2020 Congressional Candidate Rishi Kumar’s ties to right-wing Hindu nationalism
Rishi Kumar, a self-proclaimed progressive, current Saratoga City Councilor and candidate for the seat of California’s 18th Congressional District, has been accused of having strong ties to — and actively supporting — the Overseas Friends of [the] Bharatiya Janata Party (OFBJP) — the foreign arm of the far-right Indian Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the current ruling party in India and the party of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In a May 2019 article, the international Sikh publication Sikh24 accuses Mr. Kumar of having attended a March 31, 2019 event in Milpitas, California organized by the Northern California chapter of the OFBJP in support of Prime Minister Modi’s 2019 reelection campaign. The article is based on speeches held by Mr. Pieter Friedrich, a South Asian affairs analyst and activist, as well as Mr. Bhajan Singh and Mr. Karthikeyan Shanmugam, both activists from the Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI), at a Saratoga City Council meeting on May 1, 2019. In their respective speeches, the three men all confront Mr. Kumar, addressing his alleged involvement with the OFBJP. Mr. Singh, one of the activists from the OMFI, asks why Mr. Kumar is “siding with those who operate like a sleeper cell to work for one of the deadliest nationalist movements in the world.” Mr. Friedrich asks if “our secular and pluralistic society really need a US Congressman who spends his free time campaigning for a religious nationalist political party in India?”
* Mr. Friedrich’s full speech at the Saratoga City Council on May 1, 2019 can be found here
* Mr. Singh’s full speech at the Saratoga City Council on May 1, 2019 can be found here
* Mr. Shanmugam’s full speech at the Saratoga City Council on May 1, 2019 can be found here
In Mr. Kumar’s 2020 campaign’s publicly available ‘Fellowship FAQ’, designed to guide some of his 232 interns — or “fellows”, as they’re called by the campaign — through their early days as members of the campaign team, Mr. Kumar’s alleged involvement with the OFBJP is mentioned under the heading “Conspiracy theories about Rishi” along with a guide as to how to respond if anyone brings up the topic.
In the FAQ, the campaign claims that when “Rishi arrived in the United States for grad school [in] Mechanical Engineering, [the] BJP wasn’t even a party at that time in India,” though if you look at Mr. Kumar’s Ballotpedia profile — which is, to a great extent, filled out by Mr. Kumar and his campaign staff themselves via a ‘candidate’s survey’ — Mr. Kumar graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Bombay in 1988 and from the University of Connecticut in 1992. According to the party itself, the BJP was founded in 1980, and at the 1989 Indian General Election — held just the year after Rishi graduated from the University of Bombay — the party won 85 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India. Not only had the BJP been around for the better part of a decade when Mr. Kumar came to the United States of America — it had also already established itself on the national political scene in India. Just two years later — at the 1991 Indian General Election — the BJP added another 35 members to its parliamentary group, winning 120 seats — 20.1% of the vote — of a total 545 available in the Lok Sabha.
The ‘Fellowship FAQ’ also claims that this case is just one of multiple “conspiracy theories” that are made up “to attack [his] run” — the other two being allegations of Mr. Kumar accepting money from the National Rifle Association and Mr. Kumar’s involvement with a September 2019 hit-and-run (Mr. Kumar was charged by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, but the campaign claims that it is an “orchestrated” and “sensationalized” attack created by the media to hurt him since he is a “progressive” running against “an establishment veteran incumbent” — in this case the 27-year incumbent Democrat Anna Eshoo.)
The FAQ also explains that these are stories created by “special interests [that] seek to subvert the agenda”, that “every Indian American who runs for office is attacked with a false narrative,” and that “we should get away from bigotry and attacks that have no ground.”
But there is in fact ground for these “attacks”. There is photographic evidence proving that Mr. Kumar has been present at multiple OFBJP events. The picture below, taken and shared on Facebook by Chandru Bhambhra, the OFBJP Northern California Chapter coordinator as well as public relations manager for the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) — the foreign arm of the Indian Hindu nationalist, paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), shows Mr. Kumar (left) posing with a BJP scarf (also known as a fatka) at the NaMo Sangam NaMo Again! — NRIs for Modi event at the Jain Temple in Milpitas, California on March 31, 2019, where over 400 activists and members of the OFBJP gathered to pledge support to PM Modi’s reelection. The banner behind him clearly confirms the event.
Another picture, also shared by Mr. Bhambhra, shows Mr. Kumar, still wearing his BJP scarf, speaking at the event. An article from the India Post describes how Mr. Kumar, while speaking at the event, claims that India will be known in terms of “before Modi” and “after Modi,” explaining that “the dynamic leadership of Modi has sparked a huge sense of pride in being Indian that was hitherto missing.” Two other media outlets — Indica News and The Hitavada — also reported on Mr. Kumar’s attendance at the event.
In the event invitation, shared on social media by members and sympathizers of the OFBJP, it is clearly stated that the event is organized to “show support for [the] BJP and Modi in the upcoming 2019 parliamentary elections in India.” On the online RSVP website, it is explained that the OFBJP is organizing the event to “highlight the achievements of [the] BJP [government] [and] PM Modi in the last five years.”
A photo shared on Facebook by a “prominent” member of the OFBJP, Sunil Ganu, shows Mr. Kumar present at the Chai pe Charcha with NaMo event — organized by the OFBJP — at the Pista House restaurant in Milpitas, California on January 30, 2017. In reporting on the event, the India Post interviewed Mr. Bhambhra, the Northern California OFBJP chapter coordinator. He explained that the event “was called to celebrate the Nomination of Rani Garima Singh for Amethi constituency of Uttar Pradesh, India,” an Indian BJP politician and the mother of a local OFBJP volunteer. The news outlet also spoke to other attendees, including Mr. Kumar. In the article, the India Post wrote: “[City] Council Member Rishi Kumar said amongst all Indian political parties, BJP was the one he liked. He said we need to take care of people’s needs and was confident that Garima Singh and BJP will be able to do so.”
This all proves that, since he was present at an OFBJP event — and spoke very positively about the BJP — three and a half years ago, Mr. Kumar’s involvement with the OFBJP is neither a one-time-only, nor anything new.
But it doesn’t end here.
In a September 2015 LinkedIn post, Mr. Kumar describes how he met Mr. Modi in an official setting as an elected official during the Prime Minister’s visit to Silicon Valley the same month. In the post, Mr. Kumar highly praises the PM. Under the headline “Silicon Valley still basking in Modi fever”, he describes how the official visit had the entire “Indian American community buzzing for months”: “The man, the myth, the legend [Prime Minister Modi] was being eagerly awaited.” He also describes how many of the organizers on the team planning the visit were “RSS, BJP and VHP folks” — members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS; an Indian Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization — of which the HSS is the foreign arm), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; the party of Prime Minister Modi — of which the OFBJP is the foreign arm) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP; another Indian Hindu nationalist organization) — and that they “had an incredible energy, driven by that zealous work ethic and energy driven by ethical behavior.”
In the post, Mr. Kumar also explains that “PM Modi is an inspiration for many of us, to apply service, ethical forthright behavior, hard work, commitment, (…) and without a self-driven agenda be at the service,” and that he has “never (…) seen an elected leader like this with such a smooth oratory that hits all the high notes, resonates and touches the depth of the heart, pushing and prodding to bring out the goodness, and reinforcing the value of what is right.” He finishes off the section by saying that “India is lucky to have a phenomenal leader at the helm. Salute to Prime Minister Modi.”
Furthermore, Mr. Kumar goes on to talk about how he “seek[s] to emulate [PM Modi] in [his] governance on the city council.” While I do not know which part of the Modi governance Mr. Kumar tries to emulate on the Saratoga City Council, I certainly do not hope it’s the mass incarceration — and systematic discrimination — of Muslims, the suppression of women’s rights to abortions and the ignoring of the many issues facing the LGBTQ+ community, among much else.
The fact is that Mr. Kumar has, for several years, been actively involved with the Overseas Friends of [the] BJP, even though he and his campaign stubbornly denies it. But why? If he would at least be frank about his international political affiliations, we would know what he stands for, but at the same time that he supports left-wing ideas and progressive social change in the United States, he is actively involved in the fight to maintain the right-wing, Hindu nationalist, minority cleansing status-quo in India.
One of the strongest arguments for Mr. Kumar in his race for Congress is that it is wrong for Ms. Eshoo — the incumbent congresswoman from California’s 18th District — to be the largest recipient of donations from the pharmaceutical industry in all of the U.S. House of Representatives. He has called on Ms. Eshoo to explain why she has “accepted more Big Pharma money than any other US Representative,” which is a completely legitimate question, but perhaps Mr. Kumar should start by explaining his own association with a foreign party that has been known to actively undermine democracy in its home country, instead of lying by denying altogether that the link even exists, before demanding answers from others.
Afterword
As a defense the Kumar campaign has previously championed, this article might be criticized and shut down as being ‘right-wing propaganda’ and an “orchestrated attack” spun up by “special interests [that] seek to subvert the agenda” since Mr. Kumar is “challenging an establishment veteran incumbent,” (I’m quoting the ‘Conspiracy Theories About Rishi’-section in the campaign’s ‘Fellowship FAQ’) but the answer is really much simpler than that.
While being critical of Mr. Kumar, I do not in any way support Ms. Eshoo, the incumbent congresswoman, or anyone to the right of her. I think it is utterly wrong for any Member of Congress to accept money from special interest groups and PACs — especially at the extent to which Ms. Eshoo is. But that doesn’t change the fact that I also think it is wrong that someone, posing as a progressive, is involved with a foreign far-right nationalist party and clearly succeeds in lying about it.
I simply want our politicians to tell the truth — why should we trust them to fight for our interests if they don’t speak truthfully? All I hope is that Mr. Kumar, as well as every other politician, will be honest about his values, views, and affiliations, and it is then up to the people of California’s 18th to decide whether they want him representing them in Congress or not.
August 05 update
Today I learned that Mr. Kumar’s campaign has released a statement on the allegations of his involvement with the OFBJP. As expected, they still deny any involvement, while still claiming that “[T]hese rumors about Rishi are simply false. If anything, they are an orchestrated attack on Rishi’s patriotism — a sad attempt to paint who will be the first Indian-American Congressman from California’s 18th District as anything but a dedicated American public servant.”
The statement, titled ‘Rishi Kumar, true American patriot’, also refers to Mr. Kumar’s 2015 LinkedIn-post praising in which he describes meeting PM Modi (and heavily praises him afterward.) Since I first wrote this piece in early July, the title of the LinkedIn-post has been changed from ‘Silicon Valley still basking in Modi-Fever’ to ‘Silicon Valley Welcomes India’s PM Modi’ — a very convenient move if you do not want to sound like you’re praising a Hindu nationalist leader. This is also exactly the reason I made sure to use the Wayback Machine — so that it would be possible to prove that information was later changed — as in this instance.
The statement that acknowledges that Mr. Kumar attended the OFBJP event in Milpitas, California on March 31, 2019, but claims that “He was invited by close friends, and viewed the event as an opportunity to share his platform of inclusivity and progress with the Bay Area community.” They go on to then claim that “Not once did he share pro-BJP sentiment, and not once did he endorse the party or any of its policies,” which is also a blatant lie. In the India Post article mentioned earlier in this piece, Mr. Kumar clearly endorses the message of the BJP: “[City] Council Member Rishi Kumar said amongst all Indian political parties, BJP was the one he liked. He said we need to take care of people’s needs and was confident that Garima Singh and BJP will be able to do so.”
Why can’t Mr. Kumar be honest about his political interests and views? We can do better than this.
Notes
* Most external websites linked in this text have been archived using the Wayback Machine made available by the Internet Archive. That way, the information and sources presented to you will stay the same, even if some is later changed, censored or deleted. Other sources (mainly first-hand) are shared via Dropbox.
