Congressman Pete Olson, a Republican representing Texas’s 22nd congressional district, recently called out Democratic candidate Sri Preston Kulkarni for taking “big time money from Nazi sympathizers” in reference to strong financial backing of Kulkarni’s candidacy by leaders in US affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an Indian paramilitary.
Olson is retiring, leaving an open seat which Kulkarni and Republican competitor Troy Nehls are hotly contesting. However, Kulkarni’s candidacy has face strong pushback due to heavy financing by leaders of the Hindu Swayamasevak Sangh (HSS), the international wing of the RSS. Kulkarni has named Ramesh Bhutada, the Vice-President of HSS-US, as having been “like a father to me on this campaign.” According to Bhutada’s relative, Vijay Pallod, the circle of RSS-affiliated activists had raised tens of thousands of dollars for Kulkarni “to get his campaign off the ground in the first month.” Kulkarni, who is running for the second time, previously secured the Democratic Party’s nomination for TX-22 in 2018 after nearly 30% of his campaign donations came from sources linked to the RSS as well as controversial Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi is accused of overseeing an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002 in Gujarat, an Indian state for which he was chief minister at the time. The RSS is a Hindu nationalist paramilitary founded in 1925 which gave birth to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and seeks to declare India as a Hindu nation. The RSS’s second and longest-serving chief — who is now revered as the paramilitary’s “guru” — had in 1939 praised Nazi Germany for manifesting “race pride at its highest” by “purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews.” He concluded that it was “a good lesson for us in Hindustan [India] to learn and profit by.”
Referring to Emgage Political Action Committee and its decision not to endorse Kulkarni (despite doing so in 2018), Olson asked why Kulkarni takes “big $$$ from Nazi sympathizers.” Calling it “not cool,” he noted that competitor Nehls “has taken $0.00 from groups associated with Nazism.”
The irony is that Olson himself has taken $6,000 from HSS’s Ramesh Bhutada and, subsequently, spoken on the floor of the US House of Representatives about the need to “stand with” Modi as he pushes his agenda for India.
Nevertheless, Kulkarni continues to be heavily funded by leaders of US affiliates of the RSS — many of whom played a key role in helping to elect Modi — and has, unlike other Indian-American progressive Democrats, refused to criticize Hindu nationalism or Modi’s increasingly sectarian and violent agenda.
*The writer is specializes in analysis of historical and current affairs in South Asia. He engages with issues such as human rights, supremacist political ideologies, ethnonationalism, politicization of religion, authoritarian government structures and policies, state-sponsored atrocities, and the need to unify around doctrines of liberty.
September 30, 2020
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
