Ekal Vidyalaya USA is the US counterpart of Ekal Vidyalaya India, which is an RSS-VHP-run project. Ekal is accused of promoting hate against Muslim and Christian minorities and indoctrinating students in remote villages inhabited by tribal people. Prominent Indian journalist Hartosh Singh Bal in an interview said that Ekal Vidyalayas are less about education and more about the indoctrination of tribals. A Committee set up by India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development and headed by Avdhash Kaushal reported on Ekal Vidyalaya schools in the Singhbhum district in the state of Jharkhand and in the Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts in the state of Assam. The Committee submitted its report in 2005 and found out that communalization is rampant in these schools and in their curriculum and textual materials.

The report states: “The training to the teachers of Ekal schools was mainly to spread communal disharmony in the communities and also to inculcate a fundamentalist political ideology… creating enmity amongst communities on the basis of religion.”

One of its early supporters, Pratap Chandra Sarangi played a crucial role in promoting Ekal schools in Odisha state. In 1999, Sarangi was the chief of Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of VHP, that was accused of leading a Hindu mob that burnt Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two children to death.