By Suresh Krishnamoorthy

It’s often said that if you tell a big enough lie, and repeat it, people will believe it. We see a similar strategy of the Big Lie, when it comes to our organisation, the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA). To our amusement, we hear that we are an arm of the RSS (or the BJP, depending on the flavour of the week). This lie has been repeated so often, by so many people that it refuses to die.

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The latest is an article by Kuhu Singh in the indianexpress.com (‘Mohan Bhagwat’s NYC visit is about power, not culture’, August 28). She may be merely repeating the Big Lie told about us by Al Jazeera, by the IAMC, by HfHR, Audrey Truschke and her outrageous rants on the American Hindu community.

As a co-founder of CoHNA and as members of its Board of Directors, we state it categorically: CoHNA never was and is not now a member of the Sangh Parivar. This is not a critique or an editorial judgement on the RSS. It is just what it is.

As an independent American advocacy organisation, our advocacy does not need the scare quotes that the article gives. We are open about it and are proud of it. Our mission is crystal clear: We speak for the right of Hindus in North America to practice their faith without interference or misrepresentation as is their right under the constitutions of the US and Canada.

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The article asserting, without evidence, that our youth arm, CYAN “quietly and silently takes up the RSS ‘community’ work of outreach into local legislatures”, is another lie in multiple ways. The objective of CYAN has always been to engage with the American Hindu youth, most of whom were raised in the US, to help them understand their heritage and their rights in America, and to stand up for them. Most of them would not know the RSS if it stood on their front doorstep.

The entire focus of the article is to try and delegitimise the notion of Hinduphobia. But unlike the author, we have actual verifiable evidence of our claims. We recently showed how a Hindu doctor, born and raised in America, was besieged by hate groups online after she shared an amusing anecdote regarding her Hindu faith, expressed in her bindi. We have extensively documented incidents of hate against temples in various parts of America. We have helped Hindus whose only crime was to be standing in line at a Taco Bell and gotten Harvard University to correct the offensive images illustrating its Sanskrit courses.

We have risen to the defence of American Hindus like Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella who have been falsely accused of discrimination. The infamous Cisco caste lawsuit was brought on by the State of California, at the behest of Hinduphobic organisations like Equality Labs and Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR) and ended in a resounding victory for us, when California ignominiously withdrew its case against the Cisco engineers.

The case we have made for Hinduphobia is so real that the State of Georgia passed a resolution recognising and condemning it. The US Congress is currently considering a similar resolution. The threats by Khalistani activist Pieter Friedrich against Hindu Congressmen Raja Krishnamoorthi drew condemnation from major civil rights icon, Rev Jesse Jackson Jr. No serious student of contemporary history can deny the existence of Hinduphobia. All they have to do is spend 15 minutes on their favorite social media platform.

Singh makes a big deal about how the use of the term Hinduphobia is “being weaponised (sic) to suppress legitimate criticism of majoritarian politics”. We openly challenge her to present one iota of evidence that CoHNA has ever tried to do this. On the contrary, we have documented evidence of repeated attempts by anti-Hindu groups in the US weaponising the dangerous claim of “dual loyalty”. This is the canard that any American Hindu who speaks up for their rights in America is automatically a stooge of the Indian government.

If CoHNA engages with school boards, city councils, and US legislators, it is to secure the rights of Hindus to ask that their religion be treated fairly in school textbooks. It is to assert that the Swastika, a sacred symbol from time immemorial, is not and never was the Nazi hate symbol; that honour belonged to Hitler’s Hakenkreuz. We fight in legislatures against unsubstantiated claims of widespread caste discrimination in America, and against the attempt to claim that those of Indian origin are more likely to discriminate than those from other communities and thus need special laws to police them.

Singh is perfectly free to advocate as she chooses on behalf of her favoured groups in India. We have no opinion on who she associates with or her “India Coalition”. But projection is a strange thing: It exposes the person doing the projection. Her India Coalition is a “small yet nimble forum of like-minded South Asians who want to see the pluralistic India not get eroded (sic)”. In her own words, her India Coalition shares the goals of the other INDIA coalition.

The false accusations of CoHNA doing the bidding of India-based organisations is designed to obscure the real nature of groups she admires — like HfHR.

A detailed analysis shows over 43 per cent of their posts on X since 2019 are on topics pertaining to Indian politics. Fifteen out of 20 members of their Advisory Board are prominent politically connected Indians, actually living in India. Their founder, Sunita Vishwanath, shared a stage with Rahul Gandhi when he visited the United States.

Despite the Human Rights in their name, they have rarely spoken about the human rights abuses in Pakistan or Bangladesh against Hindus and other minorities. They have not even raised their voices against the vandalism of Hindu temples in their own neighbourhood and have instead targeted those speaking up for vandalised temples as — you guessed it — “Hindutva”!

Advocacy for one’s faith is as American as apple pie. CoHNA will not allow others to stop us with Big Lies.

The writer is co-founder and Board Member, CoHNA. With inputs from Pushpita Prasad, Chief Communications Officer and Board Member, CoHNA