Comment by Riaz Haq on December 3, 2022 at 2:10pm

Militant Hindus Raising Funds in America to Demolish Churches in India

What? Militant Hindus from #India are raising funds with a US-based 501C3 to demolish churches in Tirupati, India? And they have already demolished Mosques? And they hold Galas to celebrate this?

You get a tax deduction for giving to demolish churches & mosques?

https://twitter.com/nadinemaenza/status/1598823166557552640?s=20&am...

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 13, 2022 at 8:05pm

Hindu nationalist group, known for intolerant rhetoric, hosted a fundraiser in Frisco

By Nikhil Mandalaparthy and Tara Roy, Hindus for Human Rights

They wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2022/12/13/hindu-nati...

“Christian pastors are like leeches.”

“Hindus are going to be condemned to hellish agony and persistent terror by Muslims.”

“The Christians in India … have no moral conscience.”


These hateful and provocative statements would shock anyone. But what’s even more shocking is that they come from a nonprofit organization based here in the Dallas area.

The Global Hindu Heritage Foundation is a Frisco-based nonprofit that just hosted its end-of-the-year gala dinner Nov. 27.

The dinner’s agenda items included seemingly innocuous-sounding items like food distribution and COVID-19 relief, alongside more alarming topics: demolition of “illegal” churches in India and the conversion of Indian Christians and Muslims to Hinduism.

The GHHF isn’t a new organization — it has been operating out of Frisco for 15 years, with a long track record of spewing hatred against Christians and Muslims along the way.

The fact that the GHHF has been able to operate for so long without drawing attention to its incendiary rhetoric tells us a lot about the growth of Hindu nationalism in America.

It’s time for all of us to take note and stand up to this hate in our community.Last week, Indian American activists from different faith backgrounds attended a Frisco City Council meeting demanding action against GHHF.Our organization, Hindus for Human Rights, reached out to GHHF for a comment but did not receive any responses.GHHF and rising Hindu nationalism in AmericaGHHF was founded in 2006 by a group of Hindu Americans from the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with the goal of advocating for various policies in India that advance the political ideology of Hindu nationalism. Hindu nationalism is an ideology that aims to transform India from a secular democracy to a Hindu nation. In recent years, under the rule of a Hindu nationalist party, India has seen a rise in attacks on religious and cultural minorities, including Christians, Muslims and Dalits, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.Just like white nationalists raise fears that racial minorities are “taking over” America —also known as Replacement Theory — Hindu nationalists argue that Muslims and Christians are plotting to take over India and convert India’s Hindu majority to Islam and/or Christianity. This is contradicted by survey data, which shows that religious conversion is extremely rare in India, and in fact Hindus gain as many people as they lose.

Another tenet of Hindu nationalism is the idea that Muslims and Christians cannot be “truly” Indian. Many Hindu nationalist groups engage in efforts to convert Indian Muslims and Christians “back” to Hinduism, an effort known as Ghar Wapsi (homecoming) in Hindi. GHHF has a team of 26 full-time staff in India who try to convert Christians and Muslims “back” to Hinduism, and their fundraising emails call on donors to sponsor a pracharak (missionary) for the cost of $3,000 per year.

GHHF’s missionary activities are accompanied by aggressive speech against Christians and Muslims. The organization has previously called Jesus an “angry, cruel, hateful and jealous God” and has said that “Christianity made many people illogical, irrational, and less objective.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 13, 2022 at 8:06pm

Hindu nationalist group, known for intolerant rhetoric, hosted a fundraiser in Frisco

By Nikhil Mandalaparthy and Tara Roy, Hindus for Human Rights

They wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2022/12/13/hindu-nati...


”The GHHF believes in the “othering” of Muslims and Christians and has said: “All religions are different, Hinduism is inclusive and other two major religions — Christianity and Islam — are exclusive. It is all about “We and THEY”.“If they [Christians] are coming to convert our Hindus, we should drive them away. We should not even allow them to talk about their religion,” according to a GHHF blog.

Hate has no place in Dallas. Given GHHF’s track record of discriminatory rhetoric, it’s alarming to see that it has had success raising funds here in the Dallas area, which was named America’s fourth most diverse city in 2021, according to Wallet Hub. And yet, across the country, we are seeing Hindu nationalist groups like GHHF spread hate in local communities.

In August, the annual India Day parade in Edison, N.J., featured posters of Hindu nationalist politicians along with a bulldozer, which has become a divisive symbol of hate against Indian Muslims. A month later, in September, Hindu nationalist organizations invited Hindu extremist leader Sadhvi Rithambara to deliver lectures across the country.

GHHF’s Frisco fundraiser is another grim reminder of how discriminatory attacks have become commonplace in the United States.

In September, Frisco saw a group of Indian American women verbally attacked and threatened — an incident the community is still reeling from, KTVT reported.

Beyond the Indian American community, anti-Semitic and anti-Asian hate crimes also continue to be on the rise in Dallas. While we speak out against these various forms of hate, we must also be vigilant against the rise of another violent ideology in our communities: Hindu nationalism.

Nikhil Mandalaparthy is the deputy executive director at Hindus for Human Rights where Tara Roy is the communication director. They wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 15, 2022 at 1:15pm

The Hindutva Threat Outside India

https://religionunplugged.com/news/2022/12/15/x7bww6c22tdb7mjm0z78q...

There have been Hindutva attacks on Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. The most horrific instance was the 2002 killing of some 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat after Muslim mobs were accused of having set fire to a train carrying Hindu nationalists, killing 58 people. Attacks against Christians are widespread and escalating.

Hindutva ideology can be distinguished from Hinduism itself. It demands neither a theocratic state nor Hinduism as a state religion. It is a national-cultural project — rather than religious in the strictly doctrinal sense used in the West — and self-identifies as the soul of India itself. Sangh Parivar militants maintain that religious minorities, including Muslims and secularists, could support Hindutva — and therefore if they do not, they are betraying the nation.

The mainstreaming of Hindutva politics, especially since the BJP returned to power in 2014 under Prime Minister Modi, has led to a widespread narrative that Hindus in India are in danger from Muslims as a result of population changes, interfaith marriage and illegal Muslim immigration. This has led to discriminatory laws on citizenship and marriage.

The potential impact of Hindutva does not necessarily end at India’s borders. Some Hindu nationalists believe that an accurate map of India should include Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh and have campaigned to rewrite Indian textbooks to reflect this. If this sentiment grows and results in a future expansionist foreign policy, India will be more likely to clash again with Pakistan and other neighbors, including China.In recent years, there have been attempts to mobilize Indian emigrants, perhaps the largest diaspora in the world, in support of Hindutva goals. Because of British imperial history, many efforts are in the English-speaking world. Overseas Indians cannot vote but can retain strong connections with India and often wield much influence. As with other diasporas, most of these connections are simply retained links with the mother country and family. But the rise in the BJP’s global support, often through social media, has coincided with a rise of radical groups.

In 2019, EU DisinfoLab, an organization that tracks disinformation campaigns, reported the existence of a large network of fake local news sites set up to spread pro-Modi, pro-Hindutva, and anti-Pakistan misinformation. There were 265 of these sites in some 65 countries registered to just one entity, the Delhi-based Srivastava Group.

Overseas funding for the BJP is opaque but appears substantial. The Overseas Friends of the BJP claims 46 branches worldwide, significant political clout and substantial funds. Indians are the wealthiest ethnic group in the United States, and Merrill Lynch categorizes more than 200,000 Indian-Americans as millionaires. In 2020, Overseas Friends was required to register in the U.S. as a foreign agent. The Indian charity Sewa International appears be a wealthy affiliate of the RSS: the U.K. Charity Commission has investigated its classification of £2 million as “earthquake relief.” Laws introduced in 2017 by then-Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Arun Jaitley designated donations from “foreign entities” as “unknown sources.” Half of the BJP’s 2019 campaign coffer was from such “unknown sources.” In 2018, the World Bank reported that $80 billion was remitted to India from its diaspora — but this would be mostly nonpolitical contributions.

Apart from funding, Hindu-related groups were active in the 2016 presidential elections in the U.S., especially with the Republican Hindu Coalition. Of course, Hindu groups are as free as Christian, Jewish, Muslim or any other groups to politically promote their views and interests, and much of this is simply interest-group politics. But there are signs of darker currents.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 15, 2022 at 1:16pm

The Hindutva Threat Outside India

https://religionunplugged.com/news/2022/12/15/x7bww6c22tdb7mjm0z78q...


In August 2022, the Indian Business Association came under fire for bringing bulldozers, featured with the faces of Modi and Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk and BJP official who serves as the chief minister of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, to two India Day parades in New Jersey. Bulldozers have become a symbol of anti-Muslim activity in India as they have been used to demolish Muslim activists’ homes held to be illegal structures. Hindutva activists have celebrated Adityanath as “bulldozer baba” for these demolitions.

The Global Hindu Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Frisco, Texas, announced a Nov. 27 fundraiser at its annual dinner that included amongst its goals the intention to support “The Demolition of Illegal Churches in Tirupati, Gaushalas” and for a campaign to “reconvert” Christians to Hinduism. Several of the “reconversion” campaigns in India have been coercive, and churches have been deemed illegal — that is, not properly registered — while similarly situated Hindu temples and other structures have been tolerated. But, if we allow that there might be illegal churches, then any closure would be a matter for the authorities. In which case, the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation would be raising money to support Indian government actions, which apart from its support of a repressive program is not usually regarded as a charitable activity.

Some groups have been accused of trying to undermine academic freedom on university campuses by targeting scholars whose work on India differs from that purveyed by Hindutva writers. In September 2021, organizers of an American academic conference on Hindutva received rape and death threats.

After March 2021, when Audrey Truschke, a professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University in New Jersey, began researching Indian nationalism, she received many verbal attacks. She had received hate mail before, but the severity of this new abuse was unprecedented. She and her family were threatened, and after several credible threats, venues that hosted her hired armed security.

United Kingdom
In the U.K., in the lead-up to the 2016 London mayoral elections, Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith sent what appeared to be anti-Muslim campaign literature to Hindus to undercut his Muslim Labour Party opponent Sadiq Khan. In the 2019 general election, British Hindus received many WhatsApp messages, which included videos by Hindu anti-Muslim activists. There were reports that Hindu nationalist groups actively campaigned for Conservative candidates, perhaps because Labour’s leader at the time, Jeremy Corbyn, had criticized the Modi government’s 2019 crackdown in Indian-administered Kashmir. Many of these groups are reported to be linked to the BJP, and thus their actions would be attempts to influence an overseas election.

In 2022, there was sporadic intercommunal violence. In May, a Muslim teenager in Leicester had to be hospitalized after an attack by a Hindu crowd. Things came to a head in August. After India’s win against Pakistan in a cricket match, a Hindu group walked through the streets in Muslim areas chanting “Death to Pakistan” before attacking a Sikh man. Similar events took place after a later cricket match between the two countries that India lost. In response, groups of Muslim men have also held protests — in one instance, pulling down a flag from outside a Hindu religious center.

On Sept. 17, some young Hindu men attacked Muslims as they marched through Leicester’s streets while screaming “Jai Sri Ram,” meaning “Hail Lord Raam,” which has become a war cry for some Hindu nationalists. Of course, in the U.K., violence after soccer games is neither new nor rare. But violence after cricket games, as distinct from celebrations, is new, especially riots that have pronounced national, ethnic and religious elements. This is a dangerous development.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 15, 2022 at 1:17pm

The Hindutva Threat Outside India

https://religionunplugged.com/news/2022/12/15/x7bww6c22tdb7mjm0z78q...


In Canada, in December 2021, anti-Sikh slogans and a Hindu swastika were painted as graffiti on a Sikh school. As in the United States, Canadian academics have been harassed and faced death and rape threats from diaspora Hindutva supporters for criticizing the Modi government. In June 2022, Ron Banerjee, a Canadian Hindu nationalist openly called for the genocide of Muslims and Sikhs. “It is awesome what Modi is doing”, he said in a YouTube interview. “I support the killing of Muslims and Sikhs in the Republic of India because they deserve to die.”

In Australia, Vishal Sood was arrested for a series of attacks on Sikhs, and when he was convicted of the assaults, he was also deported since his visa had expired. When he returned to India, he received a hero’s welcome.

In Australia, as in other countries, there have been attempts to silence academics critical of Hindutva. These have included steps by Indian authorities in Australia to silence critics both of Modi and Hindu nationalist policies. Thirteen academic fellows resigned from the Australia-India Institute at the University of Melbourne, stating that there had been interference from the Indian High Commission in the Institute’s work, including attempts to censor research that might present an “unflattering” image of India.

In New Zealand, when Mohan Dutta, a Hindu professor at Massey University, expressed his fears over the rise of Hindu nationalism in the country, his concerns were derided by the New Zealand Hindu Council. He suffered a torrent of abuse from Hindutva extremists, including being told, “If you were in India, you would be burnt.” Dutta approached the police about this but was told there was little they could do since the worst abuse actually originated in India.

Conclusion
So far, Hindutva’s overseas influence is limited. It is usually manifest in seeking political influence in diaspora countries and support, financial and otherwise, for Hindutva activities in India itself. However, there are increasing threats to academics and others critical of the Sangh Parivar agenda. Finally, in the last two years, there have been incidents of violence. The situation is likely to worsen.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 15, 2022 at 6:13pm

Affected by the inherently divisive nature of religious Hindu nationalism, the Indian diaspora is increasingly polarized in its view of India and the world. This September, communal violence broke out in the U.K. between Hindus and Muslims from the subcontinent. Meanwhile, anti-Muslim parades in New Jersey exposed fault lines in the U.S. Separatist sentiments are also more palpable amongst Sikhs in the West.

https://thediplomat.com/2022/12/india-is-squandering-its-two-big-ad...

Bollywood too is beginning to suffer a crisis of credibility. For several years, Indian films were building a cult following abroad, unparalleled by most foreign cinema. Between 2015 and 2019, Indian movies more than doubled their box office revenue overseas, according to Statista. But since then, that growth has gone flat.

In recent years, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has actively promoted partisan movies in service of Hindu nationalist causes to devastating effect. Last month, things came to a head at the International Film Festival of India that was held in Goa. The head juror at the event, the renowned Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, singled out “The Kashmir Files” — a movie purported to depict communal violence against Kashmiri Hindus and promoted by the BJP — for a scathing assessment. “It felt to us like a propaganda and vulgar movie that was inappropriate for an artistic and competitive section of such a prestigious film festival,” Lapid said.

Lapid’s comments elicited an angry backlash from Hindu nationalists, who accused him of downplaying a historical atrocity. But as Lapid later pointed out, his criticism did not deal with historical facts but with the artistic quality of the film, which he said whimsically portrayed good and evil like a “cartoon for kids.”

“Doesn’t an event like this, a tragic event, deserve a serious movie?” he asked pointedly.

The growing global perception that Bollywood is being coopted for partisan political purposes by the BJP is immensely costly for Indian foreign policy. For one, it makes those movies less appealing to a global audience — especially if New Delhi hopes that Bollywood will help build India’s influence overseas. But more importantly, it risks killing Bollywood’s tradition of creative freedom in the long run. And lack of creative freedom is precisely what has ailed China’s own efforts to use its film industry for foreign influence.

Over the last couple of years, New Delhi has prided itself on a newly adopted muscularity in foreign policy rhetoric, which it hopes will make India more powerful and respected overseas. But in the absence of the hard power elements that have characterized China’s rise, India ought to be expanding its traditional soft power — not squandering it away over domestic politics. It takes far more time and effort for a nation to build up its global brand value than it does to break it all down.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 15, 2022 at 6:56pm

Hindu-Americans are in denial about caste. It's been in religious scriptures too long

https://theprint.in/opinion/hindu-americans-are-in-denial-about-cas...

From Kathmandu to California, South Asians are confronting caste

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2022/0421/From-K...

Dowry Was Banned 60 Years Ago. But Cases Are Rising ...

https://article-14.com/post/dowry-was-banned-60-years-ago-but-cases...

India: Freedom in the World 2022 Country Report

https://freedomhouse.org/country/india/freedom-world/2022

The Indian Dalits attacked for wearing the wrong shoes - BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44517922

Jun 19, 2018 — Documenting five seemingly mundane reasons Dalits (formerly untouchables) have been beaten and killed.

Dalit man killed for riding horse in Gujarat - Times of India

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/dalit-man-killed-for-riding-horse-in-guj/articleshow/63549437.cms

Mar 30, 2018 — Pradeep Rathod, 21, was beaten to death by a group of people from the Darbar community in Timbi village of Umrala taluka.

'This Is It. I'm Going To Die': India's Minorities Are Targeted In Lynchings

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/21/751541321/this-is-it-im-going-to-die...

Aug 21, 2019 — That slogan — which means "Praise Lord Ram," a Hindu god — has long been known as a prayer. Now it's an incitement to mob violence against India's minorities.

India's Violent Mobs Are a Menace to Minorities

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/18/indias-violent-mobs-are-menace-...

India: Vigilante 'Cow Protection' Groups Attack Minorities

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/19/india-vigilante-cow-protection-...

Hindu Priest Calls for the Beheading of Christians in India

https://www.persecution.org/2021/10/24/hindu-priest-calls-beheading...

Spectre Of Mob Lynchings Continues To Haunt India Amid Lacklustre Laws

https://www.outlookindia.com/national/spectre-of-mob-lynchings-cont...

Apr 28, 2022 — Lynching is not defined as a crime under the Indian Penal Code. In 2017, NCRB collected data on cases of mob lynching, hate crimes etc. But it was observed that the data was unreliable.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 16, 2022 at 4:27pm

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari took India to task on Thursday for calling Pakistan “the epicentre of terrorism”, saying India “demonises the people of Pakistan” to hide its Hindu-supremacist ideas.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2391342/bilawal-hits-back-at-india-for...

The FM’s comments came minutes after his Indian counterpart had accused Pakistan of harbouring terrorists, including Osama bin Laden.


In his speech at the Security Council, the Indian minister had said that “India faced the horrors of cross-border terrorism long before the world took serious note of it” and has “fought terrorism resolutely, bravely and with a zero-tolerance approach".

Bilawal hit back at the comments saying “I am the foreign minister of Pakistan and Pakistan’s foreign minister is a victim of terrorism as the son of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto. The Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif when he was chief minister of Punjab, his home minister was assassinated by a terrorist. Political parties, civil society, the average people in Pakistan across the board have been the victims of perpetrators of terrorism.”

“We have lost far more lives to terrorism than India has,” he added questioning why Pakistan would ever want to perpetuate terrorism and make “our own people suffer”.

“Unfortunately, India has been playing in that space […] where it is very easy to say ‘Muslim’ and ‘terrorist’ together and get the world to agree and they very skilfully blur this line where people like myself are associated with terrorists rather than those that have been and to this day are fighting terrorism,” he continued.

The FM then went on to say that New Delhi perpetuated this narrative not just against India but also Muslims in that country. “We are terrorists whether we’re Muslims in Pakistan and we’re terrorists whether we’re Muslims in India.”

“Osama bin Laden is dead,” said Bilawal, “but the butcher of Gujarat lives and he is the prime minister of India”.

“He [Narendra Modi] was banned from entering this country [the United States],” he continued, “these are the prime minister and foreign minister of the RSS [a right-wing Hindu nationalist organisation]”.

“The RSS draws its inspiration from Hitler’s SS [the Nazi Party’s combat branch, Schutzstaffel],” Bilawal added.

The FM went on to point out the irony in the inauguration of Gandhi’s bust at UN headquarters by the Indian FM and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “If the FM of India was being honest, then he knows as well as I, that the RSS does not believe in Gandhi, in his ideology. They do not see this individual as the founder of India, they hero-worship the terrorist that assassinated Gandhi.”

“They are not even attempting to wash the blood of the people of Gujarat off their hands,” said Bilawal, lamenting that the “Butcher of Gujarat” was now the “Butcher of Kashmir”.

“For their electoral campaign, Prime Minister Modi’s government has used their authority to pardon the men who perpetuated rape against Muslims in Gujarat. Those terrorists were freed by the prime minister of India,” said Bilawal.

“In order to perpetuate their politics of hate, their transition from a secular India to a Hindu supremacist India, this narrative is very important,” said Bilawal, claiming Pakistan had “proof” that Modi’s government had facilitated a terrorist attack in Pakistan.

The minister was referring to the “irrefutable evidence” Pakistan had of the involvement of Indian intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in the blast at Johar Town, Lahore last year as three terrorists had been arrested.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 21, 2022 at 4:52pm

US court dismisses Hindutva group’s defamation case against Audrey Truschke, four activists

https://maktoobmedia.com/2022/12/21/us-court-dismisses-hindutva-gro...

A United States court on Tuesday dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by the Hindutva group Hindu American Foundation against four activists and historian Audrey Truschke for two articles published in Al Jazeera.

“The Hindu American Foundation’s SLAPP lawsuit against me and four other defendants is dismissed by Judge Mehta! I’ll comment more in the coming weeks, but this is a win against the far right!,” tweeted Truschke.

The US-based right wing group had filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on 7 May last year. Besides Truschke, it had sued Indian American Muslim Council Executive Director Rasheed Ahmed, Hindus for Human Rights co-founders Sunita Viswanath and Raju Rajagopal and Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America chairman John Prabhudoss.

Sunita Viswanath, Rasheed Ahmed and John Prabhudoss had been quoted in the Al Jazeera articles, while Audrey Truschke was named in the suit for tweeting about the story and the Hindu American Foundation.

The author of one Al Jazeera article and prominent young Muslim journalist Raqib Hameed Naik, was named as a co-conspirator in the lawsuit.

“A federal judge in Washington DC has dismissed a frivolous lawsuit filed by rightwing group Hindu American Foundation over one of my stories published in Al Jazeera last year. HAF had sued 5 people & named me as a co-conspirator,” Raqib tweeted.

Comment

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• Next ›
• Page