Attacks a Pre-Planned Reaction to Success of My Work on RSS-BJP
Appears to be heavily coordinated campaign planned months ago
Speaking with music producer and podcaster John Delvento, I explained my belief that the attack on me which first emerged in right-wing Indian media outlets on 15 February “appears to me to be a heavily coordinated campaign that was probably planned months ago, and it’s a direct reaction to the success of my work… in really exposing the RSS-BJP.”
On 19 February, Delvento conducted a free-ranging, aired live, 3.5 hour interview with me at the beginning of which I offered my perspective about the underlying motivations for the avalanche of press coverage I’ve received over the past week, including being the subject of a lead story by Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami. Going on to explain how I have managed to “derail” some of the plans of RSS-BJP, I pointed to issues such as the registry of the Overseas Friends of the BJP USA as a foreign agent, the failure of Sri Preston Kulkarni’s campaign for US Congress, the passing out of office of Tulsi Gabbard, and the recent criticism of the RSS on the floor of the Australian Senate in which my name was floated.
The full transcript of my remarks in that segment follows:
These latest attacks, what’s come out over the past few days, appears to me to be a heavily coordinated campaign that was probably planned months ago, and it’s a direct reaction to the success of my work over the past — especially the past six months, past year and a half — in really exposing the RSS-BJP and in managing to derail some of their plans, most notably in the case of Sri Preston Kulkarni, who was so close with, so intimate with the RSS’s top people in America and whose campaign was poised for success.
He had out-raised his opponent three to one. The latest polls right before the election put him at probably winning by about five points and then he lost by seven points. They were having smooth sailing and they were self-assured of a guaranteed victory until I got wind of his RSS ties, began writing about them. That hit a nerve. People picked it up, organized a campaign against him within that district, and catastrophically defeated him.
I would say, at this point, while he’s been now appointed to a position in the Biden administration, but at this point I would say that his prospects, ambitions for electoral office have been pretty thoroughly destroyed. I don’t think he would ever be able to successfully run for political office again, in an elected position.
And so that — a number of other things have happened over the past six months.
Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi Gabbard is finally out of office. Her presidential campaign just imploded. On top of that, she had announced that she was retiring from Congress, that she wouldn’t run for re-election. And so she’s no longer in office after being one of the most useful supporters of the RSS-BJP in America to help whitewash Modi’s regime right around the time he was first elected.
Then you had the Overseas Friends of the BJP, which has been crucial for helping the BJP and Modi get elected in India. They’d been in operation since the early 90s, for nearly 30 years. All of a sudden, about a year after I began writing about their connection to Tulsi Gabbard and then just more extensively researching, writing, publishing articles and talking about their activities in America and how important they were to Modi and BJP — all of a sudden, after nearly 30 years in operation, just in August of last year, they came out and were apparently compelled to register under the Foreign Agents Act in America.
These various issues combined — I think that the RSS-BJP is really feeling the pressure. They’re feeling the heat. They know that I’m a consistent thorn in their flesh, and they know that they can’t shut me up. So I think that they cooked up this as a conspiracy to coincide with the pressure that the Modi regime is facing right now in India from this Farmers Protest, which is the most pressure its ever faced since 2014, and is one of the largest — perhaps the largest — ongoing protests in the world today. And so I think they saw that as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, maybe.
…
My name was brought up on the floor of the Australian Senate, just in December, I believe, in connection with what was actually a really significant issue historically. Historical issue where, I don’t believe that ever before, you had a federal-level politician in any of these English-speaking countries actually bringing up the RSS and specifically denouncing them, calling them fascist. That was in connection, as a follow-up by this Australian Senator Janet Rice, to Australia’s Ambassador to India having gone to the RSS headquarters, meeting in this really fawning way, doing these photo-ops with the head of the RSS.
Again, I seized on that. I started reporting it, and the Australian Senator, thanks to my work as well as the work of the local Indian diaspora in Australia, then consequently spoke out in this historical move on the floor of the Senate. So, that’s another issue I would point to.
I’m relentless. I’m not giving up. They haven’t been able to shut me up, and I think it’s starting to worry them.
