Powerful Hindutva Lobby Flexes its Muscle in California

[Riaz Haq]

Last year, California lawmakers voted 31-5 to approve the first state-wide bill (SB 403) explicitly banning caste discrimination. The bill, enjoying broad support among California voters, was sponsored by Senator Aisha Wahab.  It was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom under pressure from wealthy political donors belonging to the Hindutva lobby.  

Senator Aisha Wahab with Supporters of California Law to Ban Caste Discrimination

Hindutva Lobby:

The Hindutva lobby's opposition to the California anti-caste discrimination bill was spearheaded by Ramesh Kapur, a wealthy Massachusetts entrepreneur.  “If you want to be our next president, veto the bill”, Kapur told the governor in no uncertain terms, according to a recent investigative piece written by British journalist Andrew Cockburn and published in the Harper magazine.  Here's an excerpt from the article: 

"The ultimatum was decisive. Kapur said that Newsom emailed him three hours before going public: “I’m going to veto it.” Newsom’s move dashed the hopes of all who had fought for the bill, but it seems likely to reap him rich rewards. “Now that he has made that decision, he has become the champion of the Hindu cause,” Kapur told me over the phone from California, where he was busy organizing the first in a series of fundraisers for the governor in Silicon Valley, Chicago, and New Jersey. “Newsom is hot in the Indian-American community!”" 

In recent years, Hindu Americans have become the highest-income group in the United States. Most of them support Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP party. There are many billionaires among them, and they are willing to use their wealth to influence the US political process. They see AIPAC, the Israel lobby, as their inspiration. 

California AB 3027:

California bill (AB 3027) banning transnational repression was introduced in response to the attempted assassination of an American Sikh leader. The US government believes that the assassination was plotted by agents of the Indian government. This bill is strongly opposed by the Hindutva lobby which calls it "Hinduphobic". It is supported by law enforcement agencies in the state. The bill would provide an improved sense of personal security to many Indian Americans who are facing threats for opposing the Modi government in India. It is currently stalled in California Senate committees. Hindutva supporters see Zionists as useful allies in their effort to draw parallels between antisemitism and “Hinduphobia.”

California Hindutva Group Marches with Zionists in Support of Israel's Gaza Genocide

Donor Power: 

Gavin Newsom's veto of the bill to ban caste discrimination illustrates the power of the donors crushing popular will, making a mockery of democracy. The power of the Israel lobby (AIPAC) backed by rich Jewish-American donors is the most egregious example of this, as is the power of the gun lobby (NRA). 

Polls consistently show that the majority of Americans oppose US shipment of weapons to Israel while it slaughters tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, mainly children and women. But the Biden administration continues to send arms, ammunition and explosives to the Israeli government. Both Biden and Harris pay lip service to the need for an immediate ceasefire but refuse to stop giving Netanyahu the bombs that he is using to sustain the Gaza genocide. 

Similarly, the majority of Americans want laws to restrict gun ownership in the country. Polls after each mass shooting confirm broad support for gun control laws. But the US politicians refuse to pass such laws because of the power of the US gun lobby. 

American Muslim Vote:

There are enough Muslim voters in battleground states, particularly Michigan, where their vote can make a difference to the outcome of this year's presidential contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. But there is little difference between their positions on Gaza. Both have expressed strong support for Israel, thanks to the power of AIPAC and its wealthy billionaire donors. Nonetheless, it is interesting to look at the numbers. Here is an excerpt from the Harper piece on this:

"Since October 7—coincidentally the same day that Newsom announced his veto—the ongoing slaughter in Gaza has brought electoral peril for the Democrats. Polls report withering support across important components of the coalition that brought Biden to victory in 2020, especially among the Muslim community, which gave him up to 85 percent of its votes in that election, according to some polls. Although Hindus were less supportive of Biden than Muslims were in 2020 (25 percent went for Donald Trump, according to certain estimates, a slight uptick from 2016), some see their votes as the perfect replacement for the Democrats’ faltering Muslim coalition.  “We can make the difference!” Kapur exclaimed, brandishing a state-by-state breakdown of Hindu and Muslim populations to show that his fellow Hindus could deliver votes as well as money. Muslims outnumber Hindus in America, 3.5 million to 2.5 million. But in key swing states, the numbers Kapur presented to me, drawn mostly from 2014 data, almost balance out: Pennsylvania is home to 130,000 Hindus and 150,000 Muslims. In Georgia, the state’s 172,000 Hindus outnumber its 123,000 Muslims, while the 110,000 Hindus in Michigan provide some counterweight, Kapur implied, to the quarter million Muslims, many of whom are outraged by the Biden Administration’s support for Israel. In Nevada, Hindus outnumber Muslims by almost three to one, while in Virginia, Hindus have an edge of 200,000 to just under 170,000. During the 2021 Virginia governor’s race, both the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, and the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, paid attention to this voter pool and dutifully visited Hindu temples, but Youngkin reportedly made the stronger impression—he “listened deeply” to their concerns, as American Hindu Coalition chairman Shekhar Tiwari put it, especially their complaints about local schools’ efforts to promote diversity by modifying admissions policies at their expense. And Youngkin was not the first Republican to cultivate and enjoy Hindu support. In 2015, the Chicago billionaire industrialist Shalabh Kumar set up the Republican Hindu Coalition, which describes itself as “modeled after the highly successful Republican Jewish Coalition”; Steve Bannon was an honorary co-chair of the group. Kumar and his wife poured money into Trump’s 2016 election campaign, which was making major media buys in swing states. Trump even recorded a message in Hindi". 

Related Links:

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[Riaz Haq]

Is the UAE a Force For Stability in the Middle East?

by William Hartung

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhartung/2024/09/26/is-the-uae-a...

During a White House visit earlier this week, President Biden and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan expressed their desire to intensify cooperation between their two nations on a variety of fronts. Most notably, President Biden designated the UAE as a Major Defense Partner, which the White House said “will allow for unprecedented cooperation through joint training, exercises, and military-to-military collaboration, between the military forces of the United States, the UAE, and India, as well as other common military partners, in furtherance of regional stability.” But the UAE’s recent track record raises serious doubts about its interest in promoting stability in the Middle East, and highlights its pursuit of its own narrow interests, often through military means. The new designation amounts to a virtual endorsement of the UAE’s aggressive, destabilizing history in the Middle East and North Africa.

With Israel escalating its Mideast war into Lebanon and the presidential campaign heating up, the news that the United States is strengthening its alliance with the United Arab Emirates is far off most people’s radar. But it shouldn’t be. The Biden administration’s decision to double down on its relationship with the UAE is yet another example of its misguided approach to the region, from enabling Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon to attempting to broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Far from sowing the seeds of stability and peace, the administration’s maneuvers are bolstering three of the most disruptive, destabilizing states in the region – in essence rewarding them for their recent histories of aggression and human rights abuses.

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Is this the record of a nation that is likely to be a force for peace and stability in the region? The UAE has its own agenda – developing a security network and port access across the Persian Gulf and North Africa – that may or may not coincide with U.S. policy or long-term U.S. interests.



The next administration needs to take a careful look at U.S. security policy in the Middle East and recalibrate its relationships with governments engaged in aggression and human rights abuses, from Israel to Saudi Arabia to the UAE. Continuing down the current path is a recipe for continuing war and dangerous escalation.

[Riaz Haq]

Excerpts from "They Called Us Exceptional" by Prachi Gupta (pp. 7-8) . Crown. Kindle Edition.

White America crafted a tempting story to explain the ascent of Asian Americans—“an important racial minority pulling itself up from hardship and discrimination to become a model of self-respect and achievement,” as a 1966 article in U.S. News & World Report described Chinese Americans. Those once seen as “Yellow Peril” and “Dusky Peril” became a “model minority,” creating a new racial category: Asians were those who could assimilate into whiteness but maintain a distinct cultural identity. In America, riches await, and with a little grit, anyone can reap them. The story tempered the racial progress of the civil-rights era, as if to tell Black people: If those Asians can be so successful, why can’t you? Racism was a part of America’s sordid past. The success of these new Asians proved that. Indian Americans have since been allotted a specific prominence within the context of this story. In 2009, the year I graduated from college, an article in Forbes declared Indian Americans “the new model minority,” hailing families like ours as “the latest and greatest ‘model.’ ” Within a little more than a generation, Indian Americans have become one of the wealthiest and most highly educated immigrant groups in the country, earning a median income of more than one hundred thousand dollars. The steep ascent of Indian Americans reified the pernicious model-minority myth. They called us exceptional. We fulfilled their prophecy. But the story of our subcommunity’s rise wasn’t one of genetics, nor can it simply be explained by work ethic, as pundits may have one believe. The true story, as described in The Other One Percent: Indians in America, is largely due to a rigorous but invisible selection process that often begins in India itself. In India’s highly stratified society, middle- and upper-class Indians from dominant castes typically access the best schools and jobs that feed into opportunities in America, which favor immigrants who bring specialized skills in tech and science. The result: an American diasporic community that is roughly nine times more educated than Indians in India. These conditions enabled Indian families like ours—families that had been thrice-filtered and stratified—to prosper like few other immigrant groups have ever done in America. Even though pockets of Indian Americans still struggle, this insular group has become the poster image for America’s post-racial fantasy.

[Riaz Haq]

MacArthur 'genius' grantee says Dad and Mom helped her defy caste prejudice

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/10/01/g-s1-25437/m...


Shailaja Paik was born into India’s Dalit community — one of the millions who belong to historically marginalized and oppressed castes due to their professions. They’re so scorned that they were for centuries known as “untouchables.” And even though modern India is changing, caste discrimination refuses to go away.

Paik faced prejudice both as a Dalit and a woman. She credits her parents, especially her father, for helping her (and her three sisters) defy the prejudices they faced as Dalits and as women. He made sure they got an education.

For Paik, schooling was a path to teaching history in the U.S., writing books about the untold plight of the Dalits — and now being dubbed a genius.

-------------------------------

A research professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, Paik is not a public figure as some recipients are. She has documented the deep social inequity rising from India’s repressive caste system that she is a part of. Her focus is the plight of Dalit women like herself.

------------

"My family moved to Pune, the nearest city [four hours away by road] in the 1960s, where I grew up. We lived in a one-room house in a slum area in Yerawada, on the Ahmednagar highway, which made it easier for my father to make trips to our native village so he could keep in touch with his family. Our house was about 20 by 20 feet, and we didn’t have access to toilets"

-----------------

"This is something that especially high-caste elite liberals do not want to talk about. Some [Indians] are quick to talk about the racial discrimination that they face but do not want to talk about the caste discrimination that they perpetuate."

"So we should talk about it and stop pretending that there is no caste, in India and elsewhere. There are very intense conversations taking place in the U.S. today, especially [around] caste and race."

[Riaz Haq]

Kerry Burgess
@KerryBurgess
My goodness, this was 10 years ago. How prophetic. This man (Phil Giraldi) knew his stuff. It's a shame that the US doesn't have people like this anymore

https://x.com/KerryBurgess/status/1842547446766780811

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After a full day of protesting outside AIPAC’s annual conference, CODEPINK members and supporters gathered at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC on the evening of March 1 for a discussion on the Israel lobby. The event featured remarks by former CIA case officer and current executive director of the Council for the National Interest Phil Giraldi and peace activist Miko Peled, author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

Giraldi began by arguing that the lobby is destructive for Americans, Israelis and Palestinians alike. The lobby, he explained, pushes the U.S. to pursue pro-Israel policies that harm its image, cause pain and suffering for Palestinians, and provide cover for the Israeli government to enact ill-advised and self-defeating policies.

Questioning the basis of the U.S.-Israel “special relationship,” Giraldi said that “Israel is no ally and never has been.” He described the bilateral relationship as “garbage,” as it heavily favors Israel.

The self-professed Jewish state has a massive spying operation in the U.S., pushes the U.S. into costly wars, and shares phony intelligence, Giraldi explained.

“When I was a CIA officer,” he recalled, “I used to see the intelligence that Israel passed to us. It was a joke. Every Israeli intelligence report that came to the United States was…essentially pushing an Israeli point of view, lying about what Arabs and the Iranians were up to and trying to convince Americans that there was some kind of threat coming from that direction. The only threat was coming from Israel.”

Domestically, Giraldi noted, the lobby has many levers of power: it maintains a stranglehold over Congress and the media, has been able to insert pro-Israel political appointees into the State Department, and helps facilitate close relations between Israeli security services and American police.

Despite this influence, Giraldi believes AIPAC’s days are numbered. “In my opinion, AIPAC and the rest of the Israel lobby is basically dead….but will take a long time to roll over,” he said. “I believe this because the task of defending what Israel does is beyond all credibility now. There’s just no way this thing can be sustained forever.”

Peled agreed with Giraldi’s assessment and proceeded to make an even bolder statement: “I have no doubt that within the next decade we are going to see the fall of Zionism in Palestine just like we saw the fall of apartheid in South Africa.”

This is not soon enough, however, he said, as “many Palestinians are still going to die” in the intervening years.

How does Peled believe Zionism will collapse? “I think what will bring them down is their arrogance and their stupidity,” he said. Israel does not appreciate the strides being made by the nonviolent movement in the West Bank, the significance of the unification of Israeli Arabs, or the momentum of the international solidarity movement, Peled explained.

AIPAC and its allies will not go down without a fight, however. Peled said the lobby is well versed at vilifying individuals and groups that question the Zionist narrative. The likes of Rasmea Odeh and Sami Al-Arian have been successfully depicted as threats, he pointed out, not only to Zionism, but also to American security. In reality, “the only threat [these individuals pose] is to the Zionist narrative,” Peled opined.


https://www.wrmea.org/2015-may/phil-giraldi-and-miko-peled-critique...

[Riaz Haq]

Who is lobbying for India’s Modi government on Capitol Hill? | Narendra Modi | Al Jazeera

by Mukta Joshi

US-based Hindu American Foundation has laundered Modi gov’t’s track record on minorities, championed its interests.


https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/10/15/who-is-lobbying-for-i...


15 Oct 2024
On a Wednesday morning in September 2022, a lobbyist reached out to a congressional staffer in Washington, DC. He wanted to set up a meeting on behalf of his client to discuss some human rights concerns in Pakistan and a newly introduced resolution in the United States House of Representatives regarding religious minorities in India.

During the meeting a few weeks later, the client made an appeal: Could the congressional office where the staffer worked back a ban on sustainment packages for F-16 fighter jets sold to Pakistan due to that country’s alleged persecution of its Hindu minority?

This client was not a foreign government or a defence policy think tank. It was a domestic nonprofit called the Hindu American Foundation.

The staffer was taken aback. Despite being familiar with the group and its advocacy on behalf of Hindus in the US, the staffer did not expect it to be so deeply involved in geopolitics.

The Indian government at that time had been publicly pushing back against a $450m F-16 package for Pakistan. India’s defence minister had expressed concerns about itto his US counterpart, and the external affairs minister had openly disparaged the US government for the package.

“In that moment”, the staffer said, “it became clear to me that the Hindu American Foundation was acting on behalf of the Indian government.”



The foundation, also known as HAF, emerged two decades ago as a voice for the Hindu community in the United States. It wasn’t formed to champion the Indian government.

But since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, HAF has ramped up its political activities in favour of the Indian government, which is led by Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

It has emerged, despite its claims of “nonpartisanship”, as an effective advocate of the BJP, attempting to influence the US government through meetings with members of Congress to push for the passage of multiple pieces of legislation on critical aspects of US foreign policy related to India.

Its founders, board members and a parallel political action committee – the Hindu American PAC – have made significant contributions to the election campaigns of legislators who have in turn supported HAF’s lobbying efforts on these issues.

Throughout this time, HAF has maintained a cosy relationship with the Modi government. It has acted in the US to counter the Modi government’s critics, collaborated with the Indian embassy on events and programmes, and corresponded with the embassy on sensitive matters.

Yet in public, HAF distances itself from the Indian government and the BJP. It vehemently refutes allegations that it acts on their behalf, reiterating that its members are merely Hindus engaged in the US political process and calling any allegations of government collusion “dual loyalty slurs”.

HAF appears to be treading a fine line. Its activities in favour of the Indian government, coupled with its continued collaboration with the Indian embassy, raise questions as to whether it should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938.

Registration as a foreign agent is required any time an entity represents the interests of a foreign principal before any agency or official of the US on the principal’s behalf.

The definition of a foreign agent in US law includes “any person who acts … at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal … and who directly or through any other person engages within the United States in political activities for, or in the interests of such foreign principal.”

[Riaz Haq]

Who is lobbying for India’s Modi government on Capitol Hill? | Narendra Modi | Al Jazeera

by Mukta Joshi

US-based Hindu American Foundation has laundered Modi gov’t’s track record on minorities, championed its interests.


https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/10/15/who-is-lobbying-for-i...

Registration as a foreign agent is required any time an entity represents the interests of a foreign principal before any agency or official of the US on the principal’s behalf.

The definition of a foreign agent in US law includes “any person who acts … at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal … and who directly or through any other person engages within the United States in political activities for, or in the interests of such foreign principal.”

“Lobbying for specific foreign policy issues would clearly qualify as ‘political activities’ under FARA,” said Benjamin Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy programme at the Quincy Institute think tank. “The threshold in the statute is merely doing work at the ‘request’ of a foreign principal,” he added.

But HAF is not registered under FARA, even though it has pushed the BJP government’s agenda before members of the US government.

“The mere fact that our positions overlap with those of a foreign principal is not enough to show that we are a foreign agent,” Mat McDermott, HAF’s senior director of communications, said in an email. “HAF is not affiliated with the Indian government or the BJP in any manner.” (HAF’s full response to Al Jazeera can be read here.)

One of the first political activities undertaken by HAF took place in 2005 when the US Department of State denied Modi a visa after interreligious violence erupted while he was chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat. HAF issued a statement condemning the decision, calling it the product of a “coordinated campaign” by the Indian left-wing and their US supporters to vilify Modi and the BJP.

“It was obviously a horrible chapter in Indian history. But you just have this focus on Hindu violence, but not Muslim violence,” Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, told this reporter in an interview.



“All of a sudden, [the narrative] shifts to ‘Hindus are dangerous and violent, and they’re anti-Muslim.’ It’s definitely compiling and compounding the negative portrayals of India.”

This was HAF’s first foray into Indian politics. In the years that followed, it largely focused its attention on domestic advocacy for Hindu causes.

In May 2005, HAF and other Hindu groups proposed ​​more than 117 edits to California textbooks that tackled India and Hinduism.

In 2007, the group rallied around a House resolution that for the first time would recognise the festival of Diwali. In 2008, it launched the Take Back Yoga campaign to promote and publicise the Hindu roots of yoga.

However, 2013 marked a noticeable shift in HAF’s lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill in favour of Modi, the prime ministerial candidate for the BJP in the upcoming Indian national elections.

Gaining ground
HAF on its website says it is politically agnostic and nonpartisan. Its status as a nonprofit bans it from making donations to candidates.

Its board members and executives, however, are on the board of the Hindu American Political Action Committee (HAPAC).

“There is no functional overlap between these two independent organizations nor meaningful communication. It is common and completely within the confines of US 501(c)(3) law for members of nonprofit boards to also serve on boards of political action committees in their personal time,” McDermott said.

Although the two groups are not officially affiliated with each other, all but two board members of HAPAC are part of HAF in some capacity.

HAPAC has spent nearly $200,000 on campaign contributions since it began making donations in 2012.

Donors to HAPAC over the years include many of HAF’s board members, such as co-founder Mihir Meghani and his family members.

[Riaz Haq]

Who is lobbying for India’s Modi government on Capitol Hill? | Narendra Modi | Al Jazeera

by Mukta Joshi

US-based Hindu American Foundation has laundered Modi gov’t’s track record on minorities, championed its interests.


https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/10/15/who-is-lobbying-for-i...

Meghani was also a co-founder of the Hindu Students Council, an organisation affiliated with the BJP. He was HAF’s top donor, according to its 2018 tax disclosures in Florida. He donated more than $500,000 that year.

Shekar Reddy, a trustee of the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation, was the second-largest donor. In 2022, that group was found to be raising money for the demolition of “illegal” Christian churches in India.

Like Meghani and Reddy, other affluent Hindu Americans have contributed to political campaigns through HAPAC. These include Ramesh Bhutada, an industrialist who has pledged more than $1m to Hindu organisations and causes, including HAF, through his family foundation.

Bhutada is also a director of Sewa International and former vice president of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh. Both organisations, which operate in the US, are part of the “Sangh Parivar”, a group of organisations affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is the ideological fountainhead of the BJP.

These political donations have helped rally support for Hindu and Indian geopolitical causes.



HAF’s founders and donors have also campaigned for political candidates.

“Ro Khanna is running for the US Congress against Mike Honda. Honda wrote a letter asking the State [Department] to deny Modi a visa,” Mihir Meghani wrote in a 2013 email on a Google group.

“It is imperative that as Indians and Hindus that we support Ro. As part of my commitment, I have given the maximum donation of $5,200 to only [two] candidates this year – Tulsi Gabbard and Ro Khanna, and I hope that you will give your maximum support to him as well.”

Meghani did not respond to multiple requests for an interview sent via email and the social media platform X.

Making way for Modi
Even before Modi was officially announced as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in September 2013, the tide was turning in his favour. The Brookings Institution think tank called him India’s most admired and most feared politician, and a number of opinion pieces about his popularity featured prominently in US and international media.

But at the same time, the Hindu-Muslim riots in his state remained a dark stain on Modi’s record.

In 2013, Representative Joseph Pitts, a Republican from Pennsylvania, introduced a resolution reaffirming the US government’s decision to not grant Modi a visa. According to an unnamed congressional staffer who spoke to India’s Outlook magazine: “Each office who signed the resolution received a visit from HAF … HAF is not promoting Modi, but they are trying to undermine anyone in Washington who is critical of Modi.”

On May 26, 2014, Modi was sworn in as prime minister. Soon after, his visa ban was lifted.

The first term
HAF stepped up its pro-Modi activities once he was elected prime minister in 2014. In 2016, it organised a conference call with Representative Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota and one of the 25 lawmakers who had sought a ban on Modi’s visa, “to clarify his contested record over legislation regarding India”, according to the India Post. The call included a number of organisations, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, a US-based nonprofit.

It also featured a man named Bharat Barai.

Barai, who would later sponsor a fundraiser for HAF and register as a foreign agent on behalf of the consul general of India, “specifically asked Ellison about his diatribe against Narendra Modi and happenings in Gujarat”, India Post reported. He offered to travel to Washington to talk to Ellison’s staff to give them a “clear picture” of how Modi handled the riots.

[Riaz Haq]

Who is lobbying for India’s Modi government on Capitol Hill? | Narendra Modi | Al Jazeera

by Mukta Joshi

US-based Hindu American Foundation has laundered Modi gov’t’s track record on minorities, championed its interests.


https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/10/15/who-is-lobbying-for-i...


On a cloudy Sunday afternoon in June 2017 in Washington, DC, the Indian embassy organised a welcome reception for Modi. More than 70 volunteers helped out at the event. Some were from the Washington Leadership Program, a nonprofit dedicated to placing South Asian students in congressional internships. Others were from the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, the international arm of the BJP’s ideological parent. The rest were from HAF.

“​​Congrats​ ​to HAF, HSS and WLP​ leadership​ for the coordination efforts,” Roopal Shah, one of the coordinators of the event, wrote in an email addressed to the volunteers. “Grateful to the Embassy and to the Indian Government for allowing us to be a part of this event.”

Advertisement
McDermott denied that HAF had ever collaborated with the Indian embassy for Modi’s visits “in any specific way”.

He maintained that HAF would welcome leaders of any Indian government regardless of party affiliation.

The BJP has no shortage of allies in the US. One of them, the Overseas Friends of BJP, a registered foreign agent, has the stated objective of “projecting a positive and correct image of India and its people in the US and foreign media and correcting any distortions in the media’s reporting of current events taking place in India”.

While this is the Overseas Friends of the BJP’s stated purpose, it is also a strikingly accurate description of HAF’s activities.

In February 2017, as the Modi government was being criticised for fanning religious ethnonationalism and fomenting violence against religious minorities in India, HAF wrote to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. It requested the retraction of its report on the persecution of Indian religious minorities. It also requested the commissioners to engage with HAF’s leaders “regarding the Commission’s continued misrepresentations of India’s religious diversity, legal system, and political dynamics”.


In July 2018, alongside the start of Modi’s re-election campaign, HAF released a policy statement at a Capitol Hill briefing. It detailed the ways in which the government of India had provided “unprecedented religious accommodations to its religious minority population”.

HAF’s report provided a robust defence of Modi’s policies and denied widespread reports that minorities were being persecuted.

But it denied having acted in collaboration with the Indian government.

“We have different members of HAF staff who probably have relationships with members of the Indian government,” McDermott said. “But there are no weekly, monthly or yearly calls. There is no coordination whatsoever.”

The Overseas Friends of BJP did not respond to an interview request submitted through its website.

[Riaz Haq]

Who is lobbying for India’s Modi government on Capitol Hill? | Narendra Modi | Al Jazeera

by Mukta Joshi

US-based Hindu American Foundation has laundered Modi gov’t’s track record on minorities, championed its interests.


https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/10/15/who-is-lobbying-for-i...

Angana Chatterji, a scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, pointed out that while people of Hindu descent may experience racism, Hinduphobia is not a contemporary movement or a rising concern like that of Islamophobia. “Hinduphobia acts to align diasporic Hindu majoritarian campaigns with those of Hindu nationalists in India,” she said.

In September 2021, HAF led a campaign against an academic conference called “Dismantling Global Hindutva” and used social media posts, mass emails, petitions and news releases to portray it as an attack on Hindus. “Hindutva,” meaning “Hinduness” is a Sanskrit term used for the Hindu supremacist ideology.

“It’s an academic exercise to critique, maybe even to deconstruct, but dismantling is very squarely a political activity,” HAF’s Shukla told The Washington Post.

The campaign and resulting backlash quickly snowballed with the scholars scheduled to speak receiving a barrage of online hate messages, even death and rape threats.

A 2022 study traced patterns in users of Twitter, now known as X, whose tweets and retweets featured specific hashtags, retweets, bots, and the frequency of their tweets and retweets over time and linked HAF to an online network of far-right Hindu groups and the BJP that targeted the conference. The study found Shukla to be the “largest individual amplifier of attacks” against the event.

While the conference did ultimately take place, many participants withdrew out of fear. HAF was credited for its efforts.

“Dismantling Global Hindutva was publicised to be a thunder, but ended up in a whimper, thanks to [the] efforts of @HinduAmerican [and] other Hindu groups,” Ram Madhav tweeted. Madhav is a member of the National Executive of the RSS.

He did not respond to a request for comment.

Before the conference, HAF conducted an online event. Shukla received an audience question, which she quickly summarised.

“Someone has asked if we have informed the government of India about this particular situation,” Shukla said, referring to the conference. “We have.”

The “situation” in question that HAF had informed the government of India about, McDermott clarified in the email, was that the conference “was being falsely promoted as having official backing or endorsement of the 60+ universities listed, when in fact it didn’t”.

[Riaz Haq]

The Intercept
@theintercept
How Does AIPAC Shape Washington? We Tracked Every Dollar. https://interc.pt/3YE465D by
@akela_lacy

https://x.com/theintercept/status/1849486930364272670

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https://theintercept.com/2024/10/24/aipac-spending-congress-electio...

When it rolled out its new strategy in the 2022 election cycle, AIPAC found immediate success. The lobbying group and another pro-Israel group, Democratic Majority for Israel, defeated Reps. Andy Levin, D-Mich., and Marie Newman, D-Ill., who were outspoken in their criticism of unconditional U.S. military funding for Israel. The campaign to defeat Levin marked a significant push from AIPAC to repress criticism of Israel even from Jewish members of Congress.

Ahead of the 2024 cycle and amid growing public outrage over Israel’s war on Gaza, AIPAC made a bold pronouncement: Through its United Democracy Project arm and AIPAC PAC, it would spend $100 million on elections, about one-sixth of what outside groups spent on the 2020 presidential election.

There are few congressional races that AIPAC sat out this year. Of the 469 seats up for reelection this year, AIPAC has spent money on more than 80 percent: 389 races in total. AIPAC has sought influence over 363 seats in the House and 26 in the Senate.

Of the 389 candidates AIPAC funded, 57 did not face a primary. Of the primary elections that did take place, 88 candidates had no opponent.

The size of AIPAC’s war chest means it can pick and choose the races in which it is most likely to succeed — boosting its image as a kingmaker and its influence among candidates and members, while simultaneously hiking up the cost of criticizing U.S. policy toward Israel.

Funding Both Parties
AIPAC’s approach to electoral spending is bipartisan. The group has funded Republican, Democrat, and independent candidates alike. AIPAC PAC supported 233 Republicans with a total of more than $17 million in funds, 152 Democrats who received more than $28 million in sum, and three independents: Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and Angus King of Maine, who got just under $300,000 between them. (Spending not covered in this analysis includes AIPAC PAC contributions that were refunded in 2023 or 2024 or those that went to other PACs and political organizations, such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee or the centrist Democratic nonprofit fundraising platform Democracy Engine.)