no business concluded and a new pre-AGM date was postponed to 11 June 2023, for the directors/trustees only. Rajnish had misled the directors/trustees for this May meeting in texts by assuring us that he has only invited the directors/trustees but in actual fact he had used the bcc to invite his other colleague to that meeting. Evidently in texts he confirmed to other directors that he has not invited anyone else in his bcc email. Proof of this deceit was provided to him later, but Rajnish seemed to be set in his agenda not to follow the precedented HCUK rules of setting AGM’s. Primarily this was because he knew he has to vacate his position to allow another Hindu Executive to become the general secretary.
Incidentally, Anil Bhanot’s Managing Trustee position Rajnish Kashyap targeted in his earlier dispute from 2011 to 2016 by claiming that Anil Bhanot was never appointed a Managing Director/Trustee. He then created a discord between Anil and Dr Rao of Bala ji temple, who were both very close hitherto, by launching an offshoot website hinducounciluk.net and uploading nasty letters on his website to say Anil was never appointed a managing trustee, thus holding him out to be a liar. Anil Bhanot suffered this indignation for several years from 2011 to 2016 until he engaged Dac Beacroft lawyers to ask Rajnish/Dr Rao to remove their defamatory material from their website. Dac Beachcroft proved to them that Anil Bhanot was legitimately elected and appointed as Managing Director/Trustee in 2006. Not only that, the lawyers proved to them that Anil Bhanot was also one of the founding members of HCUK in 1994. Anil Bhanot was also the General Secretary of HCUK from 2003 to 2009 who after serving his two terms in this important central role he stepped down but remained as a managing trustee to oversee the correct functioning of HCUK from this back-office role. This irked them and they sought to remove him by defaming him, but they lost in 2016.
After this dispute Rajnish Kashyap’s offshoot website, hinducounciluk.net, was dissolved and he became the general secretary of our original HCUK as after apologies we all trusted he would be fine, with Umesh Sharma JP as the Chair, as prior to this unification Umesh Sharma was also the Chair of our original HCUK. This reconciliation was seen as the best way to proceed in 2016.
However, after two terms since 2016, they have both refused to rotate their positions to allow other candidates an opportunity. It seems they get used to receiving state invitations and they don’t want to give others a chance.
Indeed, when Anil Bhanot was general secretary, he used to give others the opportunity to go to various state type events also but since 2016 only the Chair and the General Secretary share those state invitations. In fact, sometimes they block other trustees altogether as for Diwali events by Government and Lord Mayor of the City of London. Anil Bhanot is also the Hindu religious advisor to the Mod but Rajnish blocked him for the Mod work too.This is not right.
Anyway, after the 21 May inconclusive meeting, another pre-AGM directors/trustees meeting was held on 11 June 2023 which resolved to propose Mrs Krishna Bhan to be the new Chair and the AGM to be held at a neutral venue but not at the Ram Mandir because of the disruptive elements experienced in the May meeting. This AGM meeting was set for 30 July 2023.
However, Umesh Sharma – a JP – decided later that he will not observe our procedure of this pre-AGM and he decided to call his own AGM on 8 July 2023. Once again, they – three directors/trustees: Umeshji, Mahantaji, and Rajnish – invited their colleagues including some from Rajnish’s old disputed database, but not current members, to this meeting.
Membership was in disarray since Umesh Sharma and Rajnish had blocked new members to join and they were using the HCUK just to consolidate their own power, as it transpired.
Our five directors/trustees – Anilji, Krishnaji,Chrisji, Dipenji, Moorthyji – objected to their AGM of 8 July 2023 as an illegitimate meeting and asked them to follow the rules and propsitions set in the pre-AGM meeting of 11 June 2023 but they stopped responding to us.
In their 8 July AGM they appointed a lawyer Himanshu Sharma – a complete unknown to us for community work – straight as a trustee, and two more trustees from Ram Mandir Southall Balmukund Joshi and Gulu Anand. Rajnish appointed his colleague Kirit Mistry who also under Rajnish’s authority had drawn a large sum of £5,500 for work done on Covid awareness. They could not give any supporting documentation of work done to the Independent Examiner as per Accounts 2023 attached. But the maximum estimate for 10 hours work would have been £500, so an over payment of £5,000 was authorized by Rajnish for his colleague Kirit Mistry. Umesh Sharma said it was the £5,000 grant Kirit got for HCUK so he is entitled to it, but it was for HCUK not for Kirit. Anyway at the 8 July meeting, Umesh Sharma JP consolidated further his power at Ram Mandir Southall to remain as Chair of HCUK, in effect forever. This is in violation of the HCUK Constitution.
Rajnish Kashyap who holds the password to the Charity Commission register changed the records immediately to add those four names as trustees: Himanshu Sharma, Balmukund Joshi, Gulu Anand and Kirit Mistry.
However, these additional four names are rejected by the other five Directors/Trustees and therefore do not appear on the Companies House Register whose password is with the Independent Examiner in his professional capacity. This dispute is disclosed in the Accounts attached as above [A1], which incidentally were uploaded to the Charity Commission Register by Rajnish Kashyap himself and thus the disclosure therein are not subject to dispute.
Umesh Sharma JP has therefore appointed six of his Ram Mandir Southall fellow trustees/executives onto the Board of HCUK, whilst the Constitution Charter only allows two representatives from each temple – Umeshji, Mahantaji., Joshiji, Guluji and Arunji plus Chrisji although Umeshji seems to have now removed him from Ram Mandir’s Hindu Temple Trust Charity since Chrisji is on our side. This consolidation of power is a clear violation of the HCUK umbrella body Constitution and rules and practices.
The five directors/trustees held their AGM on 30 July 2023. Mrs Krishna Bhan was elected as Chair in line with the agenda agreed in the pre-AGM meeting of June. Anil Bhanot remains managing trustee, Chris Gopaul remains treasurer, Dipen Rajyaguru and Mr Moorthy remain in their positions and also the other three trustees Umesh Sharma, Rajnish Kashyap and Mahanta Shrestha but Rajnish to remain general secretary for one year only for continuity purposes.
Neither AGM notices went on the website as the new website was controlled by Rajnish. Members for this purpose were only the directors/trustees or who had paid the £25 subscription in the last year or even the previous year. Nobody else had paid the membership subscription since Umesh ji and Rajnish had blocked new entrants. In fact one HCUK executive, who had worked extensively on the Hindu Report asked Umesh Sharma to allow more young people in and Umeshji literally threw our stalwart HCUK Executive out of Ram Mandir where that meeting had taken place and he never came back to HCUK.
Dispute Reconciliation attempt:
We tried to reconcile with them and Chris Gopaul from our group of the five directors arranged a meeting with Umesh Sharma and Anil Bhanot on 1 December 2023, and the minutes of that meeting approved by Umesh Sharma through email are attached for your information:
[B1: File Note of our Attempted Reconciliation Meeting of 1 December 2023]
Umesh Sharma, although agreed to step down in this meeting face to face, he wrote back to then preferring the legal route and so he did not step down. Since Umesh Sharma and Mahanta Shrestha had appointed their lawyer Himanshu Sharma in their AGM we suspect it was precisely for this reason.
Anyway, Umesh Sharma did not honour the reconciliatory agreements he had made in that meeting.
Legal Correspondence:
Our solicitors Mills Chody wrote to Umesh Sharma’s lawyer Himanshu Sharma’s firm MB Law Ltd in which Mr Mahouzi Sina acted as the solicitor against us.
Mills Chody’s correspondence is mainly about their unlawful AGM and Umesh Sharma’s breach of fiduciary duties as a director/trustee.
Umesh Sharma had appointed Himanshu Sharma as a trustee and now he appointed his firm MB Law Ltd to look after the dispute, a clear conflict of interest and a breach of independence as Himanshu Sharma is his trustee. Further they appointed Mr Mahouzi Sina a Muslim as their solicitor upon which we have no issue and we are sure of his legal credentials but surely the appointment is also in conflict of interest for HCUK matters where the crux of the problem Umesh and Rajnish started from Anil Bhanot’s ‘reply-tweets’ in debates with the subcontinent in the autumn of 2021 speaking against the indiscriminate killings of poor Hindus by Islamists in Bangladesh and also there were some tweet-debates on a case of a forced conversion which led to a Hindu child’s death in December 2021.
Thus, their Choice of the lawyers MB Law Ltd never addressed the legality points asked by our lawyers Mills Chody but their correspondence continued to attack Anil Bhanot for his ‘reply-tweets’ of the autumn/winter of 2021 where he was replying to tweets from the subcontinent about the Islamists mobs going from village to village killing innocent Hindus and destroying their temples in the autumn of 2021 in Bangladesh, and in winter, following a Tamil Hindu child Lavanya committing suicide under pressure from Indian Christians proselytism.
The BBC didn’t even report those incidents of Hindu killings and a child’s death by forced conversion – in spite of a large Hindu demonstration at the BBC offices for Hindu Lives Matter; clearly BBC’s diversity policy is flawed and has become non-inclusive to all faiths due to their editorial staff mix, in spite of the BBC being a great British public institution it needs to work on its diversity and inclusion policy – and so Anil felt he had to speak against what he thought was an injustice against poor vulnerable Hindus. Our HCUK general secretary Rajnish hardly ever got involved with contentious matters but Anil feeling an injustice and empathy for the innocent deaths started debating on twitter about these constant attacks on Hindus for blasphemy charges where people take the law into their own hands and start killing Hindus and Christians. Further, the Indian Christians convert coercively vulnerable Hindus which is wrong but always his ‘reply-tweets’ in debates from the subcontinent only called for dialogue and legislative measures to protect innocent Hindus.
On 22 February 2022 a Muslim individual of Bangladeshi heritage from the Five Pillars of Islam organization picked up Anil’s tweets as Anil used to hastag #Bangladesh, on the Bangladesh violence of Autumn 2021, at times in his debate tweets. He exposed these tweets in an out of context manner, holding them to be Islamophobic. Anil argued that they were not but when Anil tried to debate the point of Kaffir and then said that even his Muslim colleagues agree with him that we are not Kaffirs as interpreted by the Islamists he then asked Anil for the names of those Muslims, then Anil disengaged with him. The point is that he had disclosed selective tweets out of those debates where for instance one says Dawah makes good Muslims Shaitans – miscreants – but not the one that 99% of Muslims are good Muslims ad that there is no need for conversion but to be good Hindus, good Muslims and good Christians. Anyway, suddenly there were thousands of Muslims trolling Anil, which he tried to engage with first also, but on Kaffir some Muslims thought it was a given thing to kill them indiscriminately, others sympathized. It ought to be noted that after a year or so of this the same individual is seen discussing how to overthrow the Government for a Caliphate in a video on google. Anil also tried to argue that the word Kaffir is from the Sanskrit word Kaayer which in English is Coward. Apart from the Muslims who were sympathetic, most just trolled one after another, without listening to any reasoning.
Umesh Sharma and Rajnish Kashyap saw this unfortunate tweet episode as an opportunity to get rid of Anil Bhanot from HCUK. They condemned him outright on HCUK twitter handle, without allowing for his defense or cite his reasons behind his debate-tweets. Thus, the twitter trolls got worse as they saw Anil’s tweets without any good reason. Anil begged Rajnish and Umesh Sharma on 25 February 2022 to tweet his defense, his reasons of speaking against indiscriminate Hindu killings, but they both refused. This is how Umesh Sharma and Rajnish Kashyap inflamed the twitter trolls attack on Anil inciting religious hatred against him from the unsuspecting Muslim public who naturally saw no good reason for those tweets. Anil apologized to them as it was not their fault for not knowing the full reasons. Indeed, even Five Pillars, to be fair to them, later allowed by defense reasons in their article, but Umesh Sharma a JP was cruel to deny Anil his reasons.
On 26 February 2022 HCUK had an emergency directors/trustees meeting to discuss the issue of Anil’s ‘reply-tweets’. Umesh Sharma directed that Anil should resign, without giving Anil a chance to even cite his defense. This is a JP chairing the meeting. His co-trustee Mahanta Shrestha responded ‘yes, Chairman take this action’. Other directors/trustees were not convinced. Anil presented his defense, the reasons behind his tweet-debates on twitter re Bangladesh violence and forced conversion of Hindus. The directors/trustees then resolved that Anil should not resign but only not do any HCUK work until the dust settles from social media trolls and a unanimous resolution was passed for Anil not to resign. In fact, Anil himself suggested he will take a break from HCUK activities for six months, even though other directors thought three months would be enough, but they did not want Anil to leave HCUK. Yet Rajnish went ahead on Monday 28 February 2022 and removed Anil from Charity Commission as a trustee, contravening directors/trustees resolution. This is how they work, no respect for other directors/trustees’ resolutions. Anyway, as it turned out, Anil was reinstated by a unanimous decision of a directors/trustees meeting on 4 September 2022, i.e., after six months of no HCUK activity.
Only Rajnish had the password for Hindu Council UK twitter handle so none of the other directors could help, though they sympathized with Anil’s family. Both of them, Umesh and Rajnish, were very cruel as their condemnation tweets on Anil increased the twitter troll’s activity and threats against Anil who had to leave home and go to India to escape the threats. As it turned out the social media trolling lasted 3 weeks to mid-March when some Muslims started saying, ‘leave Uncle alone…’he was only defending his fellow Hindus…and we do come from Hinduism, …while still the odd one saying it’s good that their ancestors killed the ancient religions’ Zoroastrians and Jews to make way for their perfect religion …etc. etc. Anil had learnt his lesson about social media not to ever get involved in debates.
Later it came to Anil’s notice that some Islamists had manipulated his tweets, for instance Anil’s tweet was on coercive Proselytisation and Dawah in the context of the helpless child Lavanya committing suicide he wrote that this coercive forced conversion is evil. But they turned it into ‘Islam is evil’ – which Anil would never say, as he inherently believes in the spirituality at the core of all religions.
In response to forced conversions Anil had said for instance that Hinduism is the father of all religion; it was to show our unity on faith at a spiritual level among all faiths, not at all any superiority, but to make words like Kaffir redundant. The father of religion remark is meant also historically to show Hindu and Zoroastrian religions, even Yazidi religion as sister religions and for the Abrahamic link Anil saw the word Jehova linked to the word Yahwahe in Rig Veda the oldest scripture certified by UNESCO. Jesus tenets are so Indic religions complementary. Even in Islam Anil had tweeted that Dara Shikoh a Mughal Royal who had studied Sanskrit likened some verses in the Quran to the Hindu ancient Upanishads. The unity at a spiritual level is not about superiority or inferiority but rather the humble middle path or Jesus’s passage to heaven say through the ‘eye of the needle’. It ought to be noted, however, that some of Anil’s tweet-debates came to pass as visionary as we saw extreme levels of religious violence in 2022 in India with the SarTanSayJuda (STSJ) the Islamists Beheading gangs beheading really poor innocent Hindus for their own drummed up charges of Islamophobia, and if we may say so even in UK the impact of the false narrative from BBC and especially the Guardian against Hindus here onto the most diverse multicultural city Leicester in the autumn of 2022. After the 7/7 bombing in UK Anil had asked for a debate on the word Kaffir (as Kaayer) at the Faith Communities Consultative Council at DCLG, precisely to have a policy lead for inter faith respect among religions but the debate was never called for.
It is unfortunate that the BBC selects their interviewers who are sometimes Hinduphobic in that they invite Muslims from India to talk about Hindu Muslim matters who are known to ‘dog-whistle’ the STSJ gangs to kill poor Hindus on account of what are just social media disagreements. However, it must be said that many Muslims working for BBC are inclusive as we remember in the past. Now of course the Times Radio is filling that inclusive gap admirably, not least with their Muslims interviewers who are inclusive as in the old times.
MB Law correspondence said that Anil has even spoken ill of Christians, citing his reply to one tweet in 2020 about an Indian pastor coercively converting Hindus – well that is exactly what Anil is against, coercive forced conversion. Equally Anil defends Christians being persecuted in the subcontinent, but he is against their coercive conversion methods, which once again his 2020 tweet proved visionary as it led to a child’s death in 2021. Anil spoke against the evils and falsehoods in society, never against any religion, per se.
MB Law and Umesh Sharma said that the individual from the Five Pillars also complained against Anil to his Institute of Chartered Accountants and that somehow was proof enough to dismiss him from HCUK. What baffles us is Umesh Sharma’s logic, a JP, we ask is he fit to be a JP? Anyhow, Anil’s Institute investigated the complaint thoroughly and rejected it, with their concluding remarks:
“The Committee concluded that there is insufficient evidence that, in posting the tweets, Mr Bhanot was likely to bring discredit on himself, ICAEW or the profession of accountancy and so found there was no case for him to answer. In reaching its decision, the Committee bore in mind Mr Bhanot’s rights under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998. It also took into account the relevant regulatory case law in this area particularly Holbrook v BSB [25 March 2022] and BSB vToch [March 2022]. Our file has now been closed.”
The ICAEW verdict came in time for Anil to celebrate the 2022 Christmas festivities freely.
MB Law wrote at length about Umesh Sharma reporting Anil to the police, giving a crime reference too in their correspondence to our Lawyers. But nothing came out of it as Anil only called for dialogue and legislative measures. In his 8 July 2023 AGM Umesh Sharma also defamed Anil for his tweets boasting to the general community at Ram Mandir about reporting Anil to the police. There is a deeper issue here, a pattern of Umesh Sharma that whenever he is challenged, he threatens the challenger with police action, because of his contacts in Police as a JP. Should the Justice department not retrain JP’s periodically as certainly in Umesh’s case he seems to act as though he is above the law.
In June 2023, he was challenged on how he dismissed a Ram Mandir Southall’s lady trustee of 40 years’ service through his ill-votebank procedures at Ram Mandir Southall. She had left in tears then as she felt being thrown out of Ram Mandir for no good reason. She had only lent a shoulder to cry on to another lady at the temple under Umesh Sharma – a JP – who had to leave voluntarily to escape him, but he got rid of this poor old lady trustee too, because he found out that she had heard the other lady’s plea, and so she knew about the issue. This lady, now a former Trustee of Ram Mandir spoke to Anil, again in tears, and naturally Anil revealed it all to the HCUK board as that would be the first and right thing to do – it was acse of safeguarding women. When this was revealed to the board, Umesh Sharma did not deny it but instead threatened to report Anil to the police. By some weird logic, MB law correspondence refers to Anil’s revelation as bullying Umesh. How?
Mediation:
A meeting was held at the International Dispute Resolution Centre (IDRC) which Anil Bhanot paid for but where Umesh Sharma JP did not budge an inch from his position. Umesh had brought all his Ram Mandir Southall Executives there and Himanshu Sharma his lawyer and their solicitor Mr Mahouzi Sina.
The mediation lasted the full day but there was no movement on their part to allow changes in the central positions of Chair and General Secretary.
Other Relevant Matters
Umesh Sharma’s co-trustee at Ram Mandir Arun Thakur is the President of the other sister organization, the National Council of Hindu Temples (NCHT), and Jay Sharma related to Umesh Sharma as the now secretary of NCHT also came as observers. NCHT is also under Ram Mandir Southall control and it is effectively dormant now – even in the Leicester riots of 2022 the Shivalaya temple that was desecrated they did nothing to enter into a dialogue at all. Anil Bhanot had spoken to his colleague Imam Mogra who assured him that the Muslim Council of Britian (MCB) was discomforted by the incident, and in spite of Anil’s efforts Umesh Sharma and Arun Thakur did not pursue it further with MCB to enter into dialogue under NCHT, nor Rajnish and Umesh Sharma for that matter under HCUK.
Incidentally, Umesh Sharma and Arun Thakur rebuked Anil Bhanot in an HCUK meeting in 2023 for having signed a joint-statement with Lord Indarjit Singh on the grooming gangs affecting our young girls – so they won’t do any useful work themselves nor let others do it.
On another note, Anil had also founded a Council of Dharmic Faith (CoDF) with Dr Natubhai Shah for precisely the reason to bring a better understanding between all faiths – as the Three Faiths Forum do – but here again Rajnish displaced Anil in 2015 by bringing his colleagues to outvote Anil. Since 2015 the CoDF effectively died. Rajnish accumulates positions without having the capability to do ecumenical interfaith work. CoDF was Anil’s vision to unite all Indic faiths and already he had Zoroastrian Executive on it, he was in the midst to invite the Bahais, Dr Shah had started talking to the Three Faiths Forum…..ultimately we would have brought a better understanding among all faiths. If it weren’t for Rajnish.
Next Steps
Reverting to the HCUK issue at hand, our lawyers are now writing to the Charity Commission, and we the undersigned trustees have had to take this action to revert to our original website www.hinducounciluk.org
Finally, for the Government, Anil Bhanot and Dipen Rajyaguru would like to add here that we at our part of our HCUK do not believe Islamophobia or Hinduphobia are workable definitions in legislation and our proposal is to define antiMuslim/Islam hatred and HinduMisia for legislative purposes. We can help with the definition of HinduMisia for legislative purposes, should the need arise. Islamophobia and Hinduphobia are good generic terms to help people keep on their toes, but we do not believe they are legislative terms at all. Muslimness or Hinduness can’t be defined surely for legislative purposes.
For our Temples, Anil Bhanot would like to add that he defines our Hindu Dharma to comprise of three main components, in addition to its ten principles and in an ocean of other doctrines, but at its core, in simple terms, he believes through our vast scriptural reference that Dharma is simply about: Justice, Compassion, Charity.
We are writing to you to help us rebuild HCUK again to advance those Vedic tenets and would like you to think about nominating two representatives from your temple who can help HCUK, please. We will write to you again to have a community wide meeting so as to clarify any issues herein this rather long protracted article but more importantly discuss the wider Hindu issues representing the British Hindus.
Until we find a new secretary all emails should be addressed to admin@hinducounciluk.org
Thank you
Anil Bhanot, Managing Trustee
Dated 9 June 2024 and Co-signed by:
Mrs Krishna Bhan, Chair
Chris Gopaul, Treasurer
Dipen Rajyaguru, Diversity & Inclusion
[Mr Moorthyji is not well but Mr M P Nathan, as proxy, agrees with the above]
Enclosures:
[A1] 2023 Accounts
[B1] Minutes of a meeting to reconcile which was not honoured by Umeshji