Hindu festivals have not only become victims of vicious leftist propaganda but also instruments of convenient use and throw by anyone wanting to do propaganda for some other “issue” or “cause”.
Khalistan supporter Canadian poet and performer Rupi Kaur is the latest celebrity to jump onto the bandwagon. Rupi Kaur is what one would call a “social media poet”. She shot to fame through Instagram after she self-published her first poetry collection “Milk and Honey”. Kaur made headlines in 2015 as she posted a picture of her in pyjamas with a period bloodstain on Instagram. The social media site reportedly removed the picture for supposedly violating guidelines. Rupi Kaur then utilized the controversy to promote herself and took a stand against the supposed double standards of Instagram, thus garnering fame and drawing more attention to herself and her poetry.
Rupi Kaur recently declined a Diwali invitation by the White House. The celebrations took place on the 8th of November, and Kaur was invited to be a part of these. But she turned down the invitation to apparently protest the US administration’s support for Israel’s during the “Gaza bombardment”.
She put out a post on her X handle on the 6th of November saying “I received an invite from the Biden administration for a Diwali event being held by the VP on Nov 8. I decline any invitation from an institution that supports the collective punishment of a trapped civilian population – 50% of whom are children”.
Alongside her post, Kaur also posted images of her detailed response to the White House invite accusing the American government of justifying the “genocide against Palestinians”.
Never mind that it’s actually Rupi Kaur who is trying to use the Hindu festival Diwali for doing propaganda and garnering fame. It’s hard to believe that Rupi Kaur has such a great conscience that she has stopped doing any shows or making public appearances supported by any entity funded by a US-based person or organization. But then of course, Hindu festivals are the easy scapegoat for everyone to do this high-powered drama and portray themselves to be supremely self-righteous.
If all that Rupi Kaur wanted was attention after these histrionics of her, she got it in full dose as both the Bharatiya and the international media shamelessly carried news of Canadian poet Rupi Kaur turning down White House Diwali invitations to protest the apparent Israeli offensive on Gaza. Never mind that the lady never condemned the September 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and hasn’t ever written any post calling for the release of Israeli hostages or distinguishing between the Hamas terrorists and the ordinary people of Palestine. Her X timeline is full of posts openly doing one-sided propaganda against Israel. She repeatedly reposts posts made by the likes of Rana Ayub. So how much “love” Rupi Kaur has for Diwali is questionable in the first place. Then, she has the guts to use the festival to further her personal agenda is beyond disgusting.
Rupi Kaur seems like your typical fame-monger. She sent out a letter to the White House declining their invitation for Diwali celebrations. The news of her “rebellion” received widespread press coverage. But that was not enough. Apparently, Kaur wanted the White House to bend over their knees and apologize to her for supporting Israel in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
In response to her decline, the Press Secretary of the White House Karine Jean-Pierre responded by saying that they acknowledged her decisions, and respected diverse opinions. This angered Rupi Kaur further. She reportedly found the reply “saddening” and accused the White House of “disingenuousness”.
Rupi Kaur is a Khalistani sympathizer as well. Her X timeline is full of anti-Bharat posts vis a -vis the Khalistan issue. While some of these posts are related to the 1984 Sikh riots following the death of Indira Gandhi, and the horror that Sikhs of Bharat suffered in those riots is indeed horrific and condemnable, her other posts where she where seems to be actively campaigning against the present government of Bharat vis a-vis the Hardeep Singh Najjar killing incident and other issues between Bharat and Canada, certainly don’t put Rupi Kaur in a disinterested community activist light. Her posts highlight categorically that she hates the state of Bharat and its very existence.
The government of Bharat had also blocked the X accounts of Rupi Kaur along with the accounts of other pro-Khalistani leaders like Canada’s New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh and others a couple of months back. This was in the wake of the attacks on the Indian High Commission in London by Khalistani supporters and the subsequent protests over the action of the police against Khalistani terrorist Amritpal Singh.
Amritpal Singh is the chief of a Khalistani extremist organization called Waris Panjab De and he was reportedly sent to Bharat to revive terrorism at the behest of Pakistan’s ISI. Now, if Rupi Kaur openly declares her support for such dangerous terrorists, you can well imagine from where her love for Hamas and her concern for the Gaza Strip is coming from. There are many international celebrities who have condemned the loss of lives of both Israelis and Palestinians in the conflict, and called for a ceasefire but also for the release of Israeli hostages. This kind of balanced approach makes sense. But the likes of Rupi Kaur are constantly peddling a one-sided narrative. Her anti-Bharat stance finds a combined expression in her support of Khalistani terrorism and Islamic terrorism through her act of whitewashing the crimes of Hamas and propagating a one-sided narrative. She is dangerous because being a youth icon, she wields a lot of influence.
Rupi Kaur has 4.6 million followers on Instagram and 268K followers on X. She has a sizeable fan following amongst the Bharatiya diaspora all over the world. This makes her a convenient vehicle for anti-Bharat propaganda. That’s precisely why the leftist Islamist lobby latches on to opportunistic celebrities like Rupi Kaur for whom standing up for these so-called causes is a clickbait opportunity to garner name and fame. For the young generation of Bharatiyas both in Bharat and abroad, it’s easy to be swept away by the propaganda created by the likes of Rupi Kaur since they have no deeper understanding of these issues and their historical context.
The leftist Islamist ecosystem has unfortunately hijacked the world of writers and artists. There needs to be a systematic investigation into the funding of various international literature festivals, literary & cultural organizations, etc. One wouldn’t be surprised if it’s discovered that a lot of Arab funding goes into the making of these literary and cultural events. This is just a speculation though.
According to a report by the Executive Director of the American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise Dr Mitchell Bard that has recently gone public, colleges and universities in the US received 8.5 billion USD worth of funding from Arab sources between 1986 and 2021. The report also claims that American universities received 4.3 billion USD in funding from Qatar over a period of 35 years. The report further names some of the most famous US universities like Cornell University, Harvard University, New York University, etc.
According to the report, Cornell University is the single largest recipient of Arab funding, and Harvard University is the 8th largest recipient of Arab funding.
The report traces linkages between the massive Arab funding nexus of these US universities and the aggressive anti-Israel activism being carried out by the administration and departments of these universities in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Since the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out, one has seen numerous pro-Palestine protests in universities across the world glorifying Hamas and demonizing Israel. In light of the findings of this report, one can perhaps see a link between the funding sources and the ideological orientation of the universities concerned.
There is a website called “writers against the war on Gaza” that calls itself “an ad hoc coalition committed to solidarity and the horizons of liberation of the Palestinian people”. A Statement of Solidarity can be seen on the website’s homepage that takes a biased, one-sided view of the Israel-Hamas conflict and repeats the usual rhetoric of Israel trying to conduct a genocide of the people of Palestine. Nowhere does this statement even acknowledge the historical oppression and horrors suffered by the Jews who represent a miniscule minority in the world today.
The statement is followed by the names of hundreds of writers supposedly endorsing the statement.
Unfortunately, we as Hindus have failed to create even 1 percent of this kind of ecosystem for our rights, culture, and identity. That’s why any random woke celebrity thinks it’s alright to publicly display their apparent rejection of a state Diwali celebration to peddle their vicious propaganda.
