Padma Kuppa Linked to Violent Hindu Nationalist Groups in India
“Democracy dies in darkness,” says Padma Kuppa. “The minute you stop paying attention and stop being aware of what’s going on, you let other people take over things that impact your daily life.”
As Kuppa seeks re-election to a second term in Michigan’s State House of Representatives, few voters in her district are probably aware that some of her largest campaign donations come from out-of-state donors who are executives in US affiliates of a Hindu nationalist group in India called Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Even less of the voters likely know the extent to which RSS is accused of directly — and negatively — impacting the lives of religious minorities in India.
Founded in 1925, RSS’s earliest leaders described Christians and Muslims in India as “internal threats” who hold a “foreign mental complexion.” In 1939, at the dawn of World War II, the group’s longest-serving leader wrote: “To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here.” He concluded it was “a good lesson for us in Hindustan [India] to learn and profit by.” Narendra Modi, India’s current prime minister, describes this man as a “guru worthy of worship.”
Kuppa has a long association with groups affiliated with RSS. In 2014, for instance, she spoke at a conference in New Delhi hosted by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which in 2018 was labeled by the CIA as a “religious militant organization.” Keynote speakers at the event included current RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who earlier that year was accused by an RSS worker of sanctioning a series of bombings targeting Muslims.
VHP-America (VHPA), on its website, says it is “inspired by the same values and ideals” as India’s VHP. The group is so controversial that the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR) refused to participate in a 2013 VHPA conference because the US State Department has classified VHP as “extremist” and the event’s keynote speaker was an Indian politician who “calls for the destruction of mosques as well as the disenfranchisement of Indian Muslims who refuse to acknowledge Hindu ancestry.” Yet, over the years, Kuppa has repeatedly spoken at and even been listed as an organizer for VHPA conferences. Most recently, in November 2019, Kuppa spoke at a VHPA conference in Boston.
“Money is needed (to win office),” said Kuppa in April 2019. “There’s nothing dirty about money — it should just be transparent.” For the sake of transparency, it is worth noting that out-of-state donors to Kuppa’s campaign include people like Sant Gupta of Virginia and Gaurang Vaishnav of New Jersey, both of whom are governing councillors of VHPA, as well as Shekar Reddy of Florida, who has been an organizer for VHPA conferences. Others include Ramesh Bhutada of Texas, who is the vice-president of Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA, which is the US wing of RSS. Since 2017, Bhutada — as well as his wife, son, and son’s wife — have donated over $8,000 to Kuppa.
Members of the Bhutada family were key organizers for a mega-reception for Modi in Houston which was called “Howdy, Modi.” Ramesh was a patron of the event while his son Rishi served as its official spokesperson. Up to 15,000 people protested outside, many chanting: “Modi, Modi, you can’t hide, you committed genocide.” The slogan referenced Modi’s alleged role in anti-Muslim violence in 2002 when, while he headed the Indian state of Gujarat, approximately 2,000 Muslims were massacred allegedly by RSS and affiliated groups. For this reason, Modi was banned from entering the US from 2005 until his election in 2014.
Nevertheless, Kuppa moderated a post-event panel at “Howdy, Modi.” Three out of four Indian-Americans in US Congress skipped the event. The only one who attended, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, was criticized for it by his 2020 Democratic Primary challengers. The only other Indian-American elected official to attend was Ohio State Representative Niraj Antani, who spoke alongside Kuppa at the VHPA event in Boston. All three — Antani, Krishnamoorthi, and Kuppa — share in common that they have received large donations from out-of-state RSS-linked donors like the Bhutadas.
Despite the allegations against Modi, Kuppa has complained that “reporting on India has focused primarily on the 2002 violence against Muslims in Gujarat — making it the centerpiece of any story on India or its newly elected prime minister, Narendra Modi.” Despite on-camera confessions by Gujarat state legislators who participated in the violence and fingered Modi as authorizing it — saying “he had given us three days to do whatever we could” — Kuppa has denounced “efforts to implicate” him.
Perhaps that’s what prompted donations from Atri Macherla, Ramesh Shah, and Sudhir Shah — all of whom live out-of-state and all of whom have held executive positions in the Overseas Friends of the Bharatiya Janata Party (OFBJP), the international wing of Modi’s political party. The OFBJP was just recently registered as a “foreign agent.” In 2014, the OFBJP mobilized thousands to travel from the US to India to work for Modi’s election while people like Ramesh Bhutada organized phone banks for volunteers in Houston to call and pressure Indian voters to support Modi.
Modi campaigned by calling himself a “Hindutvawadi” — an advocate of Hindutva, which Amnesty International defines as “the political ideology of an exclusively Hindu nation.” Last year, US Congressman Ro Khanna, an Indian-American Democrat of Hindu faith, called it the “duty of every American politician of Hindu faith, to stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights.” Kuppa has not done that.
In 2015, when the Washington Post reported that Indian Christians fear violence from Hindu nationalists pressuring them to convert, Kuppa called the reports “Western bias that incites fear of Hindu activism and attack[s] Hindu nationalism.” Kuppa wrote that reports that Indian religious minorities fear violence are “easily debunked.” Kuppa even appeared to defend Hindu nationalism, writing, “Western media must understand what Hindu nationalism means, and what a Hindu nationalist seeks.”
Around the same time, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) — a federal government agency — reported that religious minorities in India had, since Modi’s election in 2014, suffered “numerous violent attacks and forced conversions by Hindu nationalist groups, such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP).”
Nevertheless, Kuppa has written that “Modi can help India be more peaceful, prosperous, stable, and secular.” After Modi’s party came to power, it recommended a national “anti-conversion” law. Such laws, which are in effect in several Indian states, variously require people who want to change religions to either inform the government or actually receive government permission. USCIRF has warned that “these laws create a hostile, and on occasion violent, environment for religious minority communities.” That happened in India’s state of Odisha — which passed the first “anti-conversion” law — when, in 2008, RSS and VHP conducted a pogrom against Christians, massacring approximately 100, displacing tens of thousands, and burning homes and churches.
But Kuppa has supported such “anti-conversion” laws as necessary to “defend against unethical tactics.” Kuppa says she wants to change the “common concept of religious freedom” and suggests that one of India’s biggest dangers is not Hindu nationalism but “a constant onslaught from evangelicals.” She suggests that missionaries who provide food aid to Indians are guilty of “predatory proselytism” and calls for prosecution.
As the US Commission on International Religious Freedom reports that “religious freedom conditions in India experienced a drastic turn downward, with religious minorities under increasing assault” after Modi’s re-election in 2019, Kuppa’s constituents should consider questioning her support for the controversial Indian prime minister and her association with Hindu nationalist outfits like RSS.
