Sunita in Al Jazeera, Apr 2, 2021: “All these organizations are sympathetic to the Hindu supremacist ideology. Their parent organizations continue to spread hatred in Hindu communities towards Muslims and Christians,” and “Any American non-profit that perpetuates Islamophobia and other forms of hate should not receive federal relief funds in any form.”

Raju in Al Jazeera, Apr 8, 2021: “The rise of HAF and other organizations linked with Hindutva has emboldened Hindu supremacist organizations in India, while also stifling the moderate Hindu voices here in the US.”

Nearly twenty months after the HAF filed its complaint, Judge Amit P Mehta of the U.S. District Court in D.C. dismissed the case on all counts: “…the court has reviewed the allegedly defamatory statements attributed to Defendants Viswanath, Rajagopal, Ahmed, and Truschke, and finds that HAF fails to plausibly plead that any statement made by any defendant is verifiably false. Most of the statements are clearly statements of opinion …[Also] Because the underlying defamation claim against Prabhudoss fails, Plaintiff’s civil conspiracy claim fails.” [p 26]

A Lawsuit with Zero Evidence

Earlier, on March 15, 2022, the judge issued an order questioning whether HAF had lost any donations at all on account of our statements, “much less an amount in excess of $75,000.” [But] “rather than dismiss the complaint outright, the court will…stay the motions to dismiss and allow for a limited period of jurisdictional discovery as to the amount in controversy.”

This meant that our attorneys had an opportunity to look into the veracity of HAF’s claimed financial losses by examining granular details of donations received by HAF in recent years. This was the primary purpose of the virtual deposition by Suhag Shukla of HAF on May 16, 2022. The deposition remained sealed from public view until recently, when the court ordered 385 pages of unredacted evidence unsealed, including 45 pages of Shukla’s deposition (p 268+).

Shukla’s day-long deposition with attorneys from both sides was nothing short of a disaster. She was unable to back up any of HAF’s allegations in its complaint with evidence – not one! The result was a deposition peppered with evasive and intransigent responses by Shukla before she would finally admit the truth: See highlights of the deposition.

Our Supplemental Brief

Based on Shukla’s deposition, the defendants submitted a Supplemental Brief on June 10, 2022: “discovery…confirms the Court’s suspicions: Plaintiff is unable to identify any evidence of economic harm, let alone damages meeting the jurisdictional minimum. Indeed, discovery has established that not a single existing or potential donor ever told HAF it was reducing, eliminating, or not making initial contributions due to the challenged statements.”

The brief also dismissed assertions of “reputational damage” to HAF as a result of our statements: “HAF has no one but itself to blame for its expulsion” from the Alliance Against Genocide. It referred to some of the other assertions by HAF as “fanciful” “speculative,” “without foundation,” etc.

To make a long story short, Shukla had failed to support with evidence any of HAF’s claims: NO evidence of defamation, NO evidence of a conspiracy, and NO evidence of financial losses. Not surprisingly, HAF did not refute any of the conclusions in our Supplemental Brief, thanks to the terrific work of our pro bono lawyers who came to our aid because of their commitment to the First Amendment.

So, when the final judgment to dismiss the case came down on December 20, 2022, HAF was left scraping the bottom to find some “good news” for its donors and supporters: see SuhagShuklaOnLinkedin.

So they quickly jumped on a footnote by the judge, which explained that only one statement by Sunita and another by Audrey had the potential (“plausibly”) to be proven false, [i.e., had the case proceeded.] They maliciously modified the judge’s legalistic phrase, “plausibly verifiably false,” into “verifiably false” on social media posts, thus implying that the judge had made a determination that Sunita and Audrey had lied. The judge did no such thing!

HAF later added back the word “plausibly” in their posts, but some of their earlier doctored posts were not deleted, hence perpetuating the impression that Sunita and Audrey had lied.  In our view, HAF has done itself and its supporters great disservice by attempting subterfuge to eke out a “silver lining” out of an ignominious defeat.

What Were They Thinking?

As one of our attorneys observed during our debriefing following the dismissal of the lawsuit, “Even a first-year law student can differentiate between statements of opinion and defamation.” With two senior attorneys on their Executive Team, is it possible that HAF really thought that they had a winnable case? If not, what were they really thinking when they chose to spend several hundred thousand dollars of donated money on a foolhardy defamation lawsuit?

Perhaps, HAF felt threatened by our progressive Hindu voice –  which does not seek to divide the world into haters and the hated — challenging them from within the community and in D.C. spaces. And they decided to scare us through a high-profile SLAPP lawsuit, with expensive Trump family attorneys to boot. If that was their thinking, they have failed miserably. Instead, HfHR and our allies have together only gotten stronger, bolder, and wiser in our work of resisting Hindutva and casteism.

But it’s also entirely possible, knowing the litigious track record of HAF, that their ultimate goal was to create enough hype and narratives of victimhood around the lawsuit to help raise funds. That would explain their surprising fundraiser just months after filing the lawsuit, provocatively titled, How to sue your haters. In a classic case of projection, those who sued had become the victims, and the victims had become the haters! Sadly, the tactic seems to have worked: Looking at the list of donations in the days following the event (from the unsealed deposition), HAF appears to have collected over $ 70,000 within a day and close to $300,000 in a week! Total donations to HAF went up from $1,580,784 in 2021 to $2,583,102 in 2022! Clearly, their claim that our statements had led to financial losses was an outright lie and Shukla’s deposition was the clinching proof.

Whatever may have been HAF’s intent, we know from their history of lawsuits (mostly ending in defeat), that they have successfully leveraged them to raise funds – sometimes both before and after the case. An important lesson to take home for those opposing Hindutva: Legal failures do not necessarily lead to loss of donors and donations.

Therein lies the opposition’s challenge: If we’re to dislodge the caustic presence of Hindutva in the diaspora, for every dollar of donation received by Hindu supremacists, we must raise at least one dollar to counter their divisive hate politics. Moral successes aren’t enough anymore; we must aim for equally successful fundraising programs.

The good news is that with an outpouring of support from our donors, activists, academics, allies, our families, and our super-energized team, HfHR has already made a headstart in increasing our national and regional presence, in forming new alliances, and taking on more projects in 2023 and 2024. And now, we are appealing to you, all Indian Americans who are concerned about democracy and minority rights in India, to help us on an emergency footing so we can ramp up our efforts to propagate a progressive and pluralistic Hindu voice as a counter to the divisive voices of Hindutva. You can do so by becoming a member of the HfHR community today and by making a financial contribution.

Sunita Viswanath and Raju Rajagopal are co-founders of Hindus for Human Rights USA.

Courtesy: https://americankahani.com

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Similar arguments were made by Governor Gavin Newsom of California on October 7, as he vetoed a bill known as SB 403 that would have banned caste discrimination in education, housing and employment throughout California.

Passed with overwhelming support in the state’s Assembly in early September after being introduced by freshman Senator Aisha Wahab in February, SB 403 was a response to the testimonies of hundreds of Silicon Valley workers of South Asian backgrounds, who say they have experienced discrimination on account of their “low caste” status.

The case of one such worker, in fact, had drawn the attention of the California Civil Rights Department, which filed a lawsuit in 2020 against the tech giant CISCO and two of its former employees, who were accused of identifying the worker as a Dalit (the preferred term for communities derogatorily referred to historically as “untouchables”). The scurrilous implication of being “outed” in this way is to suggest that a worker is a beneficiary of India’s affirmative action programs for Dalits and therefore less competent.

The two employees have since been dropped from the complaint, but the caste discrimination case against CISCO continues.

Central to the CISCO case is the company’s refusal to act on the employee’s complaint, stating that caste discrimination is not illegal in California. SB 403 was an effort to address this serious gap. By formally adding “caste” to the list of protected classes under California’s civil rights statutes (which now include race, color, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, sex, pregnancy, religion, disability, age, military or veteran status and marital status), it was hoped that companies could not legally ignore caste bias.

Responding to unrelenting protests from Hindu nationalist groups, who claimed SB 403 would cause all Hindus to be regarded as discriminatory if caste discrimination was formally recognized as wrong, the bill had been edited to list caste as a subset of ancestry, though it still contained a clear definition of caste. This dilution left many caste-oppressed communities wondering why caste discrimination would be considered any more acceptable than discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, which had remained on the list.

But despite the compromise in language, Newsom vetoed the bill on a weekend as the world’s attention was called to the Mideast. It is abundantly clear that he succumbed to political pressure from the same Hindu nationalists who demanded caste be stricken from the bill. The governor’s explanation for his action is remarkably close to the position of these groups, led by the Hindu American Foundation.

These opponents of the bill had been indulging in rank fear-mongering about the proposed law, spreading preposterous allegations in WhatsApp groups that SB 403 was an attack on Hinduism itself and would make Hindus, especially women, fearful of displaying their “Hinduness” in public.

Left to themselves, many Hindu Americans would support SB 403 or at worst be agnostic. But caste-oppressed communities are now in a state of shock. Saying caste discrimination is already covered under California’s civil rights laws contradicts their experience and merely rubs salt into their wounds.

Besides the insult to these Americans, Newsom has glossed over three important considerations.

First, California’s legal system isn’t as capricious and arbitrary as HAF would have us believe. The Civil Rights Department has an elaborate process to vet complaints before legal action is taken on behalf of alleged victims. The case against CISCO was the first caste discrimination allegation the CRD had taken up; they didn’t get everything right, but lessons from that case will only strengthen CRD’s ability to fairly pursue future cases — which will continue to arise, despite (or because of) the governor’s veto.

Had SB 403 existed at CISCO when its employee complained of caste discrimination, the case would have most likely been resolved within the company itself. Employers, in response to the law, would have been encouraged by SB 403 to put in place appropriate policies and training programs on caste, as some are already doing.

The HAF’s protests, and the governor’s veto, however, will have a chilling effect, discouraging other employers from addressing caste at all or implementing caste discrimination policies.

Second, Newsom has canceled the deterrent effect SB 403 would have had on caste discrimination before it occurs, as well as its legal effect in ensuring Dalits would not need to worry about being “outed” at work and would be granted the self-confidence to be themselves at the workplace.

Finally, in its separate lawsuit against the CRD, HAF made the extraordinary claim that by defining caste as a Hindu ideology, “the (CRD) would actually require the very discrimination that it seeks to ban,” and “employers might arguably be required to accommodate an employee’s request not to work with someone the employee believes to be of the ‘wrong’ caste.” The court dismissed that claim as “both highly speculative and seemingly implausible.”

The court added that HAF, by trying to distance Hinduism from caste while arguing that SB 403 would selectively target Hindus, was contradicting itself. The defeat of SB 403, I’m afraid, will only tempt HAF to continue to push these untenable positions.

Caste discrimination is a sad reality that all Hindus must acknowledge and work together to annihilate, knowing that it is perfectly possible to practice Hinduism while combating caste discrimination. Gov. Newsom has missed an opportunity to support these simple facts. Instead he has lifted up the irrational fears and speculations of a highly privileged community over the needs of caste-oppressed communities, who will continue to face biases because of who they are.

But the fight is not over by any means. Those who demanded that caste be added as a distinct protected category in not only California’s but also the nation’s civil rights laws will, if anything, be strengthened in championing the vision of SB 403. We, the people who stand for justice for all, are the majority.

In the meantime, the least that the governor can do is to issue a letter formalizing his claim that caste discrimination is already covered under existing laws and require all employers to implement policies and training programs to deal with caste discrimination complaints.

The fight for SB 403 has been a remarkable journey, with a Muslim woman having the courage to introduce the bill and a diverse coalition of communities coming together to fight for it. We need such solidarity across our differences to win justice for any of our communities. The deep bonds we have all built through the fight in Seattle and now California will serve us well, indeed will be our lifeline, in the struggles ahead.

*Co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights and a member of  America Against Caste Discrimination. This article first appeared in Religion News Service and was distributed by the author through Dalits Media Watch google group

Courtesy: Counterview

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There’s a lot to unpack in her accusations against the Parliament of World’s Religions (the Parliament) and her ad hominem attacks on Prof. Anantanand Rambachan, a renowned scholar of Hinduism and an advisor to Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR), who had written that those who were complaining of discrimination at the Parliament did not address their own ties to India’s “contentious and aggressive politics.”

The Preponderance of Hindu Voices

Let me begin with Sekhsaria’s patently absurd claim that the Parliament discriminated against Hindu speakers.

A search of the Parliament website for the list of 2023 speakers shows over 18 Swamis and Sadhvis, as well as 50 or more other Hindu speakers, who brought diverse Hindu perspectives on Vedanta, Bhagavad Gita, ahimsa, yoga, ethics, animal welfare, climate action, human rights, religious freedom, freedom of expression, and so on. These were interspersed with Indian classical and devotional music as well as Hindu worship and chants. As a matter of fact, the number of Swamis as speakers exceeded the number of Reverends and Rabbis!

I am aware of only one Hindu speaker who was disinvited following allegations of Islamophobia: Nivedita Bhide of the Vivekananda Kendra (Kendra), a Kanyakumari-based organization founded by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), with the express mission of countering the dominance of Christians in the Kanyakumari area and Arunachal Pradesh.

Sekhsaria did not advance any argument as to why Bhide deserved to remain as a speaker despite her alleged Islamophobic tweets. Neither did she clarify HAF’s stance on the ideology of the Kendra and the RSS, whose values run counter to the Parliament’s goal of cultivating interfaith harmony.

The idea that “Hindu speakers were banned, and Hindu organizations were demonized” at the Parliament is a vast exaggeration, when in fact only Hindu nationalist groups appear to have been left out of the list of speakers.

Hyperboles are Not Arguments

Instead of reasoned arguments, Sekhsaria chooses to mischaracterize Prof. Rambachan’s remarks as a call to exclude from the Parliament those who don’t “entirely condemn Hindutva and the Government of India.” He made no such demand even by implication. Absurd as such a litmus test would be, it would have disqualified most of the Hindu spiritual leaders at the Parliament, who are unlikely to have publicly condemned either Hindutva or the Government of India!

Prof. Rambachan was clearly expressing his concern about Hindu nationalist groups, who on the one hand openly or tacitly embrace the Modi government’s anti-minority policies, but on the other hand, seek legitimacy at interfaith gatherings like the Parliament.

I have had the pleasure of working with Prof. Rambachan ever since the inception of HfHR. I see him as a man of principles, always weighing his words carefully to avoid an accusatory tone, even as he expresses his views with precision and conviction. In my view, Sekhsaria has done herself a great disservice by willfully distorting his thoughtful critique, instead of taking it to heart.

Convenient Scapegoats

Sekhsaria goes on to say that “Dr. Rambachan, and the organizations he supports openly, Hindus for Human Rights, and by association, Indian American Muslim Council [IAMC], have peddled the falsehood that the Hindu organizations they demonize are tied to the creation and fueling of hate against non-Hindu minorities in India.”

It’s interesting that she deliberately uses the word “openly” to describe Prof. Rambachan’s support for HfHR as if there were something sinister about a member of our own Advisory Board supporting our work! She then attempts to weave a conspiracy by linking him to the IAMC, even though he has absolutely no connection with that organization.

As our earliest and closest partner, we have found IAMC to be laser-focused on defending the human rights and religious freedom of Indian Muslims in India and the US, but they also speak up for the rights of other minorities. They meticulously avoid commenting on Hindu religious affairs and do their best to keep their organization clear of controversial international struggles.

To me, the mere fact that HAF and other Hindu nationalist organizations are unable to muster even an iota of empathy for the beleaguered Indian Muslim community, as it endures more homes and places of worship destroyed illegally, more lynchings, and more legal harassment of activists, betrays their deep-seated animosity towards India’s largest minority.

HfHR is working to challenge this toxic ideology manifested through violent state policy. It does not bode well for the Hindu tradition to be linked to this kind of state violence.

Equating Hindu Nationalists with All Hindus

Sekhsaria also makes the preposterous charge that HfHR and IAMC “attack every proud Hindu for their identity.”

In the first place, HAF’s claim to be speaking on behalf of all Hindus is an insult to a majority of Hindus worldwide who do not subscribe to RSS’s hate-filled ideology.

Speaking for myself, I have always had a troubled relationship with the word “pride,” which has all too often been used to justify attacks on other communities. We are all painfully aware of how “German pride” enabled the destruction of six million Jews. We are now seeing “Hindu pride” being deployed regularly in India to justify hate speech and violent attacks on Muslims and Christians.

We at HfHR wholeheartedly reject the “Savarkar/Golwalkar” version of “Hindu Pride,” which presupposes contempt for other faiths. Instead, we aspire to lift up the shared heritage of all Indians, of which we can all be proud, and which does not ask people to hate others in order to love themselves. That is the core belief of our progressive Hinduism, founded in the spirit of saints of yesteryears such as Basavanna, Akka Mahadevi, Tukaram, Kabir, and other pathfinders.

It is to the credit of the Parliament that it tried not to give a platform to speakers and organizations whose acts of commission and omission show their lack of commitment and consistency on human rights and religious freedom.

HAF’s “Action in Inaction” (The Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 4, Verse 18)

Sekhsaria’s entire defense against charges that the HAF supports Modi’s anti-minority policies rests on just one point: That they have not made explicit statements in support of such policies. This is disingenuous, to say the least. Extensive findings in recent years (#1 and #2) show the proximity of the HAF to the RSS family.

This is not the place to revisit those findings, but suffice it to say that several founders of HAF hail from the RSS family and have never credibly distanced themselves from them. HAF receives a substantial part of its funding from supporters of the RSS family. Rishi Bhutada, a board member of the HAF, was the head spokesperson for the Howdy Modi event in 2019, which unabashedly hailed Modi and Trump. And, HAF advocates aggressively in Washington in support of the Modi regime and attempts to shield it from any criticism of its human rights record.

Given that history, it’s a poor defense to suggest that the lack of explicit statements in support of Modi’s anti-minority policies absolves them of all responsibility for the massive violation of the rights of minorities in India.

The Blame Game

HAF has played the blame game for years.

Mihir Meghani, co-founder of the HAF, wrote an essay in 1996 applauding the destruction of the Babri Masjid. When the essay surfaced in 2006, he blamed his teenage years and pointed the finger at unknown persons for doctoring his essay and posting it on the BJP website without his knowledge.

In the 2004-06 California school textbooks controversy, the HAF sued the state

to halt the publication of textbooks that had not accepted all the edits suggested by Hindu nationalist groups. When the judge dismissed the case, HAF blamed “anti-Hindu” scholars, “communists,” and the learned judge himself for not being suited to comment on Hinduism.

In 2019, HAF filed a defamation suit against me and my colleague, Sunita Viswanath, and three others, citing an imaginary conspiracy among defendants some of whom had never even met or talked before the lawsuit! When the judge threw out the case, they blamed it on technicalities and attempted to mischaracterize the ruling.

Throughout 2023, HAF has made its opposition to SB 403, the CA bill to ban caste discrimination, a central pillar of their work. As the bill awaits the Governor’s assent, they continue to blame Dalit groups for daring to expose the underbelly of dominant caste culture in California workplaces and social settings.

And now the HAF is falsely blaming the Parliament of World’s Religions for imagined discrimination against Hindus.

When will HAF end its blame game and start looking inwards for its string of policy failures and the resulting loss of credibility in the community?

Raju Rajagopal is a co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights USA.

Article was first published on American Kahani

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I was there at 7 am, two hours before the scheduled hearing, hoping to get in front of the line. But to my surprise, I could hear chants of “Stop…The… Hate” from several blocks away. The line was already long, indicating that some people must have arrived there in the wee hours of the morning. As there was no chance of my making it into the hearing room, I decided to talk to people anxiously waiting outside, both supporters and opponents – with a bit of sadness, I might add, to see the Indian American community so polarized.

As I surveyed the scene, I was surprised to see all the yellow banners in the name of Dalits and Bahujans, saying “NO” to SB 403. After talking to a few people, it became apparent that Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) organizations were fronting an avowed Dalit/Bahujan group, Ambedkar-Phule Network of American Dalits and Bahujans (APNADB), in their fight against SB 403.

Alas for them, their spokesperson, Sandeep Dedage’s “primary testimony” against SB 403 did not do justice to their large presence outside the room. His hyperboles and dubious claims left me stunned and must have raised a few eyebrows even among the Senators.

SB 403 is a “weapon to butcher our cultural existence,” Dedage declared, leaving everyone wondering how a law designed to prevent caste discrimination could possibly hurt anyone’s cultural existence – unless, of course, he believes that caste discrimination is so central to Hindu culture that it shouldn’t be challenged. His objection to SB 403 reminded me of similar objections by conservative groups to laws protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ communities as a threat to “traditional values.”

Dedage also claimed that organizations supporting SB 403 had attempted to erase the contributions of Dalits from California school textbooks. That is a gross misrepresentation. Having worked closely on the textbook issue in 2005-06, I know for a fact that it was the Hindu Education Foundation (HEF), a project of the Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh, and the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), which had attempted unsuccessfully to whitewash descriptions of the caste system and erase the very word “Dalit” from the textbooks.

Some may remember this powerful ruling in 2006 by a Superior Court judge, as he threw out HAF’s (and HEF’s) challenge to the textbooks on the matter of caste:

“The caste system is a historical reality, and indisputably was a significant feature of ancient Indian society. Nothing in the applicable standards requires textbook writers to ignore a historical reality of such a significant dimension, even if studying it might engender certain negative reactions in students. Indeed, it appears to the court that to omit treatment of the caste system from the teaching of ancient Indian history would itself be grossly inaccurate.

Those who are following the debate on Equality Act, passed by the House in 2019, would have no doubt seen similar arguments by opponents, who maintain that there is no need to explicitly add sexual orientation and gender identity to civil rights laws, because “sex” is already covered under the laws.

“Just as the regulation does not require textbooks to ignore unpleasant historical realities, it does not require them to present such realities in an unnaturally positive light…the texts…have satisfied the requirement of neutrality.”

I later found out that Dedage is (or was) the Director of the HEF, a relevant fact that he did not divulge during his testimony. Also, interestingly, the website and social media for the Ambedkar-Phule Network of American Dalits and Bahujans, show little or no active presence in Dalit-Bahujan social spaces other than on the textbook debate. That leads me to believe that it was created solely to support Hindu nationalist narratives on caste.

While I do not doubt Dedage’s personal sincerity, it’s hard to forget that in the 2006 textbook battle, Hindu nationalists had created a phony website in the name of Dalits and Bahujans, which exclusively carried stories from the RSS and other Hindutva groups.

I had a pleasant conversation with a member of the HAF, who offered the now-familiar line of argument that existing laws were adequate to counter caste discrimination. If that were so, I asked him, “Why did Cisco argue that caste discrimination was not illegal under existing laws and hence they did not act on complaints of caste discrimination?”

Cisco has since added “caste discrimination” to its H.R. policies, and a former senior Cisco executive has also gone on record supporting legislations like SB 403.

“Wouldn’t it be better to specifically add caste as a category so that there would be no ambivalence on the part of employers that they must address caste discrimination in their H.R. policies?” I asked.

To his credit, the HAF supporter seemed to leave the door a bit ajar to my suggestion.

Those who are following the debate on Equality Act, passed by the House in 2019, would have no doubt seen similar arguments by opponents, who maintain that there is no need to explicitly add sexual orientation and gender identity to civil rights laws, because “sex” is already covered under the laws.

However, supporters argue that the “…act would explicitly enshrine those non-discrimination protections into law…rather than those protections being looped in under the umbrella of ‘sex.’” In their view, the bill would cement protections that could otherwise be left up to interpretation. Human Rights Campaign, which wrote in support of the bill, said “… a future administration may refuse to interpret the law this way, leaving these protections vulnerable.”

The very same line of argument now applies to why it is important to explicitly enshrine caste as a protected category in our civil rights laws. Those who’re facing caste discrimination can’t simply leave it to the vagaries of employers and the courts to protect their rights unless caste is spelled out in black and white in the laws.

“Say NO to profiling” was another common slogan I saw among opponents of SB 403.

This theme has been repeated over and over in the last few weeks, even though the proposed law mentions no particular community. Nor is it likely that employers would be so reckless as to create H.R. policies singling out South Asians. Nonetheless, APNADB claims that the new law would prevent companies from hiring South Asians – a red herring.

The HAF also raises several questions in its letter to Sen. Wahab objecting to SB 403, for example:

“…will administrators and the state be asked to rely on India’s laws related to caste and impose foreign law on those working or residing in California? Or will administrators simply treat people of South Asian origin as presumptively guilty because SB-403 states as much? Will only South Asians be forced to answer intrusive questions about or be judged for who they are married to because the state has defined caste as relating to “endogamy”?”

I find these speculations outlandish and fear-mongering at their worst.

Unfortunately, even Rep. Ro Khanna appears to have imbibed some of HAF’s talking points, as he stated in a recent town hall meeting that he was in support of any law ending caste discrimination, as long as it did not “profile” South Asians.

The cruel irony is that it’s the Dalits and Bahujans who have been subjected to centuries of cruel “profiling” in Indian society. Some members of those communities have come to America with the expectation that the “home of the free” would free them from institutionalized discrimination. To now deny them legal protections, merely based on the fears of other well-heeled communities, in my view, shows extreme insensitivity to their lived reality and exposes the victim complex being spread by Hindu nationalists.

The Indian-American community is one of the major beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and many reforms that followed, including the Voting Rights Act, a lift on bans on interracial marriages, a more liberal and inclusive immigration policy, etc. Since that era, the State of California has expanded the categories of discrimination from the original five (race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin) to eighteen. If the proposed SB 403 passes, then “caste” would be the nineteenth category. At every stage of expanding and refining our civil rights laws, arguments have been made that they were either unnecessary or would unfairly target certain sections of society. But there is no evidence that any such fears have actually come true.

To cite one major example, in the intense public debate leading up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sen. Strom Thurmond of Alabama, a staunch opponent of civil rights, argued: “This bill, in order to bestow preferential rights on a favoured few… would take away the rights of individuals and give to government the power to decide who is to be hired, fired and promoted in private businesses…It would give the power…to government bureaucrats to decide…who, in the bureaucrats’ discretion, is guilty of the undefined crime of discrimination.”

I hear echoes of that same argument coming from Hindu nationalist groups in the U.S. who are opposing SB 403.

After the unanimous approval by the Senate Judiciary Committee (11 to 0) on April 25th and the green signal from the Appropriations Committee today, SB 403 is now headed for a floor vote in the California Senate. I am confident that the Senators will not allow unfounded fears and insecurities of Hindu nationalist groups and their supporters to supersede the urgent need to protect workers against caste discrimination.

(The author is the Cofounder of Hindus for Human Rights, and a member of America Against Caste Discrimination (AACD, this article first appeared in Amerikan Kahani on May 9, 2023))

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Suhag Shukla of the Hindu American Foundation had tweeted some time back that the fact that the Adivasi couple in the documentary “The Elephant Whisperers” were seen practicing Hindu customs proves the “inarguable indigeneity” of Hinduism. I wrote a rejoinder to that claim in the American Kahani, titled. “The Elephant Whisperers and the Disingenuity of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF)’s attempt to co-opt Adivasis” writes Raju Rajagopal in American Kahani.

In a recent tweet, Suhag Shukla of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) claimed that the portrayal of Bomman and Ellie in the documentary “The Elephant Whisperers” underscores Hinduism’s “inarguable indigeneity.”

She takes a giant leap of faith from an Adivasi couple who happen to follow Hindu practices to declaring that their forebears must have also been Hindus. Extensive scholarship on the tribes of the Nilgiris dating back 150 years shows no basis for such a simplistic and self-serving assertion.

Bomman & Bellie, couple featured in #ElephantWhisperers, are amazing exemplars of Hindu values. He is a Hindu priest & both personify Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in communing with Raghu & Krishna. If they’re “Adivasi,” as we’re told, they underscore Hinduism’s inarguable indigeneity. pic.twitter.com/bWdehupewe

— Suhag A. Shukla (@SuhagAShukla) March 14, 2023

My wife and I have long been supporting tribal communities in the Nilgiris, where “The Elephant Whisperers” was filmed. Over the last 20 years, we have had many opportunities to spend time with community-based organizations that support them in education, healthcare, and land rights. 

The fact is, despite all the pressures to assimilate with the larger communities, the primary self-identity of these indigenous communities is still their tribe: Kattunayakans (hunter-gatherers), Mullukurumbas (settled agriculturalists), Bettekurumbas (shifting agriculturists and now forest department workers), and Paniyas (bonded workers in the recent past, who’re now casual laborers or small tea growers). 

Each tribe has its own distinct customs and languages: Bettakurumbas do identify as Hindu, and many of their traditional animistic spaces of worship have been taken over as mainstream Hindu temples. Most others practice their traditional faiths mixed with Hindu symbols. They are typically meat-eaters, but some are known to consume beef as well, which is not uncommon among many Adivasi tribes. Mullukurumbas and Kattunayakans have very little in common in their socio-economic status. 

Bomman, in “The Elephant Whisperers” is a kattunayakan (as he says at the start of the film), and Bellie is a Bettakurumba. The film was set in the mixed community of Thepakadu, inside the Mudumalai forest, where tribals and non-tribal forest department workers live together. So, their getting married didn’t fall into either of their tribe’s customs and was more Hinduized, as we saw in the documentary. 

Some of the shared traits that distinguish the tribes of the Nilgiris from the people from the plains include a natural inclination towards gender equality, excellent female hygiene, and a relaxed attitude towards sex and marriage. On the health side, many tribal communities exhibit genetic abnormalities not seen in the plains, including sickle cell anemia — which they share with America’s indigenous and black communities.

Most of the tribes in the Gudalur area are members of the Adivasi Munnetra Sangam (AMS), which was set up in 1988 and has helped them defend and regain their rights to forest resources and to lands that had been promised to them, but were often encroached upon with impunity by corporate tea plantations. 

The collective term “Adivasi” (which simply means original inhabitants) refers to hundreds of indigenous communities throughout India and is now in common usage. In contrast, the term “vanvasi” (forest dweller) is a term coined by Hindu nationalists, chosen consciously to deny their indigeneity. Most Adivasis reject that label. 

Since AMS was established in 1988 under the umbrella of the NGO, ACCORD, the lives of 20,000 Adivasis in the Gudalur area have changed dramatically. They fought for and regained hundreds of acres of land. Tribals who used to stop on the streets to look away and avoid eye contact with non-tribals (who considered them inauspicious), walk with their heads held high today. Some of the Paniyas who were bonded to the land-owning Chettis, are now small tea plantation owners or casual laborers.

Communities that seldom saw doctors and hospitals in the 1990s, and used to leave their sick in their verandahs to recover or to die, now run a 50-bed modern hospital, under ASHWINI, with such superior care that even non-Adivasis in the area now prefer to go there. Thanks to ASHWINI, the infant mortality rate has fallen from 250 per 1,000 in 1987 to around 20 per 1,000 these days. Maternal deaths are also getting fewer each year. 

A school started initially to educate the children of ACCORD, has blossomed into an Adivasi school VIDYODAYA, which emphasizes the preservation of tribal cultures and languages, while at the same time teaching the best of science, math, and the environment.  

Given this backdrop, my hope after I saw “The Elephant Whisperers” was that the movie might stimulate discussions on issues such as the worldwide movement against elephants in captivity; the fragile co-existence of man and elephants and the proposal for an elephant corridor that would displace many Adivasis; imminent dangers to Adivasi communities by efforts to gut the 2006 Forest Rights Act; and challenges faced by the Nilgiris biosphere reserve by proposed projects like the underground lab for neutrino studies, which could displace thousands of people from their ancestral homes. 

So, to me, it was a huge disappointment to see the Hindu American Foundation elide over all the real issues faced by tribal communities and instead zero in on their supposed Hindu ancestry – a red herring, in my view. 

Suhag Shukla’s tweet exemplifies the shallow and monochromatic ideology of Hindutva, especially when it comes to issues that affect the daily lives of marginalized communities. But then, her tweet was merely a continuation of the decades-old effort by the RSS and its Parivar to co-opt Adivasis into Hinduism by whatever means necessary. 

Back in 1951, in response to questions on how beef-eating tribals in the North East could be considered Hindus, Guruji Golwalkar had come up with this bizarre explanation: 

“They have been basically Hindus all along, had been deprived of the benefit to proper Hindu religious enlightenment for a long time solely because of lack of communication and contacts with the rest of the society and its culture. As such it was no fault of theirs if they had remained alienated from our religious and cultural concepts such as devotion to cow. It was therefore our sacred duty to accept the janjatis as part of the Hindu society without any reservations.” (“Shri Guruji – Pioneer of a New Era” by C.P. Bhishikar, 1999, Sahitya Sindhu Prakashan)

What the Guruji had failed to mention was that the tribals of the Northeast weren’t exactly clamoring for and standing in line to be admitted into Hindu society.

But the fact that he was willing to bend the most sacred rule of Hindutva and countenance the idea of beef-eating Hindus demonstrated the length to which RSS was willing to go to co-opt Adivasis into the “Hindu fold.” It is ironic that today’s Hindu nationalists are unwilling to accept even beef-eating non-Hindus in their midst and are legislating beef bans in several states. 

In her tweet, Suhag Shukla seems to question the very term ‘Adivasi.’ This is an affront to all indigenous communities who accept it as a collective reference to tribal communities, even if they prefer to be referred to by their tribal names. (This reminds me of HAF’s ill-fated attempts a few years back to purge the word Dalit from school textbooks in California.)

HAF’s ideological parents and their oligarchs in India are now trying to label millions of indigenous peoples as illegal squatters in the forests and are prepared to evict them to make way for mining interests to roll in with their giant bulldozers. 

Will the HAF now start referring to tribals as “so-called Vanvasis” to help delegitimize their presence in the forests?

The author is co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights, USA

This article was first published on https://americankahani.com

Related:

‘Godse is a National Hero who must be Taught about in Schools’ — Global Hindu Foundation to Government of India

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