Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump's pick to be the director of national intelligence, has faced scrutiny over alleged connections to Russia and the Kremlin as well as a visit with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but some who have worked with her and have followed her political career told Newsweek that they are concerned by her ties to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist movement that counts Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a longtime member.
The RSS formed nearly a century ago and is described by some as a "Hindu Cultural organization." It has been accused by some critics of seeking to vanquish Indian Christians and Muslims in order to to establish a Hindu nation. Modi, whom Gabbard met with in 2019, is a lifelong RSS member and is associated with the political wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Gabbard, an ex-Democrat who officially joined the Republican Party this year, was recently nominated by Trump to serve as DNI, overseeing 18 intelligence agencies including the CIA and NSA. The military veteran and former congresswoman ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020. She's been criticized for years for purported affiliations with foreign entities like Russia and Syria.
Gabbard has consistently denied any ties to Russia and once filed a defamation suit against Hillary Clinton for suggesting that she had been "groomed" by the Kremlin to run for president as a third party candidate. The suit was later dropped. Gabbard has also said she opposes Russia's military operation in Ukraine.
While her Russian and Syrian comments and actions will face scrutiny, some have said that her ties to the RSS should be examined.
"Having someone like Tulsi so closely tied to the RSS and its affiliates in America benefits India at a time when India is basically run by the RSS," independent journalist Pieter Friedrich told Newsweek.
Newsweek reached out for comment to Gabbard, her husband Abraham Williams, her father, Hawaii State Senator Mike Gabbard, individuals who have worked on her campaigns, the Department of Justice, and the purported Science of Identity Foundation (SIF) group in which she has also has ties, as well as those who have been identified as SIF members.
Meeting Modi
From an early age, Tulsi Gabbard was immersed in the ideals of the Science of Identity Foundation and its alleged Hare Krishna teachings. She kept her childhood Bhagavad Gita, the Scripture that is central to Hindu philosophy, with her when she was deployed in Iraq, calling it a "transcendental lifeline."
Upon being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016, Gabbard took her oath of office with her hand on the Gita. In 2019, she personally gifted the Scripture to Modi when she met him.
Gabbard, who has said she is not of Indian origin, has been described as an "advanced devotee" within SIF, which several former members have labeled a "cult." She has called her religious practices "transcendental Hinduism," a term recommended to her by the group's leader, Chris Butler, according to a 2017 feature published in The New Yorker.
Friedrich wrote in The Caravan that Gabbard has visited India "only once" on personal invitation from Modi.
"I believe that fundamentally the chief concern is her foundational ties to the Hindu nationalist movement," he told Newsweek.
Gabbard's connections to the RSS have been documented. The organization is considered a foundational part of the Hindutva political ideology that calls for Hindu hegemony in India.
Gabbard vowed to be a "strong voice in Congress for improving India-U.S. relations" and "promised to take the lead in passing a resolution to support Prime Minister Modi's call to the U.N." Modi has advocated for reforming the U.N. and adding India as a permanent member of the Security Council, which President Joe Biden has endorsed.
She joined the House India Caucus while in office and called for the protection of Hindus and religious minorities in Bangladesh, "people who continue to be targeted and persecuted" as she described in one video message that included admonishing the Pakistani military.
Gabbard has also openly defended the far-right Hindutva religious ideology as a way of "expressing pride in one's religion" and noting its "complex history."
When the U.S. House issued a resolution in 2013 recognizing the RSS violence against Muslims and Christians, Gabbard opposed the measure, saying: "It is critically important that we focus on strengthening ties between the two nations and I do not believe that (the resolution) accomplishes this."
Friedrich provided evidence to Newsweek that thousands of dollars in donations to Gabbard's campaigns came from leaders within the international wing of the RSS, in addition to the Overseas Friends of the BJP—the latter of which Gabbard spoke to in Los Angeles and Atlanta in 2014, according to information provided to Newsweek by journalist Christine Gralow of the local outlet Meanwhile in Hawaii.
In August 2020, the Overseas Friends of BJP registered itself under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). According to DOJ rules, the group is required to "to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities."
It's been reported by the investigative journalism podcast QAnon Anonymous, which debunks conspiracy theories, that 25 percent of Gabbard's campaign funding came from RSS-affiliates—statistics that doubled once she was in office.
India's bloody battles
Throughout her time in Congress, Gabbard was regularly seen wearing a scarf of the BJP including at events where attendees donated to her campaign.
Ram Madhav, a spokesperson for RSS and BJP, was at Gabbard's wedding in 2015 to her husband, Abraham Williams. Newsweek reached out to Madhav for comment.
"In 2008 I was in India," Michael Brannon Parker, an acquaintance of the family, told Newsweek. "Ram Madhav asked me if I knew a lady named Tulsi Gabbard. I said, 'Yes, I do know her.' He said she had approached him in [Washington] D.C. and introduced herself stating that she knew me from Hawaii and that I was close with her dad and brothers."
Parker, who is about 16 years older than Gabbard, says he met her when she was around 8 or 9 years old. He said he has known the Gabbard family for decades since he worked for Gabbard's father, Mike, and the pair remain close. Mike and his wife, Carrol, ran a fully functioning Krishna temple near downtown Honolulu that Parker used to frequent. He described the temple as always offering "a small friendly family-type gathering."
That was when he said he had some interactions with Tulsi, though he says that they talked more in the mid-2000s when she was older and becoming interested in a political career.
"So, that was the beginning of Tulsi's connection with [RSS and BJP spokesman] Ram Madhav," Parker said. "Ironically, both being well-known leaders, [they] have become a lot closer than I ever was with her."
From January 2002 to June 2015, the RSS arranged for Parker to participate in numerous conferences in the U.S., Mexico and India, he said. They sent him along with several other Westerners to Assam, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India—and an area that was once known for secessionist insurrections became a pro-India, BJP-ruled enclave.
In 2009, Parker's book Orissa in the Crossfire was published, detailing Hindu-Christian violence in the Kandhamal district of Orissa, India.
The book was written in response to the August 2008 assassination of Hindu monk Lakshmanananda Saraswati, also known as the Hindu Swami. That killing led to riots and violence that resulted in the death of nearly 100 Christians, 300 churches being attacked or destroyed, and 6,000 Christian houses plundered. More than 55,000 Christians were left homeless, according to South Asian human rights and religious journalist Anto Akkara.
Akkara told Newsweek he has never interacted with Gabbard and that she only came on his radar due to her association with Madhav—the latter described by Akkara as "one of the key brains behind the Kandhamal bloodshed of 2008 and the international cover-up."
"Tulsi Gabbard looks like a hypocrite to me as she waxes eloquent about atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh and does not leave out other minorities, including Christians, who are being tormented in the Middle East under Islamic regimes," Akkara said.
He added: "However, she has never opened her mouth on the atrocities Hindu nationalists have been perpetrating on minuscule Christians in India, especially during the regime of Modi from 2014 when atrocities against Christians started shooting up."
In September 2023, the United Christian Forum issued a statement warning about a continuous year-over-year uptick in violence against Christians in India. At that time, 525 incidents of violence against Christians were reported in 23 Indian states in the first eight months of that calendar year—noting that incidents had increased "sharply and steadily" since the 147 reported incidents in 2014, reaching 599 in 2022.
"Putting Gabbard in charge as director of national intelligence would be like turning the U.S. into a safe haven for bigoted Hindu nationalists," Akkara said. "That would also circumvent even the work of the Office of International Religious Freedom that speaks out for persecuted Christians in India.
"Elevating Gabbard as a key U.S. official would give a wrong impression about the U.S. and will be a stunner for tormented Christians as she is a professed Hindu who has a long association with Hindu nationalists engaged in violence against Christians and other minorities."
Parker said his last direct contact with the RSS and Madhav occurred in 2016. Parker says he had been invited by the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh State to give a talk at a conference organized by the cultural wing of the state government.
"I am now married to [a] staunch Muslim Pakistani woman," Parker said. "This is why I've stepped back from my involvement with the RSS and pretty much anything political. I didn't burn any bridges, but in 2015 I decided to focus on my personal life."
Warnings from faith-based communities
Gabbard has posed in pictures with RSS leaders and has had meetings with Modi when other U.S. lawmakers have refused. She met Modi in New York a decade ago on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
In 2017, Gabbard accepted the offer to serve as the chair of the World Hindu Congress, which is run by the RSS.
When Friedrich asked Gabbard about her ties to RSS, he says that she sidestepped the question, noting that she's a soldier who took "one oath in my life to serve and protect this country."
Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations (FIACONA), a, Washington D.C.-based organization that advocates on behalf of over 1 million Indian American Christians and includes a coalition of Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Pentecostal and independent church and civic organizations, calls the purported transnational repression by Hindu nationalists to be "an obscene violation of U.S. sovereignty" that Gabbard has refused to speak out against—which in turn they argue amounts to a national security danger.
Friedrich, also a FIACONA board member, recently created a petition in hopes of discouraging Gabbard's confirmation to become the next head of U.S. intelligence.
FIACONA Executive Director Neal Christie, a former United Methodist Church clergy member, told Newsweek that putting Gabbard in charge of national intelligence is "sort of like putting the fox in the hen house."
"It is very dangerous to put someone like Ms. Gabbard [as director of national intelligence]," said Christie, a second-generation Indian American. "It just does not show America First. As a Christian, I want to put global peace first; I want to put first multilateralism.
"This is someone who will bless the current practice that's in India and move us further in alignment with their agenda and interest supporting an internal spy mechanism that is oppressing religious minorities, tribal peoples, Indigenous peoples."
Christie and his colleagues have protested India and Modi, including during one of Modi's recent trips to the U.N.
He said he wants to support Gabbard but does not believe she is the right person for the DNI role, given its global importance.
"[Gabbard] is a person who comes from a minority community, who's served her country, who has been elected," he said. "I want to celebrate and affirm her service. At the same time, we cannot deny the financial support she's received from the RSS. We cannot deny her blessing of the RSS and the Modi government.
"Society is not going to be quiet. Is that really what we want as a nation where we're trying to come together after this election? Do we want another person who's in the pocket of another government—the armed wing of a party in another country? I don't think we want that. And as a person of faith, I certainly don't want that."
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