#Exposé | @nytimes revealing that #NevilleSingham, a major funder of radical leftist causes, is directly linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

Why care? Many attacks directed at @HinduAmerican can be traced to China funded press & Singham proxies!🧵
nytimes.com/2023/08/05/wor… Vijay Prashad is named. The former professor at @TrinityCollege & now ED of a Singham funded think tank, long focused attacks on HAF’s advocacy work. He’s critiqued HAF for “essentializing” Hinduism or scorned our work with Jewish allies fighting antisemitism & Hinduphobia.

#Breaking: @Penn’s faculty are sharing info of a anti-Indian conference that will discuss how “Indian Brahmins created casteist and Islamophobic barriers against Bengali Muslims.”

This singling out of Indian Hindus is identical to the rhetoric that led to the 1971 genocide. This is the downstream effect of the surge in casteist activism that @cmkshama ignited in @SeattleCouncil & is promoted by @penn faculty—some who also co-sponsored #DGH.

Pakistani news outlets carry identical slurs against "upper caste Hindus" justifying the 1971 Hindu genocide

Oh dear. Seems Equality Labs, Truschke, separatist outfits & others are pretty upset about the @tdsb vote yesterday punting the “caste” resolution to @OntHumanRights. And they’re taking it out on @HinduAmerican.

What really happened with the resolution? Let’s take a look🧵 Here’s the before & what was actually passed. What’s missing?

-no mention of South Asia
-no “rise” in caste disc.
-no forming of a committee of self-declared “oppressed” castes
-no curriculum development on caste

All gone. Instead, caste is just defined in nebulous, false terms

#Leaked: an internal “FAQ” that Kshama Sawant is sharing with her @SeattleCouncil colleagues defending her unlawful caste proposal targeting South Asians is egregiously biased & hateful.

A fact check 🧵

@D5Juarez @Lisa_Herbold @CMSaraNelson @LewisforSeattle @SeaCityAttorney As Sawant admits, Seattle policy already bans discrimination based on national origin - ancestry too. What she doesn’t say is that her proposal violates the very policies that she seeks to amend by discriminating against a minority on the basis of their national origin & ancestry

This is such an important thread from an Indian origin scholar/activist in the US because it illustrates such profound confusion/myopia about caste, its racist conflations & colonial implementation.

These scholars are the ones pushing DEI folks into really bad "caste" policy.🧵

https://twitter.com/Sonjamthomas_/status/1606296389536710656

So @Sonjamthomas_ starts by claiming that caste is "systemic" & not an "administrative" construct. She insists that British colonialists just "named it" as it had been around for "CENTURIES" (all caps!). And oh btw, she's an "expert" & a "scholar" she reminds us, so be impressed.

.@davidfrawleyved's poignant translation of Shukla Yajur Veda 36.12–15, 17–18 reminds me of why I'm so grateful to be an inheritor of this ancient, timeless wisdom 🕉️amongst so many other things.

"May the Goddess Waters be auspicious for us to drink...

1/5 May they flow, they flow with blessings upon us

May the Earth be pleasant and free of thorns as
our place of rest
May She grant us a wide peace

May the Divine Waters which grant us blessings
May they sustain our vigor and energy,
and for a great vision of delight...

2/5

The gotcha tweets poking fun at Rishi Sunak's origin story being tied to Africa or Pakistan or the UK may be amusing, but are also meaningless.

They completely elide that what most Hindus appreciate in Sunak is a visibly Hindu man whose religiosity does not seem performative. 🧵 When Sunak sports a kalawa on his wrist, lights diya in front of the home, bows deeply to a sannyasin, performs a gau pooja, speaks of his Hindu identity, it feels natural, genuine. Sunak is comfortable in his own skin. This resonates with many 2nd/3rd gen Hindus in the diaspora

I bet the Islamist & radical fringe groups that paid 6-figures for that @nytimes ad are kicking themselves.

If only they knew the NYT was going to horrifically gaslight Hindus the next day for free.

Getting the cause of riots wrong to using a discredited source-it’s all there. A side by side comparison with the @BBCNews is telling, and one can’t help but wonder what drives the @nytimes reporting.

Why would @meganspecia platform Majid Freeman whose disinformation was reported as the proximate cause of the troubles? @BBCNews was clear on that. Compare👇🏼

Why did we sue @CalDFEH? Good coverage by @RNS, but to clarify 🧵:

The crux of HAF’s lawsuit is whether the state of California is violating Hindu Americans’ constitutional rights to religious freedom by defining Hindu religious teachings and practices and that too incorrectly;

https://twitter.com/RNS/status/1575847945278291970

whether California is violating Hindu Americans’ constitutional rights to equal protection by singling out people of Indian origin and Hindus and defining them as inherently bigoted and targeting us in a way that it doesn’t target any other ethnic or religious group; and whether

Thank you! @nitashatiku @washingtonpost reporting that @Google said no to its renegade former manager seeking to platform Equality Labs—known for a long record of divisive, Hinduphobic advocacy. This time, a large tech company exercised due diligence & refused to be bullied.🧵 Report says @google employees were concerned Equality Labs’ programming would sow divisions amongst workers.

They’re right. EL’s work is rife with Hinduphobic, racist terms like “Brahmanism” & promotes a reading list actually calling for Hindus to convert to Buddhism or Islam.

#Update: @raqib_naik's tweet thread maliciously & falsely accusing @rajiv_pandit of endorsing genocide, & also attacking @HinduAmerican co-founder @mihirmeghani, is having security consequences in India where Meghani is visiting family.

Here's what just happened 🧵 Apparently, Naik's tweet was widely forwarded in India, along with Dr. Pandit's response (below). When Dr. Meghani & his wife arrived at a train station in Gujarat for an overnight train to Mumbai earlier today, they were met by 3 police officers.

Why?

https://twitter.com/rajiv_pandit/status/1507429469857984515?s=20&t=UzfB8XT82TAc4XaDF_dmHA

The laughable plagiarism kerfuffle targeting a speech @vikramsampath gave 5 years ago confirms one thing when you go against the gatekeepers of South Asian Studies: there is no bottom.

They will make things up, they will try to slime you and they will conspire with others. 1/ See how this executive committee member of @IAMCouncil and Al Jazeera contributor mocks Sampath?

Why is Raqib releasing a letter co-signed by Truschke?

Well, @HinduAmerican has an active lawsuit against Truschke, IAMC & others for conspiracy to defame HAF. More of the same.

This is what we warned would happen if @calstate inserts “caste” into policy

Minority faculty of Indian origin are already being marked as “oppressors” based on their last names alone

This is actually what ethnic name policing looks like

Is that what you’ll do too @calstate?

https://twitter.com/profdilipmandal/status/1485137094523895808

So he wants a list?

Let’s play this out.

We produce the list.

@Profdilipmandal et al, who know nothing about any of the faculty’s place of birth, family history, socio-economic class, personal story, marital status, etc, is going to assign them a caste.

Take note @calstate

Another day, another US college student group adding “caste” as a “protected class.”

To be clear, Harvard hasn’t changed its anti-disc policy, but a grad student contract was.

Unpacking this piece by @sakshi_saroja shows why this move is so misguided.

nbcnews.com/news/asian-ame… There is no “Hindu” caste system. Hindu Vedas don’t refer to a birth-based hierarchy & varna, based on qualities, was never immutable. But calling a discriminatory system with societal/colonial origins “Hindu” nicely targets only Hindus for policing & censure.

#SalvationArmy, a "Worldwide Church," is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that it failed to pay folks in rehab forced to work in its stores.

Not a single MSM outlet covered this, unlike when a #Hindu temple faced similar allegations. Why?
🧵
revealnews.org/article/salvat… Neither institution should be presumed guilty until their day in court

Surely this too is newsworthy @nytimes @anniecorreal @HoustonChron?

Salvation Army has deep political ties, but BAPS supposed "ties" to "Hindu" politicians makes print

This is Hinduphobia parading as news

Audrey just can’t help herself.

She wants to shame the 1000s of #HinduAmericans who are inspired by @BAPS.

But after she shared the latest recycled allegations on an academic listserv, a senior professor told her to knock it off - albeit far more politely than deserved. 1/n The senior professor said that scholars should:

- be very careful in assessing facts & details in the media

- remember accusations are not proof of wrongdoing

- understand the goals & motivations of every person and organization involved in the issue

2/n

We #HinduAmericans have the unique (mis)fortune to have Indian visitors drop by for a bit and arrogate the immense privilege of platforms such as @TheAtlantic to import their casteist obsessions & counterfactually transfer those anxieties on us. (Thread)
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… You come from a casteist family that dunked on your servants? You want to slam our model minority myth as “flattening”?

Fine.

But your “caste travels” tropes “flatten” varna/jati/etc & expose an entrenched #Hinduphobia & shocking ignorance of Hinduism. Yet you’re platformed.

Reflecting on #dghconference, this was among the most disturbing moments. The same speaker @CeMIS_unigoe who made that repulsive phallus metaphor, put up photos of two men named in the #Cisco case with a casteist slur. They were rendered mute victims of a public spectacle.

https://twitter.com/SuhagAShukla/status/1436387263357853698

Activist-scholars like the one from @CeMIS_unigoe & those in the US pushing for a caste category actually believe that Hindus are so entirely abhorrent that they should be marked a suspicious class and targeted based on their race, national origin, ethnicity, & religion.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but c'mon! In response to @HinduAmerican's #Hinduphobia glossary, a few South Asianists released a "manual" denying the existence of #Hinduphobia, thereby trafficking in it!
-Thread-
hinduamerican.org/hindu-hate-glo… Remember also that because of one of the "manual" author's track record of #Hinduphobia, a conference was actually held on her university's main campus @RutgersU where her Chancellor called #Hinduphobia & anti-Hindu hate out & the concept was fully defined hindustudentscouncil.org/2021/press-rel…

The @pewresearch survey of 30,000 Indians has fascinating findings that we will discuss in detail tomorrow evening.

Sharing here a few quick takes showing how Indians see religious tolerance as a central part of who they are as a nation. Tolerance seen as a civic virtue. 1/ Most Hindus in India believe religious diversity benefits the country.

Factoid: BJP supporters were most likely to champion religious diversity (two-thirds). 2/

This week was #InternationalYogaDay2021, and its a great time to reflect on the global conversation that we @HinduAmerican sparked 11 years ago with our #TakeBackYoga Campaign. Some of the highlights 1/
hinduamerican.org/projects/hindu… There was @aseemrshukla's Washington Post debate with Deepak Chopra covered here nytimes.com/2010/11/28/nyr… 2/