{"id":9,"date":"2026-11-01T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=9"},"modified":"2026-11-01T13:05:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T13:05:00","slug":"philsugar-hindu-american-foundation-accused-of-weaponizing-victimhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=9","title":{"rendered":"PhilSugar | Hindu American Foundation accused of weaponizing victimhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

The crowd of U.S.-based supporters await the arrival of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a community reception on Sept. 28, 2014 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
\nCredit:
\nDON EMMERT\/AFP via Getty Images
\nFor years, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) presented itself as an advocacy organization pursuing a \u201cHindu human rights\u201d agenda in the U.S. The organization snatched up political credibility among Democrats, civil liberties groups, and progressives, all while supporting the far-right Hindu supremacist movement both in India and transnationally, according to a new report by research group Savera, which details how this carefully constructed image is starting to slip.
\nIn its early years, HAF pursued causes that could be said to advance religious freedom, diversity, and inclusion. Behind the push for the public commemoration of Hindu holidays and \u201ctaking back\u201d yoga, however, lays a more nationalistic and chauvinistic agenda, advocates say. In January, Savera joined a chorus of observers in pointing out HAF\u2019s connections to a fascist movement in India that not only extols Hindu supremacy, but also holds real political power through India\u2019s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
\nSavera\u2019s
\nreport
\n, released in October and titled \u201cHAF Way to Supremacy: How the Hindu American Foundation Rebrands Bigotry as Minority Rights,\u201d tracks how HAF has hidden its true ideology behind a pretense of advocating for Hindus in a Christian-majority country. The report asserts that this approach has made the group palatable to progressives in the U.S.
\nThis latest report builds upon a series of investigations by Savera into the activities of the \u201cSangh Parivar,\u201d the \u201cfamily\u201d of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist, organizations across the globe dedicated to transforming the Indian state into a theocracy.
\n\u201cWe have no response to the Savera report,\u201d said Mat McDermott, HAF\u2019s senior director of communications. He went on to describe Savera\u2019s allegations as \u201cbaseless\u201d and accused the organization of being affiliated with India\u2019s opposition Congress Party.
\nPrachi Patankar, an activist and writer whose work against caste-based oppression informed many of Savera\u2019s findings, has meticulously dissected HAF\u2019s strategic facade.
\n\u201cHindu American Foundation is leading with this idea of Hindu victimhood,\u201d she said. Some of this sentiment can be traced back to genuine sources, like anti-immigrant find a sponsor Manila<\/a> sentiment in the U.S. and the persecution of Hindu communities in Pakistan and Bangladesh; Patankar notes, however, that this idea of victimhood is not deployed to address structural inequality or oppression. Instead, HAF mobilizes to \u201cgo after other oppressed minorities within the Indian American community, like Dalits and Muslims, because Hindu supremacy is inherently Islamophobic and casteist,\u201d she said.
\nAppearing across South Asian religions, cultures, and countries, caste refers to a system that allocates social privileges, wealth, occupations, and interpersonal associations based on birth. Dalits, in particular, are treated as complete outcasts.
\nSavera notes that self-proclaimed
\n\u201cHindu rights\u201d organizations in the U.S.
\nhave a vested interest in preserving this system because their origins lie within upper-caste, conservative Indian circles. The issues HAF has brought before state and federal lawmakers have included reframing protections against caste-based abuse as anti-Hindu or \u201cHinduphobic.\u201d The activist base HAF and others have cultivated within the Indian American diaspora involves itself in localized, overtly bigoted actions, including accusations of terrorism and fanning calls for violence against the Sikh community.
\n\u201cTo challenge the Hindu supremacist far right, we need to bring together the majority that rejects Hindu supremacy\u2014and that necessitates an intercaste, anti-caste, and multifaith coalition,\u201d Patankar said. Savera itself is headed by members of diverse South Asian backgrounds, including Hindus who reject the supremacist aspirations of organizations such as HAF. Since Hindu supremacists in the U.S. have begun
\naligning explicitly with white supremacists
\nand have also expressed support for
\npunishing groups opposed to the genocide
\nof Palestinians, Savera has attempted to build coalitions with Black Lives Matter, Standing Up for Racial Justice, and progressive Jewish organizations.
\nWhen fascists play the victim
\nHAF was founded in
\n2003
\nwhen it split from the American branch of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council. A year before, this parent organization became infamous for instigating genocidal violence against Muslims that roiled the state of Gujarat, biggest sugar baby site Philippines<\/a> allegedly in collusion with Modi, who was the state\u2019s chief minister at the time. Thousands of Muslims
\nwere killed or displaced
\nin a matter of weeks by armed mobs and complicit law enforcement. Over the years, evidence of most active sugar baby site Philippines<\/a> Modi\u2019s involvement has mounted.
\nThe Hindu American Foundation arose from a growing frustration within the transnational movement that rhetoric celebrating fascism hindered outreach in countries such as the U.S. Instead, HAF\u2019s founders opted to reframe their messaging as an appeal for minority rights and multiculturalism.
\nThis approach inarguably has won the organization much success. Savera has documented how leading progressive organizations were, at least at one point, convinced they shared principles with HAF. The American Civil Liberties Union reportedly felt comfortable allowing HAF to weigh in on legal cases involving religion in courtrooms, civic spaces, and schools, according to a list of past HAF legal advocacy work listed on its website. In 2019, Americans United for Separation of Church and State spearheaded an initiative with 43 \u201creligious, civil rights, and secular organizations\u201d against Christian nationalist curricula being placed in public schools; HAF was among the groups. HAF Executive Director Suhag Shukla has held up the group\u2019s relationship with the Interfaith Alliance, which includes lobbying the Senate to codify same-sex marriage protections as a pluralistic bona fide.
\nSavera\u2019s report shows that all of this occurred over the past two decades, during which HAF consistently and publicly advocated for the Sangh\u2019s theocratic interests. This included defending Modi, who could not enter the U.S. for nine years due to sugar daddy sites Manila<\/a> \u201csevere violations of religious freedom,\u201d over suspicions of his culpability in the Gujarat carnage.
\nThe ACLU and the Interfaith Alliance did not respond to requests for comment. Moises Serrano, media relations manager for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said that the organization was \u201cunaware\u201d of Savera\u2019s report and was unsure when someone from the group would read it.
\nLobbying politicians
\nHAF has also won friends with more formal political power, particularly within the Democratic Party. In 2019, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., a recipient of HAF\u2019s \u201cFriend of the Community Award,\u201d exhorted his colleagues to attend the \u201cHowdy Modi\u201d rally in Texas where Modi and then-President Donald Trump appeared together, according to the Daily Beast, despite alarm over Indian crackdowns in the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir. This past spring, Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., introduced a congressional resolution against alleged incidents of \u201cHinduphobia,\u201d drawing criticism from marginalized caste, Sikh, and Muslim commentators who noted the term had been used to mask attacks against their communities.
\nHAF is also tied to the considerable war chest of the Hindu American Political Action Committee. Though the groups are not officially affiliated, most of the PAC\u2019s board is involved with HAF,
\naccording to Al Jazeera
\n. Sherman, at $20,600, is HAPAC\u2019s third-largest recipient of donations between 2012 and 2024, according to aggregate
\nFederal Election Commission
\ndata compiled by Al Jazeera. Thanedar received a more modest $5,000. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump\u2019s nominee for director of national intelligence in his next administration and a
\nknown Modi supporter
\n, took in $8,500.
\nHAPAC donated a grand total of nearly $183,000 to 27 Democratic candidates and just under $52,000 to 11 Republicans, according to Al Jazeera\u2019s analysis. Notably, this breaks ranks with other sugar dating membership fees<\/a> American appendages of the Sangh, who prefer Republicans, though Savera notes that the gap is narrowing.
\nSherman, Thanedar, and Gabbard did not sugar baby na verified<\/a> respond to Prism\u2019s request for comment.
\n\u201cCritical caste theory\u201d
\nThanendar\u2019s efforts on Capitol Hill are hardly the first instance in which the Sangh, through organs like HAF, has attempted to safeguard its ability to abuse people how to choose a sugar baby<\/a> of marginalized caste backgrounds behind a dubious aegis of \u201creligious freedom.\u201d
\nWhen Senate Bill 403,
\na bill
\nthat would put protections in place against caste discrimination, was introduced in the California State Legislature in 2023, it \u201ctriggered a veritable moral panic within the American Sangh,\u201d according to Savera\u2019s report. By HAF\u2019s
\nown admission
\n, it spent nearly $300,000 opposing the legislation under the auspices of defending Indians and Hindus from being vilified. Ultimately, the Sangh\u2019s efforts helped compel Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto the bill.
\nHAF\u2019s relatively moderate line is that banning caste discrimination is a moot point since not enough data shows it to be a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. But instances of caste abuse in the U.S. are proliferating alongside calls for its abolition; in 2020, a Dalit employee filed a lawsuit against Cisco Systems due to caste discrimination. One year later, Indian laborers constructing a Hindu temple in New Jersey sued, attributing their low pay and coercive work environment to caste abuse.
\nSavera\u2019s report criticizes HAF for sugar dating profile setup<\/a> \u201cfearmongering\u201d about what it calls \u201ccritical caste theory.\u201d
\n\u201cBorrowed from the contemporary Far Right\u2019s preferred bogeyman of \u2018Critical Race Theory\u2019 and the Christian Far Right\u2019s appropriation of the language of religious freedom sugar dating terms<\/a> to argue that their particular beliefs entitle them to discrimination, such as against Queer people, the term seeks to manufacture a sense of victimhood by falsely claiming that the movement to ban caste discrimination is itself discriminatory against Hindu Americans,\u201d the report says.
\nIt\u2019s unclear how HAF will move in the wake of the Trump victory. Patankar said that sugar dating account deletion<\/a> maintaining the tenuous balancing act between playing the victim on the one hand and pursuing a supremacist agenda on the other is essential to the organization, regardless of how things play out.
\n\u201cIn order for them to talk about Hindu victimhood, they need the liberal space because those are the spaces where this narrative can thrive. Because the MAGA far right doesn\u2019t care about that,\u201d Patankar said. \u201cHAF throwing in with MAGA is ultimately going to hurt them too. That\u2019s just the reality of it.\u201d
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\nNews
\nSimi Kadirgamar
\nSimi Kadirgamar is a New York City-based reporter and fact-checker. Her range of work has included covering Hindu nationalism in the U.S., the occupation of Kashmir, and far right politics in martial arts….
\nMore by Simi Kadirgamar<\/p>\n

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The crowd of U.S.-based supporters await the arrival of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a community reception on Sept. 28, 2014 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Credit: DON EMMERT\/AFP via Getty Images For years, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) presented itself as an advocacy organization pursuing a \u201cHindu human rights\u201d agenda in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}