heyOn June 28, I woke up to the news that my name had appeared in the Indian press. several media outlets including Hindustan Times, Zee News, News18 And Bharat Times Titled, “Who is Sunita Vishwanath?” I received calls and messages from friends and family from all over the world. Our family WhatsApp group, consisting mostly of people living in India, stopped any political conversation and some members quietly left.
I am a New York-based human rights activist, co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights, an organization that mobilizes the Hindu community in America to reclaim our religion from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist ideology of the Indian public . Party (BJP). I co-led protests in New York and Washington, DC during Modi’s recent visit to the United States. I am used to hateful comments from right wing Hindus. But this was a new low.
on a televised press conference At the new BJP headquarters on June 28, Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani held up a photograph of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, sitting a few chairs away, my face inked, giving a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC , and asked, “Why is Mr. Rahul Gandhi socializing with people who are funded by George Soros?” and “Is it true that Mr. Gandhi met Sunita Vishwanath during his visit to the United States of America?” He then pointed to vague claims that philanthropist George Soros is planning to destroy the Republic of India. All these baseless allegations came out because of my photograph in which I attended a program of around 50 Indian policy experts with Rahul Gandhi at DC Town Hall.
This is also the picture Irani shared Tweeted A BJP leader alleged that I am “nothing but a representative of George Soros, who has offered $1 billion to interfere in India’s internal affairs through a network of opposition leaders, think tanks, journalists, lawyers and activists”. promised.” In the same tweet, Malviya also claimed that one of our close allies, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), is Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamic political party based in Pakistan and a proxy of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. Somehow, according to Malaviya, George Soros and the ISI, through me, have come together to destroy India.
In America, we are quite familiar with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories by the far right that paint Soros as a master manipulator and villain. Malviya’s tweet is referring to reports By Disinfo Labs, a Hindu nationalist platform that alleges that my Jewish husband and I are the perfect puppet pair to destroy Israel and India. Soros is the new favorite hero of the Indian Right with the BJP sharing A doctored video depicting Rahul Gandhi as a puppet of Soros.
After Smriti Irani announced that I was a Soros agent, the Indian press reported it as fact. My uncle asked his son, “Have you heard of a man named George Soros? He is destroying India!” Indians around the world have swallowed the lies of the mainstream Indian media, hook, line and sinker. A prominent Indian journalist wrote to me, “The country has gone mad.”
To put it bluntly, I am neither friends with Rahul Gandhi nor am I an agent of George Soros. My organization helped organize some events for Gandhi to meet the expatriate audience, as we want to encourage community discussion about democracy in India. And although I do not know Soros personally, I have known many of the staff members of his Open Society Foundation for decades, and I respect him greatly for his lifelong contribution to the defense of democracy around the world. His recent statements about India do not sound like the words of a person bent on destroying the country. He resounding My own heartfelt wish: “I may be naïve, but I hope for a democratic revival in India.”
fighting the forces of Hindu nationalists
At one level, my husband and I are being used as fodder in the BJP’s efforts distracted From Gandhi’s visit to the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, which has been witnessing months of ethnic violence under the watch of the BJP. But on another level, I am being targeted because I, a Hindu woman, am raising a positive, Hindu alternative to Hindu nationalism.
Last week, wall street journal Encounter with reporter Sabrina Siddiqui terrible reaction from Hindu nationalists because he Asked In a joint press conference with President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Modi raised questions about human rights. He did what any American journalist would do at a press conference. Modi’s allieswho rarely sees the Prime Minister confronting journalists, attacked Siddiqui for doing his job. Following a coordinated, Islamophobic and misogynistic campaign against her, Siddiqui was forced to post about her family history and dispel rumors that she was anti-Indian. wall street journal Issued Siddiqui, a statement defending the White House Condemned it Attack, and the White House Correspondents’ Association condemned This is targeted hate.
Siddiqui and I are not alone. rana ayub, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Leena Manimekalai, Aatish Taseer, Kshama Sawant, Representative Ro KhannaAnd Representative Pramila Jaipal There are some Indians and Indian Americans who have come under fire from Hindu nationalists. But the most brutal attacks are saved for Indian American Muslims and those who experience racism. My IAMC colleague Tazeem Ansari was also named by Irani in connection with Gandhi’s visit. he is gone unfairly maligned As a Supporter of Pakistan’s 1971 genocide in Bangladesh. Prominent Indian American Muslim activist Amina Kausar Was One of many Indian Muslim women who were put up for humiliating virtual slave “auction” in the sexually explicit Bully Bai app. When Leena Manimekalai released a poster of her film, in which goddess Kali holds an LGBTQ flag and smokes a cigarette, her family and associates received threats from more than 200,000 online accounts, as she later revealed. Guardian,
a form of Hindu nationalist slander campaign digital international repression, according to Freedom House. These vicious attacks have been designed with a range of tactics to stifle political dissent abroad and shut down civilian space in India. The Indian government actively jails critics, raids independent media offices, shuts down civil society organizations in India, and suppresses dissent abroad through vicious online attacks and doxing, and some cases, denies entry to India.
The international community has presented scathing criticisms of Modi and his associates. Hence, to intimidate these dissidents, the BJP deploys internet army to create a toxic flood of hate against critics of Government of India. Hindu nationalist organizations in America, like hinduaction, Organize your bases to increase this hatred. Hindu American Foundation sued my co-workers and me We filed a defamation suit after talking to the press about the organization’s ties to Hindu nationalists. (His attempt to use the US courts to silence us cost him dearly and fail,
Hate is fueled by official actions. When Representative Pramila Jaipal condemned human rights violations in Kashmir, she faced a backlash online and External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, Cancelled an official meeting with him. Journalist Rana Ayyub has faced online harassment as well as judicial harassment UN issued statement in support of it. US lawmakers tell us they are afraid to speak out more strongly against the Indian government because they will face targeted abuse online.
We may feel trapped because the Indian state and allied institutions are closing in on us. But we should not be intimidated by the Indian government and its social media army. Because Indian Americans do not face the same physical threats that minorities and human rights defenders face in India, we use our relative safety to continue speaking out on behalf of a country and people we love. feel an obligation to do so. We must unite across faith, gender, class, caste, politics and geography to defend the Republic of India against the scourge of Hindu nationalism and to defend inclusive democracy and human rights everywhere in the world.
Sunita Vishwanath is the executive director and co-founder of Hindu for Human Rights. She tweets @SunitaSunitaV. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)