Hindu Americans are deeply hurt by the recent Hinduphobic resolution passed by Teaneck Democratic Municipal Committee, in which Hindus have been likened to Nazis and fascists. The community is also deeply concerned with what it sees as a pattern of Hinduphobic bias of the US Democratic Party over the last several years.
Note: This article is a slightly modified version of an earlier blog and is being published with its author’s permission. The original blog can be found here: http://www.satyablog.org/2022/10/04/teaneck-democratic-party-committee-resolution-labeling-all-hindu-americans-as-terrorists-on-us-soil-send-shock-waves-among-hindu-americans/
Teaneck Democratic Municipal Committee (TMDC), on Sept 12, 2022, passed a resolution categorizing practically every Hindu American group as extensions of “Indian hate groups” persecuting minorities in India. It further insinuated that Hindu Americans are potential terrorists and purveyors of Nazism and European fascism on American soil and, therefore, need to be investigated. Naturally, the resolution sent shockwaves throughout the Hindu-American community.
This resolution could not have come at the worst time, as the community is grappling with a series of hate crimes. Several lawmakers, including Democrat US Congressman Josh Gottheimer, NJ Senators Vin Gopal and Loretta Weinberg (retired), Teaneck City Council, NJ State Democratic Party, and Republican Congressional Candidate Pallotta condemned and disassociated with it. Several NJ Hindu American organizations and SEWA International issued a statement calling it a defamatory resolution, demonizing the entire Hindu American community, and promoting hatred against a peaceful minority, particularly when the community is facing unprecedented violence across the nation. The community is also deeply concerned with what it sees as a pattern of Hinduphobic and Anti-India bias of the Democratic Party over the last several years.
Rising Tide of Violence Against Hindu Americans
On July 12, 2022, Rutgers University researchers at Network Contagion Lab, which studied the patterns of hate in social media and messaging platforms, released a report that Hinduphobia is on the rise and warned that this could spill into real-world violence. The report noted that ‘the weaponization of Hinduphobia for facially political aims in the real world poses a tangible threat to ratchet anti-Hindu violence.’ The report, authored by John Farmer, former NJ State Attorney General (and Senior Counsel for 9/11 commission), along with several others, recounted the dot busters campaign in Jersey City in 1987, targeting Hindu Americans by White youth gangs where one person was beaten to death while walking from home, a physician beaten to comatose state with baseball bats while walking from office, another with a metal pipe in his apartment and a cab driver killed on the streets.
The Rutgers report could not be more timely, as these recent incidents of violence against Hindu Americans show:
- On Aug 27, 2022, in Plano, Texas, a Mexican American woman physically attacked three Indian (Hindu) American women in the parking lot and cursed them with epithets such as, ‘You f…ing Indians’, ‘you are ruining America,’ ‘we don’t want you here, you curry arse bitches’, ‘you Indians are f…ing everywhere, I hate you f…ing Indians’.
- Just four days later, after Plano, TX attack on Sept 1, 2022, another Hindu American was confronted by a fellow Indian American of Sikh faith in Fremont, CA, calling him a ‘dirty Hindu,’ ‘ugly Hindu,’ a ‘disgusting dog,’ ‘f…ing Indira Gandhi Nigger’ (referring to Indian Prime Minister who was assassinated by Sikh guards), ‘cow urine drinker,’ ‘you dirty arse f…ing Hindu,’ ‘you f…ing dirty mother f…er’, ‘ ‘you f..k India, you are f…ing America’, yelling beef, and spat twice at him. He is believed to be part of Khalistan, a Sikh separatist group whose goal is to separate the state of Punjab (where most Sikhs live) from India.
- A few days before the Plano attack on August 27th, a series of vandalizing incidents took place on Aug 3rd and Aug 18th, in which a group of miscreants vandalized the Gandhi statue in front of a Hindu Temple in South Richmond Hill, NY. These miscreants are also believed to be from Khalistan (Sikh separatist) group, instilling fear in the Hindu American community, largely of Caribbean descent.
Every country has fault lines. India, with a 10,000-year-old civilizational history, has its own social issues mixed in with contemporary politics. For a mainstream American political party to take sides in fault-line issues of a foreign country, create a dangerous situation for the immigrant minority communities in this country. This has been amply seen in Leicester, UK, where massive disturbances have taken place in the last few days between Hindu and Muslim communities and where Hindu temples have been vandalized based on false narratives of kidnap and mosque attacks fanned by disgraceful reporting by the local news outlets.
What seems especially ominous is the language like ‘cow piss drinker’ ‘fascists who support the nationalist government in India’ commonly seen in these hate attacks against Hindus from the US to the UK and even in Canada, and the support such groups are getting from Western institutions like American Democratic party, USCIRF, Pulitzer Center and others, accompanied by false narratives in Western media about incidents in India, indicate a possible larger plan in the works that the community has not come to grips with.
Targeted Hindu organizations have a long history of community service in the US
Among the many organizations listed in the Teaneck resolution is SEWA International, an organization with more than 3,000 volunteers, ten helpline centers, and which has donated many millions of pounds of food to local food pantries (see graphic) and organized 90 webinars during the Covid pandemic in the US, serving 
all communities across the country. It has done enormous service to the society at large in the United States, such as during Hurricane Katrina, as well as conducted mammoth international relief efforts in other countries, including Ukraine. It has received commendations from the US President, Governor Kemp of Georgia, US members of Congresspersons Gerald Connolly (democrat), Raja Krishnamurti (democrat), and US Senators and FEMA executives. It is one of the seven trusted partners of FEMA. There was even a Congressional resolution, H. Res 1160, introduced by Republican congressman Fitzpatrick, commending their work during Covid.
Indeed, TDMC has failed to provide any evidence of hate being promulgated by Sewa International or other Hindu American organizations it has chosen to equate to Nazism and European fascism in its resolution.
Shady Background of Organizations Behind the TMDC Resolution
Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), with which the Teaneck democratic party worked in creating the said resolution, has a long history of being linked with various terrorist organizations and activities.
- IAMC was charged in 2021 under anti-terrorism law in India (UAPA) for spreading fake news.
- Its advocacy director, Ajit Sahi, was recently caught on tape endorsing support to an Islamic terrorist organization, SIMI, that perpetrated several terrorist attacks across India!
- Its key founders, such as Shaik Ubaid, were former executives of ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), against which US Congress passed a resolution for its deep connection to terrorist organizations like Jamaat-e-Islami, responsible for the holocaust during the 1971 Bangladesh war that killed 3 million, displaced 10 million and in which 200,000 women were raped – per the text of the TDMC resolution.
Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), another organization that worked with TDMC in producing this resolution, has its own history of serious federal crimes.
- CAIR has been reported by the Anti-Defamation League as a former member of the Islamic Association for Palestine that called for Jihad against Israel.
- CAIR was also included on a 2007 Department of Justice list of nearly 250 ‘unindicted co-conspirators’ in the Holy Land Foundation charity case, whose founding officers were convicted on more than 100 criminal counts and sentenced in May 2009 to prison terms ranging from 15 to 65 years for financing terrorism against Jews.
It is also interesting to note that these same organizations categorize Zionism as different from Judaism, just as they claim Hindutva to be different from Hinduism, implying that the former oppresses Muslims and is different from the latter (religion), thereby camouflaging their real intention!
These groups are working in tandem with another individual, Peter Friedrich, spreading venom against Hindu Americans and hate against several Hindu American candidates and organizations. Peter Friedrich is a Christian missionary working in close cooperation with the Khalistan Separatist group under the banner of ‘OFMI (Organization for Minorities in India). The latter organization has deep connections with Pakistan’s ISI, from which these groups receive funding to destabilize India. A Pakistani-origin partner of Peter Friedrich, Bhajan Singh Bhinder (aka Iqbal Chaudhary), has been alleged by the Drug Enforcement Agency to have attempted to negotiate the purchase of assault weapons and shoulder-fired missiles for the ‘Free Khalistan’ movement. Peter Friedrich has been under the radar of Indian security agencies since 2006, and a great deal has been reported about his work by Michael Rubin, senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute (see his article on the AEI blog). Peter Friedrich is also a known anti-Gandhi activist who is using Sikh separatist groups to demolish Gandhi Statues. Many in the know understand that this hatred for Gandhi is for Gandhi’s views against the missionary conversions in India. The Christian fundamentalists in USCIRF (US Commission on International Religious Freedom) work closely with Islamic fundamentalists for their common goals against Hindus and India, as documented by Disinfo Lab’s investigation (see this video series for the full account).
Is the Democratic Party Inimical to Hindu American Interests?
All this begs the question: Why should a mainstream US political party weigh in on the fault lines of a foreign country with little or no research or incriminating evidence? Are they really ignorant of the fact that, in doing so, they are inflicting enormous harm to a highly contributing minority community within our own country?
Unfortunately, the TDMC resolution is not the only instance where the Democratic party has taken an extreme anti-Hindu position. India’s CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) is another example where, in recent times, several Democratic party-controlled city administrations have shown extreme Hinduphobic bias at the behest of organizations like CAIR. The Citizenship Amendment Act was enacted by the Government of India to facilitate expedited citizenship for the victims of ethnic cleansing in India’s neighboring Islamic countries. Unfortunately, in each instance, it was clear that the Democratic-led city administration had not taken the time to understand the content of the CAA legislation and, therefore, were clueless about what they were opposing.
There is little doubt that there are many organizations like CAIR working behind the scenes to foment Hinduphobic sentiments in the American political system. Investigations by Disinfo Lab and Anti-Defamation League have daylighted the deep and complex connections these shadowy organizations have with known international terrorist entities. It is incumbent upon all mainstream political parties to investigate the backgrounds of the organizations they choose to go to bed with.
