Why is California’s Progressive Caucus Leader Still Attacking Hindu Americans?
Just over a month ago, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) exposed a campaign to malign several Hindu American Democratic candidates for national and down-ballot state races. The allegations were explosive: A senior leader of the Democratic party in California is closely tied to a political operative writing hit pieces on other Democrats across the nation because of their ethnic origin and Hindu religion.
That leader, Amar Shergill, California Democratic Progressive Caucus chair, and the operative, Pieter Friedrich, in turn, knew one another through their work with Bhajan Singh Bhinder, the accused in a plot to smuggle arms to Pakistan to support the erstwhile Khalistan terror movement seeking to wreak havoc in India.
Confused yet? It gets worse.
About two months ago, Friedrich — who had gained notoriety for a stream of attacks against Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for supporting U.S.-India ties as a Hindu American legislator — was hired by the co-founder of the Indian American Muslim Council, Dr. Shaik Ubaid. Friedrich was tasked to write pieces and make YouTube videos maligning the Texas congressional candidate, Sri Kulkarni, Illinois’s Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy, and Michigan State Assembly incumbent Padma Kuppa — all Democrats, all Indian American, all Hindus. Friedrich went on to attack several Republican Hindu American candidates as well.
This week, one month after the Hindu American Foundation’s expose’, Shergill responded in a piece in Browngirl Magazine (since taken down).
In the piece Shergill fails to respond, rebut, or repudiate his role in that tangled web. He doesn’t deny his association with Friedrich nor Bhinder nor the Khalistan movement that Bhinder is so actively aligned with. He doesn’t deny that Friedrich is paid to wreak the havoc that he amplifies on twitter and in his columns. He doesn’t rescind his attacks on Tulsi Gabbard.
Instead, what Shergill offers is a good bit of sanctimonious grandstanding, lecturing HAF to not “push away” Joe Biden in his presidential bid. He claims that instead of standing with most Hindu Americans that support the Biden/Harris ticket for President, HAF is failing to align with Democrats by not endorsing him, and “are doing Trump’s work for him” by allegedly supporting Trump, without any evidence to substantiate baseless claims.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking as it was Shergill himself who took to the pages of the Sacramento Bee in May to lend credibility to the debunked stories accusing presidential candidate Vice President Joe Biden of sexual assault.
Shergill argued that an independent investigation had to be carried out before any Democrat supported Biden’s strong denials of impropriety. After Biden’s denial was corroborated by Congressional records, Shergill never expressed regret for essentially accusing Biden of a horrific assault that never happened.
It was Shergill again, who broadsided the Biden campaign in February 2020 — again in Browngirl Magazine — by assailing Biden’s highest ranking desi campaign worker at the time, Asian American Outreach Director, Amit Jani, saying Jani was the reason “Biden is losing another presidential campaign.”
Jani’s alleged crimes? 1) That he welcomed India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi — yes, the one who’s also been warmly embraced by President Obama and Vice President Biden along with dozens of members of the U.S. Congress; and, 2) that he did not condemn India’s integration of its territory of Jammu and Kashmir — an enormously emotional topic for most Indian Americans that welcomed the move, and something Biden has never condemned.
To summarize, Shergill was taking shots at the Biden campaign’s most prominent desi not because of what he did as an American, but because of an axe to grind rooted in polarized Indian politics.
And then Shergill did it again.
Two months ago, he returned to his dirty tricks campaign against Biden at a critical time in the campaign. Just after Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate,. Shergill went on National Public Radio, to say that the Biden campaign was failing Indian Americans in not condemning “horrors in India” and that “Amit Jani needs to atone for his support” for Modi in the past. Shergill went on to demean Indian Americans that don’t agree with him politically as Indians that falsely “call themselves Democrat.”
It’s a bit rich of Shergill to now demand rational political expertise and “purposeful action” or lecture that “Hindus should spend…time ending [Trump’s] disastrous presidency, not pushing away those fighting alongside us,” when fighting alongside Shergill would have meant months of pushing away Biden and slandering senior Biden campaign officials like Jani.
Finally, Shergill is a lawyer. He should know that a duly registered 501c(3) organization like HAF legally cannot endorse a candidate in any race, something which HAF has never done.
Calling on HAF to support Biden is calling on HAF to do something illegal. Hopefully Shergill doesn’t give that advice to his non-profit clients. HAF’s non-partisan track record is clear and publicly available for anyone to see, including Shergill, with a simple perusal of its website.
What HAF will do and has always done is advocate on behalf of all Hindu Americans, whether we politically agree or not. When HAF backs Jani against the trolling, backs Krishnamoorthy, backs Kulkarni, backs Kuppa, and many other candidates — it is not to endorse them, but to defend against the demeaning of their faith and the racist allegations of dual loyalty, or their support of a robust relationship with the largest democracy in the world that happens to be the spiritual homeland of their religious tradition.
We wish that Shergill, would join in that important work, rather than engage in internecine attacks against Hindu American candidates, amplifying shady political operatives and importing South Asian political divisions into local races causing a harm not just to his party, but to his community of desis, that will take years to undo.
