Why is Gabbard so closely linked to the Hindutva rulers of India?
When Ram Madhav was a representative at her wedding in April 2015, you have to really trace back and look at the four years previous to that as far as the ongoing long-term relationship between Tulsi Gabbard and the Hindu nationalist organizations that this particular individual, Madhav, represents.
When Madhav there, he was there as a representative of Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, but there were four years of back history that led up to him being there. That really begins in her first primary election, when she was just running for Congress.
Tulsi Gabbard announced for Congress in May 2011.
By the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, she was developing strong ties — before she had won the primary — to Hindutva organizations based in the U.S. which are the U.S. chapters of organizations back in India. By “Hindutva,” I mean organized Hindu nationalist outfits springing from India.
This was before Modi came to power and before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), his political party, came to power. It was while they were mobilizing, trying to get him into power in 2014. These organizations found Gabbard, and they latched on to her, and they identified Gabbard as somebody that could be used as a figurehead to help advance their agenda of whitewashing Narendra Modi and his record and whitewashing the BJP and its supremacist agenda of Hindutva.
Gabbard was not expected to win at all.
In January and February, she was still 40 or 50 points behind the other person running for that congressional seat. She was a first-term — first year in her first term — city councillor from Honolulu running against a former mayor of Honolulu. By the end of 2011, she had only raised about half of what this guy had raised. She was flagging in the polls. She was flagging in fundraising. And then these key executive members of these U.S. Hindutva organizations who are linked to India found her, and latched onto her, and started pumping money into her
By August 2012, when Tulsi Gabbard won her first primary, about $40,000 came to her from those Hindutva sources. By November 2012, when she won the general election, she had received about $80,000 to $90,000 from individuals who are directly identifiable as executives and active members of these American Hindutva organizations.
Two of the first key individuals were these guys from Texas.
One of them is Vijay Pallod. He first gave to her in October 2011. The otheris his brother-in-law, Ramesh Bhutada. Vijay Pallod is a former Governing Council Member of the VHP-America, which is the U.S. branch of VHP-India. Ramesh Bhutada is the National Vice-President of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, HSS-USA, which is the U.S. branch of the RSS.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is the religious wing of India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary, the fountainhead of the Hindutva ideology. The VHPA is the U.S. wing of the VHP and the HSS-USA is the RSS’s U.S. wing.
Especially significantly, towards the end, after Hindutva sources gave Gabbard tens of thousands of dollars, before she’d actually won election, Vijay Pallod and Ramesh Bhutada hosted a fundraiser for her in Texas. She went to Houston, to Vijay Pallod’s home on October 28, 2012. They had a fundraiser for her. A number of these individuals, executives of these Hindutva organizations, were there. Three days later, three days after these Hindutva people are throwing this fundraiser for her, and after she’d raised about $20,000 in Texas in the space of a couple of weeks, she came out with her India policy in which she basically declared that she was going to be the most pro-India congresswoman that ever existed and that she was going to unequivocally advocate for India to be supported in its bid for a UN Security Council seat.
Her congressional career exists because of financing from and free promotion from Hindu nationalist organizations in the U.S. which are directly linked to Hindu nationalist organizations in India which currently control India’s government and which, there, are directly implicated in repeated pogroms and other atrocities against minorities.
One week after Tulsi Gabbard got elected, she went to Florida, had a fundraiser in Florida with key members of these organizations — specifically, in Florida, with key members, including the president-elect, of an organization called the Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP), which is an organization which exists in the U.S. for the sole purpose of promoting the Indian political party, the BJP, and which is now a registered Foreign Agent in America. The BJP is the ruling party of India since 2014 and the OFBJP exists and operates for the sole purpose of encouraging — and mobilizing — Indian-Americans to support this foreign political party.
In her first two years in office, which were key years, Tulsi Gabbard received donations from the President, the Vice-President, the former President, and the former Vice-President of this OFBJP organization as well as from about six or so National Council members of the OFBJP. She received donations from the President, the Vice-President, the National Public Relations Chief, and the National Public Relations Coordinator of the HSS — the international wing of the RSS — as well as at least four HSS chapter presidents in four different states.
Gabbard also keynoted at least one VHP-America event. VHP is the religious subsidiary of the RSS. She was at three HSS events, one of them in Australia. She attended two OFBJP events. When she was in India, she spoke at two separate forums — one conference, one forum — which were sponsored by the RSS or its affiliates. This is all in the first two years. This is not to mention her meeting with the president of the BJP, in 2013, before the BJP comes into power in 2014.
This is not to mention her meeting with the national spokesperson of the RSS, turned spokesperson of the BJP, Ram Madhav, on multiple occasions — including him attending her wedding.
I’ve personally identified at least 90 different individuals within her first two election cycles — 2011 to 2012 and 2013 to 2014 — who are distinctly identifiable as members and especially executives of these different Hindutva. organizations in the U.S. who have donated money to her. And that’s just leading up to 2014.
Ram Madhav, at the time when he was at her wedding, he was the national spokesperson for the BJP, the political party.
A couple years prior to that, he was national spokesperson for the RSS, the paramilitary organization. While he was still national spokesperson for the RSS, before Modi came into power and before the BJP came into power in 2014, in Tulsi Gabbard’s first year in office — in Tulsi Gabbard’s first six months in office — she was in D.C. in July 2013. And she sits down, she has a meeting with this guy who was later at her wedding.
This was July 2013, before her April 2015 wedding. She sits down, she has a meeting with this Ram Madhav, while he is not an elected official, not even a political party leader. He’s spokesperson of the RSS. Also at this meeting is the president of the BJP which, again, he is not an elected official, not a politician — a political party leader of the opposition party which is trying to get into power and which is not in power at that time. Tulsi Gabbard — six months in office — she’s sitting here having meetings with them.
Why is she having meetings with the RSS-BJP in July 2013?
If you follow the money trail, in June and July 2013, she had three or maybe four fundraisers in four different states — in Illinois, California, Texas, and maybe also Florida — in that two month period in which she was given about $90,000 by key people in these Hindutva organizations, especially from the OFBJP. Sandwiched in the middle, she’s in D.C. meeting with the president of the BJP and the national spokesperson of the RSS-BJP.
Gabbard joined the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.
That commission was holding a hearing on religious freedom in India in April 2014. She specifically came out at that hearing and read out a statement saying, paraphrasing: “I’m against this hearing because the timing is horrible, the elections are just about to occur in India, and I feel like this is an attempt to interfere in the elections in India.”
Tulsi Gabbard has no qualms about allowing these operatives of the BJP — these operatives of a foreign political party — coming and lining her campaign coffers with tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars. Then, as they’re doing it, meeting with these people, attending their events, and meeting with representatives from an Indian political party and with paramilitary organization representatives, not even elected officials. She has no problem doing that in her first year in office — her second year in office — or before she’s even elected, but then when the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in April 2014 attempts to talk about human rights in India, she goes out of her way to denounce it asinterference in India’s political elections.
But to talk about interference.
That’s April 2014. In May 2014, the BJP does win, they come into power, Narendra Modi is elected as Prime Minister of India. On May 16, he is announced as Prime Minister of India. The exact same day, Tulsi Gabbard issues a press statement saying, “I just got off the phone with Narendra Modi to congratulate him and his BJP for winning.” It is, among other things, very strange that a freshman congresswoman from Hawaii, who is just barely into the second year of her first term in office, on the phone withe newly-elected Prime Minister of India.
Why did Modi take Tulsi’s call? How did he even have time for that?
Fast forward to June. Gabbard’s in Los Angeles. She attends an OFBJP banquet where she is the chief guest. At this banquet, after a year or more of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from leaders and members of Hindutva outfits and a lot of money from BJP-affiliated activists — at this banquet in Los Angeles, she puts on a BJP sash with the BJP colors and poses for a photograph. This is the first one she goes to.
The second one Gabbard goes to is two months later in Georgia in August.
At that banquet, she’s the chief guest, but she’s also there with a guy named Vijay Jolly. He’s an Indian guy, from India, an Indian citizen. At the time, he was the BJP’s Foreign Affairs Cell Chief.
So, let us talk about this issue of political interference.
At this banquet in August, Gabbard speaks, and she congratulates the audience for their efforts to get Modi and the BJP elected. She’s speaking to American citizens — Indian-Americans, but American citizens. She congratulates them for all the “hard work that they did by traveling to India” to campaign for the BJP, which many of them did.
Then, after Gabbard speaks, this guy Vijay Jolly, the head of the OFBJP, gets on stage and he says, “I am a soldier of the Bharatiya Janata Party.” Then he tells her (this is in August and her reelection for a second term is coming up in November): “We are sure, with the support of the people of Indian origin, the Non-Resident Indians and, of course, the U.S. citizens, your victory later this year is a foregone conclusion.”
Keep in mind, this is a political operative from a foreign political party. Not a U.S. citizen. He’s on U.S. soil at a foreign political party event, turning to a U.S. congresswoman and telling her, “Yeah, your reelection later this year is absolutely a foregone conclusion.”
When Tulsi Gabbard talks about things like war and peace, and she talks against regime change, I like to hear that, but I cannot accept her as anything but a hypocrite if she’s talking about that, on the one hand, while she’s whitewashing and lining her campaign coffers with money from these Hindu nationalists who are implicated in staging pogroms — many people call them genocides — of minorities, of the most vulnerable people, in India.
Gabbard shouldn’t be in the U.S. Congress, she shouldn’t be president, and she definitely shouldn’t be the Director of National Intelligence.
Tulsi Gabbard should be, if not investigated on a criminal level, at least deeply investigated on a journalistic level. If we’re going to talk about Russia hacking our election and we’re going to talk about foreign political interference in the American political scene, how about we look at Tulsi Gabbard?
While we are distracted with alleged Russian political interference in U.S. politics, maybe we should pay a little bit of attention to the Indian political interference.
It is absolutely provable that Gabbard’s congressional career exists because of support from these people, and that it’s been a quid pro quo, pay to play relationship, back and forth, for years. So why is Gabbard being promoted as Director of National Intelligence?
Pieter Friedrich is a freelance journalist specializing in analysis of South Asian affairs. He is the author of Sikh Caucus: Siege in Delhi, Surrender in Washington and Saffron Fascists: India’s Hindu Nationalist Rulers as well as co-author of Captivating the Simple-Hearted: A Struggle for Human Dignity in the Indian Subcontinent. Discover more by him at PieterFriedrich.net.
