Washington, DC: Hindu extremist groups in the United States are funding members of Congress such as Illinois representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (8th District) and pressuring President Joe Biden’s administration to avoid condemning India’s attacks on minorities, a leading Indian rights activist said at a Congressional Briefing this week.
According to a press release this Islamophobic and anti-Christian agenda is being driven by “very well funded Hindu nationalist extremist groups operating in the US as advocacy organizations [and] as business entities,” said John Prabhudoss, Chairman of the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations (FIACONA), a Washington DC-based advocacy organization.
“We need to recognize that before it gets really too out of hand,” Prabhudoss added. “Hindu nationalism has infiltrated the US establishment very well, very succinctly.”
One example, he said, was the support and funding of Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi by “proxies of the Hindu nationalist radical groups that want to make India as a Hindu nation state.”
“In December, 2021, there were calls [from Hindu nationalists] to kill 2 million Indian Muslims — that is twice the number of people killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994,” said David Anderson, Outreach Director for the International Society for Peace and Justice, an advocacy organization.
Members of Congress and their staffers “in private” say” they are monitoring human rights in India and were “deeply concerned” about it, Anderson said. “It is great that members of Congress and the Biden administration are concerned, but what are they willing to say about it publicly? Do not wait until there is a crisis to act.”
“It is not just a fringe minority who have become radicalized against Muslims and Christians,” said Rasheed Ahmed, Executive Director of the Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy organization that campaigns to uphold the religious freedoms and human rights of all Indians.
“The ideology of Hindu supremacism has poisoned every aspect of Indian democracy, from the central government, to schools, to the film industry, to law enforcement agencies, to the justice system. All Muslims in India is under attack simply because they exist.”
“We believe it’s important to stand up as Hindus from across the world, from the diaspora as well as in India, and raise our voices against this ideology of hate which is coming from our own community,” said Nikhil Mandalaparthy, Advocacy Director with Hindus for Human Rights, an advocacy organization aimed at countering Hindu nationalism and Islamophobia.
The US government must look at what “your own government agencies are saying about India… There’s a strong consensus that India is going farther and farther from being a democratic country where rights of minorities are guaranteed, and it’s time for everyone to wake up and take a more proactive role in challenging this injustice,” Mandalaparthy added.
The briefing was co-sponsored by Genocide Watch, World Without Genocide, Indian American Muslim Council, Hindus for Human Rights, International Christian Concern, Jubilee Campaign, 21Wilberforce, Dalit Solidarity Forum, New York State Council of Churches, Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America, India Civil Watch International, Center for Pluralism, International Commission for Dalit Rights, American Muslim Institution, Students Against Hindutva Ideology, International Society for Peace and Justice, The Humanism Project and Association of Indian Muslims of America.
