Admin | On 04, Aug 2019

“Howdy, Modi” event expected to draw mass protest of BJP leader

Houston, TX: August 4, 2019 — Leaders of various US groups affiliated with the RSS, an Indian paramilitary, are organizing a grand reception for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Houston, but the controversial BJP politician is as “welcome as an outhouse breeze” for many minorities of India who have made Texas their home.

“We don’t want Modi here in Houston,” says Gurmail Singh, a local businessman. “We just protested Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as the mascot of India’s KKK because of her ties to the RSS. Now these RSS groups in Houston want to throw a shindig for Modi. He’s a creature of the RSS. He let his people murder so many minorities in India. Like we say in Texas, Modi is as welcome as an outhouse breeze.”

US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard protested over RSS ties in Houston, TX in April 2019

The RSS, founded in 1925, is a uniformed and armed group with an estimated six million or more members. Its founders drew inspiration from Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Its longest serving chief, M.S. Golwalkar, even wrote in 1939: “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.”

Modi’s reception is scheduled for September 22, 2019 at Houston’s NRG Stadium. The event is officially hosted by the Texas India Forum, a registered nonprofit. Searches of public access lists of registered nonprofits, however, yielded no results for TIF. The group does not have a website, and its only online presence appears to be HowdyModi.org, the website promoting Modi’s reception.

Jugal Malani, a Texas industrialist, is the only person whose name is currently attached to the “Howdy, Modi” event. Malani is an advisor to the Houston chapter of the US branch of the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation. Ekal is an educational project founded by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the religious wing of the RSS. In 2018, the CIA declared the VHP a “religious militant organization” and the RSS a “nationalist organization.”

Malani is also the brother-in-law and business associate of Ramesh Bhutada, who is the Vice-President of HSS-USA, which is the international wing of the RSS. Bhutada is also an advisor to Ekal-Houston.

Malani (far left) and Bhutada (far right) celebrate Modi’s election in 2014

The Overseas Friends of BJP, the international wing of the BJP, is also heavily involved in organizing the reception. According to an OFBJP press release, Vijay Chauthaiwale — BJP Foreign Affairs Cell Chief — is urging the “US leadership” of the Indian political party to “mobilize the Indian Diaspora for the mega event.” OFBJP executives such as President Krishna Reddy and others plan to “tour major cities to mobilize the community for the event.”

“Many minorities of Indian origin know Modi by the nickname, ‘Butcher of Gujarat,’” comments Arvin Valmuci, a spokesperson for Organization for Minorities of India. “The RSS’s many crimes against humanity include a pogrom against Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002. Modi was chief minister of Gujarat at the time. Members of his administration as well as of Hindu nationalist organizations like VHP and RSS led the slaughter of thousands of innocent people, including entire families.”

In a report investigating the 2002 violence, Human Rights Watch stated: “The groups most directly responsible for violence against Muslims in Gujarat include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the ruling BJP, and the umbrella organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS), all of whom collectively form the sangh parivar (or ‘family’ of Hindu nationalist groups). These organizations, although different in many respects, have all promoted the argument that because Hindus constitute the majority of Indians, India should be a Hindu state.” Later, in 2007, VHP and BJP leaders who instigated the violence confessed on camera that Modi “gave” them three days to conduct the pogrom.

“We are calling on every Indian-American to protest on September 22,” concludes Valmuci. “We are calling on every American politician to boycott the ‘Howdy, Modi’ reception. We remind the American public that Modi has been passionately protested by Christians, Dalits, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and many others every time he has visited the West to appear at these self-promotional, propagandistic ‘rockstar’ receptions. We have one thing to say: ‘Adios, Modi.’”

Modi was protested by hundreds, perhaps thousands, during his receptions in New York in September 2014 and California in September 2015.

Protest of Modi in San Jose, CA in September 2015