For decades, I traveled and volunteered in India freely, distributing food, clothing, and other vital supplies as part of charity work sponsored by my church in Tennessee. When I returned in October 2019, I expected the visit to be no different. But immediately upon my arrival, my documents were confiscated and I was imprisoned for 6 days in a dark cell. For the next 7 months, I was prevented from leaving India. My crime? Being Christian.
Held on spurious charges, the real reason I was targeted was because I like countless other Christians throughout India who have been arrested, imprisoned, and even killed for their beliefs and practiced a faith deemed anathema by India’s ruling Hindu nationalist political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Under the leadership of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, India has bulldozed churches, passed laws to criminalize conversion to Christianity, imprisoned pastors, and helped inflame anti-Christian atrocities in Manipur, all in pursuit of rendering India a pure Hindu nation. One BJP official told my lawyer that the party was going to stop American Christians from coming here.
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Considering the harm I suffered in India, it came as quite a shock to see an American politician with deep ties to Modi and the Hindu nationalist movement nominated as Director of National Intelligence: Tulsi Gabbard. As Christians, we have a responsibility to denounce her appointment to this important position with all our strength.
Over the course of Gabbard’s career, she has partnered with the overseas wing of the BJP, worked to shield Modi and his party from criticism of his abominable human rights record, and relied on the financial support of domestic groups tied to Indian paramilitaries who persecute Christians. These ties, disturbing enough in themselves, ought to be totally discredited when it comes to a person charged with overseeing the CIA and FBI. These agencies are tasked with protecting Americans from foreign threats and the Modi regime, to put it lightly, is a major threat to Americans.
In 2023, the Indian government launched two assassination attempts in North America, killing a Sikh leader in Canada and hiring an assassin to kill Gutwarpant Singh in New York. Indian intelligence officers also led an extensive misinformation campaign targeting American individuals and organizations who were critical of the Modi regime. Indian consulates have routinely surveilled American citizens, passing along their information to foreign counterparts. Under Modi’s rule, in other words, American critics are increasingly subject to the same authoritarian pressures as Indian dissidents.
Gabbard is deeply embedded with Modi and the groups who champion his cause from afar. Her love affair with India’s PM, the BJP, and Hindu nationalism goes back to 2011 when she first began receiving donations from members of overseas Hindu nationalist groups as a freshman U.S. Representative representing Hawaii.
According to Federal Election Commission records since that time, at least 105 current and former officers and members of American Hindu nationalist groups and their families have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gabbard’s campaigns since 2011. At one point their donations constituted almost 25% of her political funds.
One of the most notorious groups that Gabbard received support from is the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America. The VHPA is the foreign counterpart of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an Indian paramilitary group formerly designated as a militant group by the U.S. Department of State. Its members have repeatedly attacked and even killed Christians in India. The VHPA has sent more than $7 million to the VHP to support its violent missions. In spite of its troubling legacy, Tulsi has appeared on stage at VHPA events and received $25,405 in donations from VHPA executive Bharat Barai (and his wife).
Another troubling association of Gabbard’s is her connection to Ramesh Bhutada. A donor to the tune of nearly $40,000, Bhutada helps lead the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, the foreign counterpart to India’s largest Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Like the VHP, RSS members have repeatedly called for the demolition of Churches in India and organized violence against Christians. Narendra Modi, a former RSS member and a staunch ally of the organization, has relied on the organization to stir up votes and intimidate political opponents.
Perhaps most troublingly, Gabbard, as exposed by journalist Pieter Friedrich, has directly partnered with the Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP). Addressing crowds at an OFBJP banquet in Atlanta in 2013, OFBJP organizer Dhiru Shah urged BJP supporters to fund Gabbard’s campaign, saying, it is necessary that we support a person like Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. And whatever the donations you make is not enough, because she needs to win Vijay Jolly, then the BJP’s Foreign Affairs Cell Chief, stated: We are sure, with the support of the people of Indian origin, the non-resident Indians and, of course, the US citizens, [Gabbard’s] victory later this year is a foregone conclusion.
Like the paramilitaries to which it is intimately linked, the BJP has overseen efforts to criminalize conversion to Christianity, conducted extensive bulldozer campaigns that destroyed churches, and routinely failed to respond in any meaningful way, and indeed incited, acts of anti-Christian violence in northern India. Members of this incredibly dangerous political party came to Gabbard’s wedding. Gabbard has met with Modi, its head, four times.
Unsurprisingly these financial and personal ties appear to have had a profound influence on Gabbard’s political activities in the U.S., where she has consistently opposed efforts to criticize the human rights record of Narendra Modi and the BJP. Gabbard has: opposed the U.S. State Department’s nearly 10-year ban on Modi’s visa, launched in recognition of his complicity in a massive anti-Muslim pogrom; condemned a 2014 Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing on human rights conditions in India; and, in 2019, attempted to whitewash discussions of the very same pogrom which got Modi banned from America.
Members of Modi’s political party the BJP were a constant threat to me while I lived in India. They harassed me and separated me from my family and parish for nearly a year. They are an even more serious threat to Christians who continue to bravely practice their faith in India. Tulsi Gabbard has repeatedly partnered with these organizations and this movement, and cannot be trusted to keep Christians safe here or abroad. In the interest of Christians everywhere, we must raise our voices and demand the cancellation of Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation as director of national intelligence.
The full story of Bryan’s arrest, prison and 7.5 months being held as a Christian hostage can be found in the book You Can’t Stop Living Because I Am Gone: #BRINGBRYANHOMEby C.B. Newel and Bryan Nerren.
Bryan Nerren is a former senior pastor at International House of Prayer Ministries in Shelbyville, Tennessee. He was imprisoned in India under the Modi regime.
