When 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (Campaign HQ, 10/17/19) accused Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a long-shot Democratic primary candidate, of being a Russian-groomed foil, the media reverberations were sweeping. Coverage of the row prompted more coverage, with some takes defending Gabbard’s moral compass and others prolonging the obsession with the idea that Russia is interfering in American politics.
Lost in the noise is the reality that Gabbard’s most troubling attribute is her documented connection to the far-right Hindu nationalist, or Hindutva, movement known as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent organization of India’s ruling BJP party.
There is no evidence that Gabbard, who rarely polls above 3%, is any kind of Russian agent, plucked by Moscow to sway the 2020 election toward the reelection of Donald Trump. But those silly accusations eventually mix into the media as they look to explain how an idiosyncratic candidate like Gabbard can gain the support not only of anti-war leftists who see her as a champion of nonintervention, but also of far-right white nationalists like David Duke and Richard Spencer.
The New York Times (8/2/19) portrayed her as an idealistic crusader for peace, and then came out (10/12/19) framing her stances as part of, intentionally or not, a Moscow-led disinformation campaign. NBC (2/2/19) sounded the alarm about an “upcoming Russian campaign of support for Gabbard,” saying she had become a favorite of the “Russian propaganda machine.” In a profile in Rolling Stone (8/9/19), Matt Taibbi scoffed at Gabbard’s critics, summing her up as “simply opposed to bombing the crap out of, and occupying, foreign countries for no apparent positive strategic objective, beyond enriching contractors.”
Lost between these hit jobs and puff pieces is the RSS’s influence on Gabbard, despite the evidence that this is much more a part of her life than Russian intrigue. The best chronicle of her affiliation with the Indian right comes from the Indian publication Caravan (8/1/19). Religion News Service (1/27/19) had earlier outlined her connections to Hindu nationalist groups, and how these affected her votes and political positions. The Intercept (1/5/19) also covered the issue.
Anyone interested in Gabbard should read these articles in their entirety, but the key take away is this: The RSS draws much of its power from its followers in the Diaspora, and Gabbard has been crucial to revamping the image of the Hindu nationalist in the United States, and has in turn received crucial financial support from the Indian-American far right. (Gabbard, who is of Samoan and European descent, is a practicing Hindu.) Much of that RSS support has come from donations from Indian-Americans who are part of the movement’s US efforts—think of them as like US Zionists who aren’t just pro-Israel, but pro-Likud. “Gabbard’s donors have publicly applauded her for supporting Modi before he was elected, for speaking against the US decision to deny him a visa after 2002 and for working against congressional efforts to recognise human-rights violations in India,” the Caravan article states.
She has even brought her Modi connection into the primary: As India Abroad (10/6/19) reported, she defended Modi’s role as chief executive of Gujarat during 2002 anti-Muslim riots, quoting one Indian minority rights advocate who accused Gabbard of engaging in the “‘most abominable form’ of victim-blaming.”
It has long been known that she has a close relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has launched a military assault on Kashmir and has stripped millions of Muslims of citizenship (Telegraph, 7/30/18); at a meeting between the congressmember and the prime minister in September 2014, she gave him her childhood copy of the Bhagavad Gita, the copy of the sacred text she had taken on her deployments to Iraq and which she had sworn her oath of office on. But what these articles outline is that Gabbard was pivotal in a global public relations effort on the part of the Hindutva movement to remake Modi from an outcast for his complicity in the Gujarat violence of 2002 to the legitimate statesman the West considers him today.
From various political angles, Gabbard has been painted almost like Democratic Party’s version of Ron Paul, a marginal force but one who is seen both on the left and the right as principled opponent to US-led war and intervention. This is why her RSS affiliation is so damning, since it very much validates a regime carrying a large-scale military occupation that many observers interpret as being rooted in anti-Muslim animus. This is hardly jumping aboard the peace train.
Caravan (8/1/19) presented one of the most in-depth accounts of Gabbard’s ties to the Indian far right.
Modi could have been a forgotten piece of the past. Instead, he’s hobnobbing with the global power elite while India’s Muslim minority shakes in the face of state terror. The Caravan article lays the case out at length, but in short: “The greatest diplomatic triumph for the American Sangh was rehabilitating Modi’s tainted reputation in the United States. Gabbard played a significant part in that project.”
As Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director of the South Asian progressive community Equality Labs, told FAIR:
Gabbard’s connection to the RSS/BJP matters most urgently now because the Democrats have positioned themselves not just as the resistance against Trump, but also to white nationalism and all sorts of other populisms that are destabilizing democracy everywhere. She was one of the first Democrats to platform Modi, using her role as congressman to jettison bipartisan legislation that would have addressed the issue of Gujurat riots and religious freedom in India. At every step, her foreign policy interventions around India has been to gaslight Indian minorities who are in crisis because of the attacks of the Modi government. And that is not the act of a progressive.
Gabbard’s connections to the Hindu right are well-documented. She has shared the dais on many occasions with leaders and members of India’s right-wing political party, the BJP, the electoral front of the Sangh Parivar, a family of organizations affiliated with the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS); and has actively fundraised from its affiliated platforms in the United States, including the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) and the American branch of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP-A).
These are not innocuous faith-based organizations; they are supremacist groups whose Indian counterparts have been identified as “militant religious organizations” by the CIA. They use violence against religious and cultural minorities in their pursuit of a “Hindu nation.” By standing with these extremists, Gabbard stands against vulnerable minority communities in India.
And that record isn’t just important to what she’s done for the right-wing government of India; this history is central to understanding Gabbard’s expressions of anti-Islamic sentiment (Islam being seen as the prime obstacle to a Hindu-nationalist India), as well as the rest of her enigmatic political tenure, which includes voting to restrict refugees from Syria and Iraq, as well as joining Republicans in attacking then-President Barack Obama for not using the term “radical Islam.”
Allegations of Russian affiliation are conveniently apolitical, in the sense that they can deployed against the left, using long-outdated fears about Soviet competition and the idea that disloyalty to the US empire is orchestrated by a Communist cabal, as easily as against the right, seeing xenophobic nationalists around the world as part of a new international led by Vladimir Putin. Such a catch-all can be used by anyone against anyone, as Clinton did with Gabbard, and can create headlines and rile emotions with no expectation that the accuser will have to come up with a real argument about why the accused should be seen as repugnant.
But Gabbard’s RSS connections are far more real, with very earthly consequences. Her history of Islamophobia becomes more frightening when viewed through her support for a political movement that has supported anti-Muslim violence and discrimination in India. If she were to become president of the United States, how would she respond to the Indian military’s brutality in Kashmir?
It’s much harder for the media to focus on Gabbard’s very real connections to the Indian far right than on her more fanciful connection to Moscow, because “RSS” simply doesn’t stir emotions the way “Russia” does in a population still seemingly influenced by decades of Cold War propaganda. Russia talk of any kind sparks discussion from all sides on social media, and can rally coverage in places like MSNBC, but the factions of Indian politics don’t carry the same weight in US media.
And digging too deep into Gabbard’s connection to Hindutva presents an ideological quandary for the press. The far-right government of India is most known for its ethnic politics, but it’s also responsible for neoliberal restructuring of the national economy. The latter isn’t so offensive to top editors.
And much like acknowledging the role of Israel’s influence in US politics can invite accusations of antisemitism, writers might fear being branded as anti-Indian or anti-Hindu—even if there are countless Hindus in India and worldwide who support secular democracy over Hindu nationalism—if they make much of a connection between Gabbard’s faith and her political ties.
Gabbard lags far behind the frontrunners in the primary, namely Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. She matters little in terms of the race for the White House. But she is young, ambitious and enjoys enthusiastic support from a small but loyal core of supporters. Thanks to her presence in the 2020 race, Gabbard may have a louder voice in the House of Representatives for years to come, and may seek higher office.
Clinton may have done Gabbard a favor by putting her into a news cycle despite her low polling, and the Russia buzz drowns out reporting on more pressing issues about her candidacy. The media would do well to spend less time speculating about her connections to Putin and more time examining her association with the Indian far right, and how that might be shaping her policy worldview.
Pols aren’t pop stars.
They’re persons with political power that profoundly affects people’s lives.
Focus on how they use that, rather than blindly enlisting in a cult of personality.
Et Tu, FAIR?
These articles always rely on things Tulsi Gabbard said and believed, mostly as a teenager or college student in the 90s and early 2000s as a result of the bigotry of her father and the reactionary bubbles where she went to school.
I admire my Congresswoman because once removed from that corrosive influence and having seen the real face of war and the people she was taught to hate, Cong. Gabbard has rejected those attitudes and become a pretty decent Progressive and principled Anti-Regime Change Wars. Of course, since she’s the ONLY outspoken anti-war candidate and since the MIC is the REAL 3rd rail of USAmerican “politics”, she’s the subject of biased reporting such as that described in this article.
As a long-time Anti-War activist, I’m uncomfortable with her overreliance on the “I’m in the military” but I do believe in her growth and conversion away from childhood conditioning that quite closely resembles mine when rejected my upbringing in the military and realized I was a Pacifist and resigned from the military in 1964.
She’s a practitioner of Yoga and not the “Hindu nationalist” that biased articles allege in order to attack her…
This article is almost entirely talking about things Tulsi Gabbard has said, done, and believed in the past 6-7 years, not “the 90s and early 2000s”- primarily things Tulsi has done since being elected to Congress in 2012, such as opposing bills supporting religious freedom in India, or condemning human rights abuses. And of course, Tulsi is only SELECTIVELY a “anti-war candidate”, as supporting RSS military occupation of Kashmir is hardly a peaceful or anti-war position by any stretch of the imagination.
So, nice try, better luck next time.
You’re dumb as hell. Durrrrrr she’s not anti war because she won’t do something about India’s occupation of Kashmir. And how do you exactly foresee a U.S. congresswoman stopping a nation of 1 billion people from doing something? She is against U.S. involvement. You know, things she ACTUALLY can influence for the better. Nice try though.
You might want to explain her opposition to the anti-BDS movement designed to combat the savagery apartheid Israel visits on the Palestinians. That war crime is okay. AIPAC after all says who is or isn’t in Congress. Or any other elected US official. See Cynthia McKinney.
What bullsh*t. It’s amzaing to see just how far the deep state will go to galvanize oppostion to Gabbard’s message of no regime change wars (a/k/a imperialism). Curious that no other candidate’s character is being tarnished for supporting the right wing government of Israel. When you consider that Modi was awarded Palestine’s highest honor, I guess it’s easy to see why journals like this one could be pressured by Israel to paint Modi as a pariah for the purpose of undermining Gabbard and her anti-imperialism.
In other words, you don’t have any actual substantive rebuttals to (much less disproof of) ANY of the explicitly sourced assertions made in this article, but you object to FAIR saying anything negative about a politician you happen to like. Gotcha. Thanks for the… er… “contribution”.
NO, what they are saying is that Tulsi is being subjected to a double standard when other candidates are not being scrutinized for their own support of questionable foreign leaders and political movements. Israel is a great example.
If there wasn’t a good reason for this, then it might qualify as “whataboutism” but, in fact, anyone who’s been paying attention knows that there is a reason – Tulsi’s stance against the MIC and their continuing foreign wars and meddling. The other candidates, the ones who *don’t* complain about these wars, they don’t find themselves being attacked for their support of foreign leaders, now do they?
I would say “I wonder why…” but I just told you why.
Right Enai. The writer doesn’t say which Palestinian award or when she received it. But it’s on the Internet. It must be true. Whichever one it was. Or when.
“But what these articles outline is that Gabbard was pivotal in a global public relations effort on the part of the Hindutva movement to remake Modi from an outcast for his complicity in the Gujarat violence of 2002 to the legitimate statesman the West considers him today.”
Pivotal? Seriously? Then how on Earth would you describe the impact of someone like Obama on Modi’s image?
“Definition of pivotal
1: of, relating to, or constituting a pivot
2: vitally important : CRITICAL”
There’s nothing here that is damning. That she has a relationship with Modi, given the description of that relationship is not alarming. What is outstanding about Gabbard is her courage to speak out against endless war. It’s hard to imagine a President Gabbard eager to commit the US to Modi’s India based on what is written here. Currently, the US has a warm relationship with Saudi Arabia. We’ve made heavy payments to Pakistan. Neither of these countries is the kind of place/government that is worthy of support more than is India. It’s not a nice world out there and job 1 for the US is to withdraw from meddling abroad. Gabbard is certainly aware of that.
Her personal preference for and lip service to, an odious, religious nationalist ideology, that happens to have it hands on all the levers of state power in the worlds 2nd most populous nation and one that will soon overtake China and the worlds fastest growing economy, is “nothing damning” ? Even if you acknowledge she has little to no chance of becoming president , it would still be damning. Then again, Hitler had many friends in the US also, and they all claimed their critics were
“exaggerating” and ” overlooking the big picture”.
I hope she corrects any incorrect alliances in the past. She skyped into my opioid panel in upstate NY recently and commented on opioid legislation pending in Congress. I am running for Congress myself and hope I can also bring some wide life experiences to a very narrow minded Congress in certain areas.
What a despicable frame-up. Et tu, FAIR?
“champion of nonintervention, but also of far-right white nationalists like David Duke and Richard Spencer.”
Because some people on the right don’t like war either, this is a catch-all smear against an anti-war candidate?
I’d be far more interested in FAIR’s “ties” to money at this juncture. Where do you get your budget from exactly? Who is paying your salary, Ari Paul?
Your nonsensical argument is that because India and Pakistan have religious conflicts spanning back centuries, somehow it’s all Gabbard’s fault for daring to meet with the elected Prime Minister of India. So, you like democracy and the democratic process, or you hate it, FAIR? Which is it?
“the Russia buzz drowns out reporting on more pressing issues about her candidacy.”
You’re trying to claim some meetings with the Indian Prime Minister are alleged “pressing issues?” Absurd! Nobody in the US even knows who that is, and most of them couldn’t find India on a map. They certainly couldn’t find Kashmir. And they don’t care. This is stretched way past the breaking point and is now torpedoing the credibility of FAIR.
Just another rag with cheap smear pieces. Prove me wrong.
Thank you. Couldn’t agree more. This article will be a stain on fair.
Here is a link to the actual interview … the podcast …
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/campaign-hq-with-david-plouffe/id1479487160
So two things have changed.
1. I don’t know where this stupid story came from but it is entirely wrong. HC did not say Tulsi Gabbard was a Russian agent, troll, useful idiot, whatever. What she did say was that Gabbard and others were pawns for the Republicans to try any way they could to win another term for Trump. This was pure disinformation.
2. Since the story came out, Tulsi Gabbard has said she will not run for re-election.
The corporate world is killing or has killed democracy in America now. The media is owned by big money interests. Citizens make too little money to get political representation. And social media has been weaponized to manipulate reality for most Americans. To see this happening for me is nauseating, and the excesses of the Left, and tricks I see from channels on the Left, for instance that viciously attack Elizabeth Warren from the Left in favor of Bernie Sanders when the platforms of both of them are about 97% the same smacks of the same attacks on Hillary Clinton to de-energize and confused voters and get them not to vote – like the so-called Bernie Bros in 2016 trying to tell people if Bernie could not run … which sadly, and unfairly, at the time he could not as he had truly been cheated out of the nomination, that it was not worth voting, and thus one of the forces that contributed to HC’s loss though lack of voting.
It is time that average citizens stop being fooled by both the far-Right and the far-Left, in many cases they are paid for and scripted by the same billionaires to build a fake facade about politics in America. We the People are being manipulated, treated and managed like farm animals, so while 1984 has come to pass literally now, we also have Animal Farm as well.
Really? Set aside Clinton’s support for the Honduran military coup of 2009. Her State Department’s engineering of the Ukraine coup. Among a long career of political corruption. The Clinton charitable trust was cashing 8 figure checks from Saud royalty at the very moment her State Department was approving tens of billions of dollars in weapons transfers to the reactionary Saud theocracy.
Wow, I’m incredibly disappointed to see an article like this on FAIR. The author uncritically accepts one after another smear against Tulsi Gabbard, without considering the possibility that there is a coordinated propaganda campaign against her that sources he relies on may be part of. How ironic that an organization dedicated to identifying and outing media bias would print something like this poorly fact-checked and shallow article.
What part of this factual report constitutes a “smear” ? Let us know and provide the evidence that it is ( objectively substantively) false, please, and if you can i will donate $1000 to Gabbards campaign
In general, the article frames the situation in India as analogous to Israel/Palestine, in which “Hindu nationalists,” with Modi as their leader, are the oppressors and Muslims are the oppressed just as Jews are the oppressors and Palestinians (predominantly Muslims) are the oppressed in Palestine, and portrays Gabbard as siding with the oppressors in India and as being Islamophobic. The claims about Gabbard are prima facie absurd for anyone remotely familiar with her views or political record (see tulsigabbard.org for a summary with links to legislation and public statements & interviews), and the claims about India are distorted and simplistic.
There has been conflict among Hindus, Muslims, specific groups of Hindus or Muslims, and many other groups throughout the history of India and Pakistan as independent nations (i.e., since 1947). In this article and pieces it links to, this complex history is obliterated and only the 2002 Gujarat riots and the recent conflict in Kashmir are discussed and only the role of Hindus or Indian police or military in that violence is mentioned. This article portrays Gabbard asking the woman questioning her at one of her rallies about what led to the Gujarat riots as condoning the Gujarat riots, and that’s just flat-out dishonest. She wanted to see if the questioner knew that the riots were sparked by the murder of 60 Hindus by a group of Muslim terrorists (a crime for which 30 people were convicted and sent to prison), and suss out whether the woman knew that the violence in India wasn’t just coming from the Hindu side. This article also fails to mention that Modi was exonerated by the Indian Supreme Court of any role in instigating or sustaining the riots. It also singles out the BJP as violent and fails to mention that the Indian government has a long history of human rights violations, regardless of which party is in power, as well as failing to mention that India has been victimized by a large number of terrorist attacks, largely from Pakistan-supported Muslim fundamentalists. And much else. You can just search on Wikipedia for information about the Gujarat riots, terrorist attacks in India, the situation in Jammu & Kashmir, and much else, and get an idea of the complexity of the picture.
Gabbard has put forth a very clear message of religious tolerance and political freedom, and has backed that up in her legislative record (see the aforementioned website on the latter). The notion that she is Islamophobic is utterly absurd, given her opposition to wars in Muslim countries, the fact that she has many Muslim supporters, her being the keynote speaker at the 2017 Muslims for Peace conference, her support for Keith Ellison for DNC chair, her staunch defense of Ilhan Omar in the face of Islamophobic attacks and false accusations of anti-Semitism, and her general message of religious tolerance. She even has a page titled “Fighting Islamophobia” on her website: https://www.tulsigabbard.org/tulsi-gabbard-on-islamfighting-islamophobia And she has been very careful to distinguish between Islam in general, which she regards positively, and Islamic fundamentalist factions such as the Wahhabi sect, ISIS, etc., which she condemns as bigoted and violent (which they are).
Gabbard has stated on many occasions that she does not support any specific political party, organization, or politician in India, and she met with a variety of political leaders when she was in India, not just Modi. And note, also, that in 2014 when she visited India, neither she nor Obama (who met w/Modi several times & regarded him as a friend) nor anyone else who met with Modi was smeared as a supposed “supporter of Hindu nationalism.” It was only after Tulsi provoked the ire of the establishment by quitting the DNC vice chair position, endorsing Bernie Sanders, criticizing the DNC’s election-rigging and bias, and amped up her criticism of the warmongering and corruption of the political establishment, that she started getting smeared. These smears simply didn’t exist before then.
It is simply astonishing to me that this author, given FAIR’s purpose, makes no attempt to investigate who the people who’ve written the pieces it cites are and what their affiliations and political leanings are, and just automatically assumes that the ones he cites in support of his case are on the up and up. He fails to note that Pieter Friedrich, author of the piece in Caravan Magazine that he cites, is a notorious Hinduphobe and right-wing Christian extremist whose parents were missionaries in India. A few sources on Pieter:
https://medium.com/@samir_46682/san-jose-inside-op-ed-elevates-work-of-racist-and-bigot-52067a9bec8f
https://overwritten.org/2019/10/10/traitors-of-journalism-pieter-friedrich-conspiracy-theorist-freewheeling-slanderer/
Pieter in his own words here: https://web.archive.org/web/20040405132111/http://pieterfriedrich.com/aboutpieter/
A rebuttal to his article that Ari Paul cites: https://medium.com/@tjmcnulty_79436/debunking-pieter-friedrichs-tulsi-narrative-1085649b2810
The Intercept should not be regarded as an unbiased source regarding Gabbard, either. Its owner, billionaire Pierre Omidyar, is a big Democratic Party donor and Hillary Clinton supporter who also happens to be very supportive of the very regime change wars that Gabbard opposes. Tulsi has also been smeared in other publications that he owns, such as Honolulu Civil Beat. (Omidyar is a fellow Hawaii resident.) And smear pieces about Julian Assange and Wikileaks have also been published in The Intercept. So, while Glenn Greenwald is great, this notion that Ari Paul seems to have that The Intercept is an inherently credible source is nonsensical.
Here is a direct rebuttal to The Intercept’s piece: https://medium.com/@ScottStandsWithTruth/tulsi-is-a-rising-star-despite-lies-from-bias-media-78b249af138b
Greenwald himself has interviewed Tulsi at length, and specifically asked her about her position on India as well as about other foreign policy matters, Muslims, etc., starting at about 15 minutes in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYgfj0OcHjk
Another good piece rebutting the claims that Tulsi is Islamophobic or supports the Indian right wing: https://medium.com/@na_rup/exposing-lies-in-zaid-jilanis-article-on-tulsi-gabbard-cdb0e1589e6c
https://medium.com/@jeffmelton/fairness-accuracy-in-reporting-publishes-unfair-smear-piece-428b2d08b06f
I’m not surprised at your theoretical deductions but as an Indian Muslim this regime is exactly how the author has portrayed. We know the bigotry and hate going on. Don’t be surprised if you witness another genocide. It wasn’t the case with the other governments, but now we walk on eggshells
That’s it for me and your propaganda rag. I actually thought your website was worth subscribing to but I was wrong. Rehashing this total propaganda smear article that has no basis in reality shows that you are either really bad journalists or corrupted by the same big money that’s corrupt in MSNBC, the New York Times, and CNN. Goodbye fair.org, you should be ashamed. This references the first smear article that got released within a couple HOURS of Tulsi Gabbard announcing her run for president. Lots of people are controlled by the military industrial billionaire complex all right.
“Lots of people are controlled by the military industrial billionaire complex all right.”
Yes and some people are controlled by ultra nationalist dictators. At least one of them, a political servant of the military billionaire industrial complex, who habitually votes for them in congress , is being claimed as a “peace activist” by her cynical or misinformed followers.
Great investigation Ari Paul. And timely. I heard no less than Kevin Zeese speaking kindly of her this weekend in Chicago. The fact she joined the US military in April of 2003 shows she had no vision of US imperialism and war crimes. Anybody paying attention knew Iraq had no WMD antecedent to the 2003 US invasion. As MLK said, “Where there is no vision the people perish.”
Multi cultural candidates make this race interesting, especially Congresswomen Gabbard. Sanders could select her as a Vice Presidential candidate with her Military/ foreign policy experience. Not my call though!
Remembering that there is lots of dis-information being posted on facebook.
Shocking from Fair. You are not just smearing Tulsi as having ties with Hindu Nationalism, which she doesn’t unless you count all Hindus who donate to her as suspicious of something. That is pure Hindubphobia. And also less shocking is you continue the Hinduphobic attack on Prime Minister Modi. He was exonerated of all claims, which were in fact levied by a single person with deep ties to the opposition political party. But because peoeple from that party have pushed their narrative in the west, people blindly accept it without checking out the actual facts. It is sad to see a rise of Hinduphobia, but that is what it is. The facts http://indiafacts.org/liberal-hatred-for-tulsi-gabbard/
Ari Paul seems to be indulging in Tulsi’s character assassination. Any one who claims to work for Guardian should be a red flag. It’s interesting to see that such discredited “writers” get a mouth piece at FAIR. FAIR has lost some credibility with me by magnifying Hindu phobia. Let’s not make a mockery of FAIR’s own tab line “Challenging media bias…,” really?
The Caravan article by Freidrich is written by a self-described Republican Theocratic Christian fundamentalist. He has worked for a number of years as a spokesman in America for the Khalistani movement, who have been investigated for weapons smuggling and organized crime ( https://swarajyamag.com/world/an-introduction-to-one-of-the-breaking-india-groups-opposing-world-hindu-congress ). That group sees Tulsi as problematic for their goal of creating an ethno-separatist religious state in India for themselves (called Khalistan). They believe that if a Hindu were to become presidentthey would hinder their chance of creating Khalistan. They have a fantasy goal of creating their own religious state in India (it is mostly a fantasy of people in Canada and America and has very few followers in India) and they have a long history of terrorism in India and abroad (e.g., Killed Prime Minister Gandhi and shot down an airliner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan_movement ) because they are paid and supported by Pakistan’s ISI, who have supported the Khalistani separatist organization for many years as part of their “Bleed India” strategy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan_movement#Pakistan ). The Caravan article is written by their spokesman, you can search on youtube for proof of that with Friedrich speaking for them.
As for the claim Tulsi has “connections” to Hindu nationalists as if that is some self-evident evil, how is that not Hinduphobic? What is a Hindu nationalist? It is like claiming that Hillary Clinton is bad because Ukranian nationalists support her (they do). Why is it people cannot see Hinduphobia? Are they blind to it? The idea being pushed is that Hindus hate Muslims and are therefore bad. Or if Modi does something that people don’t like then because Hindus who support Modi also support Tulsi, then Tulsi is bad. What has happened to common sense?
Tulsi is clearly being smeared for one reason alone. She is threatening to the status quo of foreign policy. Because most of the American people support her views, therefore people have invented everything under the sun to try to distract from what Tulsi stands for in order to find her guilty of some sin by guilt from association. “Tulsi shared a dias” is now equivalent to promoting Islamophobia.
People need to understand just how much propaganda they have been subjected to when it comes to Hinduism and Tulsi Gabbard. Please see https://medium.com/@pamho/media-legitimization-of-hinduphobia-just-because-tulsi-gabbard-is-a-serious-anti-war-progressive-32160247c859
Another thing I want to bring up is using Kashmir to smear Tulsi.
These are some facts:
Article 370 was revoked recently causing the uproar. This is what changed because of that.
Before – You can marry a child in Kashmir legally. [Yes, Child marriage was legal there]
Now – Child marriage is illegal. There is an age limit for marriage just like anywhere else in India.
Before – If a Kashmir girl marries a person from anywhere else in India, she will immediately lose all her properties in Kashmir. It means she will no longer be the owner of her own house and land. Also, her children can’t inherit any properties and they cannot even get admission in the educational institutes of Kashmir. This practically means they are systematically banished from Kashmir forever.
Now – No matter who a Kashmiri girl marries, she will get to keep her own properties.
Before – Poorest people and low caste discriminated people do not have any protection laws or public aid or scholarships while all other states of India had this.
Now – Poorest people and lower caste discriminated people will get very strong protection laws and aid and scholarships.
Before – A man can divorce his wife by just saying three words “Talak Talak Talak” and wife will not get any maintenance money. This is called “Triple Talak.” This usually means the wife will be homeless with nowhere to go and no income to survive. Many women were living as wives even under torture by their husbands in fear what will happen if her husband says these three words.
Now – Divorce by “Talak Talak Talak” is a punishable offence, and Maintainance laws apply.
Before – The politics revolved around 3 families holding all the power. These three families looted all the federal money and exploited the entire population all money. Corruption in Kashmir was noted for decades as the highest in India by far.
Now – The 3 families are no longer in control like Kings and Queens lording over serfs. New Anti-corruption laws apply. The 3 families, worth billions, are primary promoters of all the lying propaganda about what has happened in Kashmir since the law changed. They especially fear the new anti-corruption laws.
Before – If a person becomes the chief minister of Kashmir, It was legally required to give them a multi-million dollar luxury home at a resort locale, plus maintenance, plus luxury, car plus dozens of servants. All expenses to be paid by the taxpayer. And, this person gets to keep all these things for life. Over $10 million was spent for “renovation of bungalow” by the previous chief minister in the last couple of years.
Now – Chief Minister will not get those benefits. They will have to vacate their official residence once they are not in power. And, these previous chief ministers may be asked to give-back these ill-earned properties. These people are angry that they will lose their $50 million+ worth bungalows and other benefits. All the chief ministers were from the three families, and they were the one who made this law that they should get bungalows.
Before – There were no laws protecting the minority Hindus and Buddhists and Shia. This lead to the minorities being forced out of their own homes by the Sunni majorit over the past few decades. These majority people did a genocide in late 1980s early 1990s leading to the forced exodus of over 500,000 “Kashmiri Pandits” having to flee for their life. See Wikipedia for “Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus.”
“On 4 January 1990, Srinagar-based newspaper Aftab released a message, threatening all Hindus to leave Kashmir immediately, sourcing it to the militant organization Hizbul Mujahideen. On 14 April 1990, another Srinagar based newspaper named Al-safa republished the same warning. The newspaper did not claim ownership of the statement and subsequently issued a clarification. Walls were pasted with posters with threatening messages to all Kashmiris to harshly follow the Islamic rules which included abidance by the Islamic dress code, a prohibition on alcohol, cinemas, and video parlors and strict restrictions on Kashmiri women. Unknown masked men with Kalashnikovs used to force people to reset their time to Pakistan Standard Time. Offices buildings, shops, and establishments were colored green as a sign of Islamist rule. Shops, factories, temples and homes of Kashmiri Hindus were burned or destroyed. Threatening posters were posted on doors of Hindus asking them to leave Kashmir immediately. During the middle of the night of 18 and 19 January, a blackout took place in the Kashmir Valley where electricity was cut except in mosques which broadcast divisive and inflammatory messages, asking for a purge of Kashmiri pundits. On 21 January 1990, two days after Jagmohan took over as governor, the Gawkadal massacre took place in Srinagar, in which the Indian security forces had opened fire on protesters, leading to the death of at least 50 people, and likely over 100. These events led to chaos. Lawlessness took over the valley and the crowd with slogans and guns started roaming around the streets. News kept coming of violent incidents and those Hindus who survived the night saved their lives by traveling out of the valley.”
Now – Minority protection laws apply. Hindus are allowed to move back.
Before – Homosexuality is illegal and banned.
Now – LGBT laws protect Homosexual people.
Before – Over 100,000 people whose ancestors migrated from Pakistan in 1947 did not have voting rights till now. They were practically stateless. People migrated to any other state in India has full voting rights, but not for people who migrated to Kashmir.
Now – Everyone has voting rights. The democratic rights of a person in Kashmir is the same as the person in India’s capital Delhi.
Before – People of can buy land/do-business/study/settle anywhere in India, but people of India can’t buy land in Kashmir This lead to no businesses being able to invest, thus it remained under-developed while rest of India progressed. The biggest employer is the government itself as there is no way to start businesses, thus no employment. There was also no private hospitals, no good educational facilities etc.
Now – Both people of Kashmir and people of rest of India can buy land/do-business/study/settle anywhere in India including Kashmir. A lot of companies have already promised investment. A lot of big educational institutions are coming up. Two big cities are getting Metro-trains for easy transportation. This will give a lot of employment and bring people out of poverty…
Before – Kashmiri children did not have the right to education. Only the rich get educated, others remain poor and illiterate forever.
Now – Right to education is a right of every child. No matter if they are poor or not, they get access to education. It is compulsory by law for the government to give education opportunities to each and every child. If a child is poor, he/she gets free education.
We are talking about over 500 such barbaric laws which will be gone with the removal of 370. I have only mentioned a few important ones over here, so now you can get an idea on how gigantic this change is. There are powerful people who are unhappy with this as it takes away their power, thus they will do whatever it takes to stop this change.
As a precautionary measure, a lot of police personal from around India was sent to Kashmir to maintain peace knowing very well that terrorists, Pakistani army and these politically powerful people will definitely try to disrupt peace.
Regarding communication blackout, that is the standard policy applied to all places which have chances of peace-disruption due to people misusing it to create violence using fake-news and instant-reaction without thinking rationally. In the previous year itself, at two places in India, the same policy was applied. That is, one during Jat Riots in Haryana near Delhi and Sterlite Protest in Tamil Nadu. In the case of Kashmir, communication blackout of as long as 4 months has happened in 2010 after a terrorist attack. This is nothing new.
Jammu and Kashmir is also a place with a lot of terrorist activities from terrorist organizations including ISIS, Lashkar-e-Taiba, JEM, Al-Qaeda etc.
There was a major terrorist attack this February itself which killed a lot of people. Taking precautions during such major change is necessary, the alternative is that hundreds of people will die.
The fact that she has appeared on Fox with Tucker Carlson numerous times during this campaign speaks volumes. Then on October 24 she fully and unwittingly denigrated herself by being a guest on Fox’s “Hannity” with serial slander and America’s preeminent conspiracy theorist Sean Hannity.
The biggest story by far in the case of Gabbard is that she is being framed by the Democratic Party, their corporate sponsors in the MIC and their grovelling media (including NPR which had a hit piece masquerading as an interview by Here and Now’s Robin Young) as a “Russian asset.”
Everything else Gabbard has said and done pales in comparison.
Matt Taibbi is exactly right. Everyone is a Russian asset (if we are to accept the “logic” of folks like Rachel Maddow and others at MSNBC, NPR, NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc) The message is clear: if you don’t toe the official Party line, we will destroy you”
The irony is that this is precisely the technique that another infamous party ( the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) employed. The difference is that the latter would physically banish people to labor camps in the Gulag while so called journalists like NPRs Robin Young attempt to banish people like Gabbard with words. A kinder gentler banishment, but banishment all the same.
I was googling around on topic “Modi” and came across this article, happen to know somewhat about U.S elections too. Its quite disappointing to see an article which is completely flawed to its core. Being honest in my opinions it is more of racist and religious hatred kind of thing. I as an Indian on behalf of my prime minister would like to clarify a few things. So the narrative you set here for readers, from selective sources of news feed and with your very well written propaganda from your Deep state or MIC or whatever gets busted. I am not sure why some of west media paints the picture of Hindus as some kind of radical terrorists or somewhat, honestly speaking we don’t even have a proper sense of religion. Now coming to my main point regarding all those shaming that you do to a person because he/she is related to Modi as if he is a devil. First things first, he is elected by majority of people from 1.3 billion intelligent people who know whom they are voting for. And they include your so-called oppressed minority Muslims too. Didn’t you do your homework? There are Muslims in RSS and BJP too. RSS is often confused with other fringe groups who do this religion shit for just extorting rich and other political agendas, that is not to be linked with RSS, its full form and meaning itself tells its a National Self Help group. Now coming to why U.S banned him, thanks to vested interests of your government in India, they had to do that on demand of then ruling party in India – “The Congress”. They tried their best to defame him as he was one of the most moral, and non corrupt politician at that time, the moment he came to power this riot happened. I don”t think or can believe any sane person would do that and make his political carrier dead. Just to let you know there were riots every next day before he came to power. And this riot after he came to power was actually last such riot, he did extremely well in managing peace there. The then ruling party formed plenty of committe and all that panels to prove him guilty. Case went till the highest court of law here in India and he came out clean, all people trying to malign him were shamed and some even punished. If you can’t respect our intelligence in judging him, then atleast trust the judge of the highest court in our largest democracy. And now coming to radical Hinduism, there is no such thing in my opinions, we are the only religion in my opinion where Parsis found home and love when they were persecuted by Islamists in Iran. We are the only religion where there was no anti-semitism. We are the only religion because of majority of which in India, its the largest democracy and huge huge number of diverse religions, sects languages flourish here. Please don’t malign us. Yes that riot was unfortunate, I am ahsamed of it too because I belong to the same religion as those people, but please don’t also forget that they had lost their children and loved ones because of incident which happened few days before that riot. The pilgrims returning from holy site of Hinduism where locked in train and burnt alive by your so called terrified minority community. Hindus are still lynched and murdered even today in many parts of our country if we worship some idol, as its against their Islam. Few days back they did Charlie Hebdo part 2, where they brutally stabbed, slit throat and shot a man for cirticising Islam. Sorry but they couldn’t take anymore of this radical wahabbism anymore. And yes one more point, when police was unable to control rioters, and few policement also joined in venting out anger at those Islamists due to that incident, it was modi who called upon army, and it was that ruling party which made Modi a devil, denied to send from neighbouring states. Still he managed to control all within 3 days, go look at his speech, how much he appealed to remain calm. But no, all you want is to peddle lies so your internal politics and your war machines can keep running. And if youreally have any sense of journalism, please publish this comment. and I voted for Modi, I have more Muslim best friends, even my Ex…so I am anti Muslim? A radical? I don”t even know my religion properly for gods sake, who has that much time on earth..after working our asses to meet our basic needs in country like India
Ohh and one more interesting fact, there was plenty of defence related corruption when Modi’s opposition party was in power. I hope that rings any bells.
Excellent article. Tulsi is a friend to islamaphobic right wing fascists like those in the Hindutva and racist far right movement. Her support for drone wars and genocide in Kashmir and Palestine show what a horrible fraud she is.
Also, why did she join the military after 9/11 to help bomb people? She’s a pathetic candidate with even more pathetic supporters like Modi!
RSS is not a far-right organization, it is Center-Right.
RSS has even a dedicated Muslim Branch, that works for welfare of Muslims.
BJP has many Muslim leaders in ministry.
One should know what RSS is, before making judgements.
#StandWithTulsi