The leftist woke lobby of the US has a track record of harassing and intimidating Hindu American politicians who don’t conform to their worldview. From Vivek Ramaswamy to Tulsi Gabbard, Hindu Americans who don’t shy away from displaying their Hindu identity and practicing Hindu Dharma, have been targeted for their pro-Hindu and pro-Bharat or pro-Modi government sentiments to be more precise.
For the American woke lobby, the ideal Bharatiya American immigrants are ones who downplay their Hindu identity, or even better abandon Hindu Dharma altogether. They also need to pass the litmus test of calling Bharat’s democratically elected government fascist, totalitarian, and anti-minority, it seems. That is precisely why Vivek Ramaswamy was hounded for his Hindu origins. He was asked uncomfortable questions from the audience members regarding his identity as a Hindu and if, he being a practicing Hindu, felt himself fit to become the President of a country like the US, whose founding principles were based on a different religion. The question was a staged one in all probability. This question apart, Ramaswamy has been a victim of a systematic smear campaign orchestrated by the woke lobby of the US.
The latest Bharatiya American politician being targeted is newcomer Bhavini Patel, Congressional candidate for Pennsylvania’s 12th district. She announced her bid to unseat Rep. Summer Lee in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District’s 2024 Democratic Primary.
Since she announced her candidature, Bhavini Patel has been constantly harassed by Lee’s supporters, their opposition to her candidature often bordering on bullying and intimidation tactics. In a fresh incident, Patel was accosted by supporters of Summer Lee outside the Allegheny Country Democratic Committee meeting. The video about the incident is being circulated on social media platform X in which the stalker can be seen screaming lines from a recent media article calling Bhavini Patel right-wing and genocide supporter and stuff. The food truck shown in the video is Patel’s family business.
It’s a rather disturbing video that should actually be taken up by the authorities as proof of outright intimidation and harassment of a first-time politician, that shouldn’t be sanctioned by the law of any country. Criticizing a candidate for their policies and point of view is another thing and verbally harassing them and stalking them by calling them names in public view is another. This trespasses all norms of genteel political discourse and should be outrightly condemned and dealt with legally.
However, this is just one episode in a whole bunch of incidents targeting Bhavini Patel for her political views. To begin with, Bhavini Patel is a vocal advocate for the Jewish state. Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, Patel has reportedly released several statements and appeared at numerous local public events in support of Israel and hostages held captive in Gaza.
There is an in-depth explanation of Bhavini Patel’s family background and her policy priorities in an article published by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. According to the article, Congressional candidate Bhavini Patel is focusing on securing strong federal funding to support several district projects, including small businesses, infrastructure, transportation systems, and workforce development.
Owing to her pro-Israel stance, Bhavini Patel has garnered enormous support from the Jewish community of Pennsylvania’s 12th district. This is what seems to anger many who are now reportedly targeting her for her pro-Israel stance. An event featuring Bhavini Patel scheduled at the University of Pittsburgh was recently canceled. The University of Pittsburgh is Patel’s alma mater, and she was scheduled to speak there at a program that was a non-political event. She was supposed to engage with students, drawing from her experience as a student there. Her team had reportedly clarified this with the university authorities many times that they would take all precautions to keep the event apolitical.
However, at the last moment, her speaking engagement was canceled by the University of Pittsburgh citing security and safety concerns for Bhavini Patel in the wake of opposition to her policies as a US Congress candidate. The university has reportedly asked Patel to reschedule the event later in the year. Bhavini Patel raised the issue through her social media in which she said that she was saddened that she could not speak at her alma mater. As per various media reports, the University of Pittsburgh in its statement said that it was a part of their practice to regularly invite distinguished alumni to speak to students about their time at Pitt and “It was in this capacity, not as a political candidate, that the University invited Bhavini Patel to speak. As the event drew closer, it became clear that it would not be possible to host the event at the originally planned location and keep the focus of the event on her experience as a Pitt alumna”.
A recent article published by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle delves deep into the woke politics of the anti-Bhavini Patel lobby. The article says that the cancellation of the University of Pittsburgh event featuring Bhavini Patel came close on the heels of a 28th January Candidate Forum at Carnegie Mellon University where the audience turned raucous, intimidating, and even confrontational at times.
Bhavini Patel has shared a couple of posts from her X account regarding the cancellation of her speaking engagement scheduled at the University of Pittsburgh. “The cornerstone of a thriving democracy and political process is freedom of expression. I won’t be silenced by identity attacks. Lastly, acknowledging and supporting people of color when they express that they are being harmed and silenced is crucial for a just society”, says Patel.
An article specifically aimed at maligning Bhavini Patel and destroying her credentials recently appeared in the Pittsburgh City Paper. The article titled “Bhavani Patel courts out-of-state donors with Hindu nationalist ties and pro-Israel agendas” spits venom against Patel for her pro-Israel and pro-Modi government stance.
The write-up ostensibly scrutinizes a video call recently hosted by Bhavini Patel along with California-based physician Mihir Meghani. The article emphasizes that Mihir Meghani is a supporter of Hindu American issues, thus implying that it’s a fault to be supporting Hindu American issues, and by supporting those issues, one becomes a suspect.
The article further says that Patel and Meghani conducted this virtual event in which many of the callers were from outside Pittsburgh, and they indulged in “vociferous praise of Israel” and “their interest in defeating a progressive Democrats and “Squad” members including Patel’s opponent, incumbent US Rep. Summer Lee; and Hindu nationalist rhetoric”. It’s almost comical the way the article fabricates a conspiracy theory by taking snippets from a bunch of video callers expressing their political opinions and treating these as some kind of vicious statements by a bunch of criminals. Is it a crime to support Israel and condemn Hamas’s attacks on Israel? Is it a crime to support PM Modi’s “Hindu nationalist government”? Well, by the standards of the US woke media, certainly seems like that.
The write-up also contests Bhavini Patel’s claim that 70 percent of her campaign funding comes from within Pennsylvania. The article says that the call lasting less than an hour, featured several messages of support from donors, three of whom indicated primary residence in New York.
The article sees the fact that Mihir Meghani, who conducted the video session along with Patel, “is a co-founder and board member of the Hindu American Foundation” and “a prolific political donor who has contributed thousands of dollars to pro-Israel lobbying groups” as some kind of radical revelation akin to a criminal conspiracy. All kinds of stakeholders finance political campaigns of different kinds of candidates. Singling out a political candidate just because of her pro-Israel and pro-Hindu stance and vilifying her supporters because of an embedded set of prejudices is anything but journalism.
Suhag A. Shukla, Executive Director of the Hindu American Foundation, issues a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of the Pittsburgh City Paper for writing such a Hinduphobic article.
“I am still trying to process the gross Hinduphobia suffusing this paragraph from PGH City Paper’s colinwimbles hit on Patel. It takes staggering racist audacity for this reporter to claim that a Hindu American Mihir Meghani saying Jai Shri Ram as a farewell is alarming and someone referring to India by its indigenous name “Bharat” is threatening. Would the same racist and colonizing lens be applied to an Indigenous American using “Turtle Island” or a Muslim American saying “takbir”? This is the “strategic xenophobia” that PittsburgPG’s editorial highlighted, “she says.
Harassment of pro-Bharat Hindu American politicians seems to have become a regular feature of US politics. The woke media applies “freedom of expression” selectively and constantly puts Bharatiya Hindu candidates in a box because of their political views, irrespective of whether they belong to the Republicans or the Democrats. The unsaid norm in US politics is that one must by default accept the superiority of Abrahamic structures of thinking and give up their own identity and thought system is rather unsettling.
