Modi Regime Attacks Pieter Friedrich for Striking Against RSS’s Fascist Agenda
Delhi Police: “Friedrich has been on radar of Indian security establishment”
“Do you query as to who is Pieter Friedrich?” That was the question posed by Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police Manish Chandra on 15 February. He continued, “All that as is shared as of now is that Pieter Friedrich has been on the radar of Indian security establishment since late 2006, I’ll say.”
Delhi Police were speaking at a press conference on the arrest of 22-year-old climate activist Disha Ravi, who is accused of “conspiracy to defame and wage war against India” for sharing a “toolkit” which offered social media activists a guide for how to promote the ongoing Farmers Protest in India. The “toolkit” in question gained notoriety after it was released on Twitter by climate activist Greta Thunberg, who followed singer Rihanna in speaking out in solidarity with protesting farmers. Indian police, operating under the regime of controversial Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have sought to turn the issue into a vast international conspiracy case.
The toolkit included a list of anti-fascist Twitter handles to follow, including my own.
Chandra went on to claim that I came to the attention of Indian intelligence for being “noticed being in the company of one Bhajan Singh Bhinder,” whom he accused of running “info operations.” Bhinder, notably, is the former founding director of Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI), a portal which has a 10-year plus history of documenting human rights abuses against Indian religious and cultural minorities. Chandra, however, described Bhinder as a “leading proponent” of the supposed “K-2” alliance between supporters of a separate Kashmiri state and of a hypothetical separate Sikh state known as “Khalistan.”
Simultaneously, a little-known group called DisInfo Lab — clearly copycatting its name after the better-known EU DisinfoLab, which rose to prominence in December 2020 after releasing a report about a vast international network of fake news outlets propped up by the Indian State — published a nearly 100-page report alleging that “the Toolkit posted by Greta Thunberg had a ‘foreign expert’ as resource person,” namely, myself. I, they said, got my start with an organization which “was working for Khalistani agenda” and went on to become a “Khalistani activist.” Their solitary proof rests on a single claim that, according to a California Bay Area tabloid, Bhinder was allegedly involved in trying to purchase arms for the Khalistan movement in 1992 — when I was eight years old.
I have co-authored two books with Bhinder (better known as Bhajan Singh), including one on how the origins of Sikhism are entwined with the anti-caste struggle. He is one of many South Asian origin friends I have made over the years, who include Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Dalits, and people from all backgrounds. Our friendship centers on a mutual passion for working for equality and liberty for all of humanity — and, above all, peaceful solutions to pressing human rights problems in India.
Although I knew little about India when I met Bhajan, I quickly learned about the decades of human rights issues in India — casteism, widespread torture, disappearances and extrajudicial executions (particularly in Punjab and Kashmir), murder of human rights activists like Jaswant Singh Khalra and Jalil Andrabi, pogroms against a wide variety of religious minorities, and, above all, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its fascist agenda. I also learned that many of the loudest voices promoting the mythical concept of “Khalistan” appeared to be agents propped up by the Indian State for the purpose of discrediting legitimate Sikh activism in support of human rights. The reason I didn’t run away from Bhajan was because he disavowed the concept of Khalistan and instead embraced a universal humanitarianism. And so, over the years, we off-and-on participated in a variety of protests and seminars — and co-authorship — to encourage egalitarianism and celebrate its brilliant history in the Indian subcontinent.
Yet the RSS intrigued me. So I decided to part ways with Bhajan and focus on becoming an expert on the topic of Hindu nationalism. That particularly began in 2015, when I went to protest Modi’s “rockstar reception” in San Jose, CA. As I wrote after the event, I was shocked — as a US citizen and native of California — by the impunity granted Modi devotees when, while I was holding signs opposing the Indian premier (who is himself an RSS member), they were repeatedly snatched away in full presence of CA police officers. At one point, a Modi devotee easily three times my size muscled up against me and whispered, “I will break you.”
Nevertheless, I doubled-down.
In 2018, I traveled to Chicago to oppose RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat’s presence at the World Hindu Congress (WHC) organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), the US wing of India’s VHP, which is itself the religious wing of the RSS. I was grateful to see reportage about the controversy created and, as I wrote after the event, I witnessed how “hundreds of protestors from all walks of life, religions, and nationalities rallied and marched for hours over two days of protest.”
Subsequently, I turned my attention to investigating US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, whose earliest campaigns were heavily funded by US affiliates of the RSS and who used her position, once elected, to help whitewash Modi’s reputation as the architect of the 2002 Gujarat Genocide. My findings were published as a cover article in Caravan magazine in August 2019. Shortly after, the article prompted US Congressman Ro Khanna to publicly denounce Hindutva — the religious nationalist ideology that seeks to turn India into a Hindu State — and declare it as the “duty of every American politician of Hindu faith” to do the same.
That infuriated the Hindutva elements in the US. Barely a month later, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA (HSS-USA) — the US wing of the RSS — protested against Khanna at one of his constituent townhall events. Holding posters with my picture on them, they lambasted Khanna for daring to oppose religious nationalism in India.
Around the same time, I also sparked international news coverage about the outrage surrounding the German ambassador to India’s fawning visit to RSS headquarters. “German ambassador causes outrage visiting fascist Indian group,” reported The Jerusalem Post. “The RSS shares the fascist ideology of the Nazi Party and supports extreme Hindu nationalism.” Without naming me, top RSS executive Manmohan Vaidya lashed back. My articles about the ambassador’s visit, he wrote, were “part of a calibrated propaganda against the RSS.”
This also followed on the heels of my protest against another “rockstar reception” for Modi in the US. Despite the assault against me in 2015, I joined a protest against his visit to Houston, TX in September 2019. In a statement before the Houston City Council, which has now been viewed millions of times and downloaded and re-shared hundreds of times, I connected Hindu nationalism to white supremacy, stating:
The RSS is a fascist paramilitary founded in 1925 — the same year that Hitler published Mein Kampf. The RSS developed with inspiration from the Nazis. And it produced Narendra Modi.
In 2002, Modi presided as soldiers of the RSS massacred 2,000 Muslims. They gang-raped women, hacked people to death, burned people alive. Leaders of the pogrom later confessed on camera that Modi sanctioned their violence.
For this reason, Modi was banned from entering the USA for over 10 years.
Today, under Modi’s iron-fisted regime, Christians, Dalits, Muslims, Sikhs, and every Hindu who disagrees with the hate, violence, and supremacy of the RSS lives in fear of their lives.
Modi’s hands are stained with blood. Those who shake his hand in welcome cannot wash their hands of complicity in his crimes.
As I declared that the event, dubbed “Howdy, Modi,” should instead be named “Adios, Modi,” the new appellation stuck and #AdiosModi trended on social media during the premier’s Houston visit.
Tulsi Gabbard had already announced her decision not to run for re-election to US Congress, which came mere days after a report by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting — a US media watchdog — upheld my claims about her links to the RSS. She had announced her campaign for the US presidency and claimed her decision was made to focus on that. Following her to New Hampshire (the first state in the nation to vote for president), I was assaulted by her campaign staff for protesting her RSS ties.
And then Gabbard’s campaign for president failed abysmally.
As the Modi regime introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), which, combined, according to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — the political wing of the RSS — intended to segregate and eliminate non-Hindus from Indian citizenship, I joined efforts first to protest against the CAA/NRC and then to help pass resolutions by American cities against the discriminatory laws.
Fast-forwarding to August 2020, the Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP) — the US wing of India’s ruling BJP, which is responsible for mobilizing thousands of pro-BJP Indian-Americans to travel to India to support Modi’s election in 2014 — was compelled to declare itself as a foreign agent in the US. Various activists in the OFBJP, including HSS-USA Vice-President Ramesh Bhutada, had been heavily involved in the campaigns of people like Gabbard. In fact, Gabbard faced criticism and mainstream news coverage during her presidential campaign for her decision to wear a BJP scarf at an OFBJP event in 2014.
Gabbard failed in her race for the US presidency and announced her decision not to run for re-election to US Congress, but her former backers — like Bhutada — aligned behind Sri Preston Kulkarni, a candidate for Congress in the suburbs of Houston. As Kulkarni himself noted upon winning the nomination during his first of two failed campaigns, “Bhutada has been like a father to me on this campaign.” As Bhutada’s relative and co-activist noted, they raised enough money to “get his campaign off the ground in the first month.”
My own campaign to expose Kulkarni’s connections to US affiliates of the RSS generated mainstream US news coverage, such as The Intercept’s reporting on “How Sri Preston Kulkarni’s campaign for Congress Got Tangled Up in Indian Politics” while Slate asked, “Why Are Democrats Backing a House Candidate With Reportedly Shady Foreign Ties?”
Subsequently, after Kulkarni’s catastrophic loss — despite out-raising his opponent by nearly 3 to 1 and a last-minute internal poll showing him leading by five points — the RSS-tied candidate was, in early February 2021, appointed to a position in the new administration of President Joe Biden. In response, I launched a petition calling on Biden to rescind the appointment in consideration of how Kulkarni’s appointment “sends [a message] of tolerance for the RSS and its fascist agenda.”
That petition has now garnered well over 6,000 signatures since its launch on 11 February 2021.
Meanwhile, the pro-Modi regime media is “accusing” me of being “the man who was leading every single activity of this entire group [the Farmers Protest international supporters] on social media accounts.” As pro-Modi channel Republic TV declared, “He is the one who was guiding people as to whom to tag, when to tag, and on which date who needs to be tagged.” The channel went so far as to suggest I was the mastermind of the “toolkit.”
It would have be an honor to have planned the hashtags and the overall “Toolkit” for the Farmers Protest, being as I stand with all peaceful protestors around the world in their struggle against totalitarianism, and particularly with Indians. Yet, I had nothing to do with it, unfortunately, despite my dedication to opposing the “Butcher of Gujarat,” as Modi has come to be nicknamed after his involvement in the 2002 Gujarat Pogrom. The entire incident, however, merely illustrated the truth of what former Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram recently noted, “India is becoming the theatre of the absurd and it is sad that the Delhi police have become a tool of the oppressors.”
As the Khalistan movement today — with which I have absolutely zero involvement — appears to me to be entirely propped up by the Modi regime for purposes of creating a Frankenstein monster on which it can blame all ills, it seems to serve no other purpose than as a Modi regime psy-op to distract attention from the crimes of the RSS-BJP. It’s laughable that the entire world today — from a white Christian writer like myself to a Black Barbadian singer like Rihanna — are labeled as supporters of a fictitious Sikh separatist state.
Instead, the simple truth seems to be that I’ve been targeted because I have emerged as one of North America’s most relentless voices against the rising fascism of the Modi regime and, particularly, the RSS, going so far as to work to have the RSS declared as a terrorist organization, which it is.
