(RNS) — Alongside criticisms of her political history, Gabbard has long fielded questions about her particular branch of Hindu faith, which many have referred to as a ‘cult.’
Tulsi Gabbard speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Richa Karmarkar
January 29, 2025
(RNS) — At a U.S. Senate committee hearing Thursday (Jan. 30), former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, will face questions about her career, from her dramatic departure from the Democratic Party in 2022, to her 2017 visit to Syrian strongman Bashar Assad and her comments echoing Russian disinformation.
But along with criticism of her politics, Gabbard has fielded questions about her religious identity. The first U.S. congresswoman to take her oath on the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu Scripture containing Lord Krishna’s teachings that she carried with her on deployment in Iraq with the Army National Guard. Gabbard has often credited her religious upbringing as the basis for her views and refers to Hindu concepts of dharma, or duty, and seva, the selfless service outlined in the Gita.
“Real spiritual understanding, or real religion, transcends sectarianism,” she told a crowd in 2016 at the 50th anniversary gala of ISKCON, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness. “Each and every one of us, whether we call ourselves a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu or any other designation, we each have this intrinsic opportunity to cultivate our own personal loving relationship with God.
Not all Hindus are comfortable with Gabbard’s Hinduism, however, with some smearing the tradition as a “cult.”
Gabbard was raised in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition — a sect, or sampradhaya, with a special affinity for Lord Vishnu’s incarnation of Krishna — a blue-skinned deity often pictured with his consort, Radha, and with his favorite instrument, the flute. Gabbard’s particular branch of the sect is the Science of Identity Foundation, a group founded by Siddhaswarupananda, also known as Chris Butler, who broke from ISKCON — a Gaudiya Vaishnava group more commonly known as the Hare Krishnas — in 1974.
NOT THE BIBLE BUT THE HINDU BAGVAGITA
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, left, administers the House oath of office to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, during a ceremonial swearing-in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 3, 2019, during the opening session of the 116th Congress.
The charismatic Siddhaswarupananda founded SIF in his home state of Hawaii, where Gabbard’s parents joined him — her father, who is of Samoan and European ancestry, converting from Catholicism. (Some sources refer to him as a “Catholic Hindu.”)
An offshoot group led by a guru like Siddhaswarupananda is nothing out of the ordinary in Hinduism. Gurus are often worshipped or even deified for their ability to pass along teachings to lay believers.
In this way, said Graham Schweig, a professor of comparative theology at Christopher Newport University who has studied the history of ISKCON, “It is very natural for the trunk to grow branches, and from the branches to grow sub branches and twigs.”
Critics point to Siddhaswarupananda’s views on homosexuality, his authoritative traits and other harmful beliefs alleged by former members of SIF, but Schweig, who met Gabbard in 2016, said the cult label mischaracterizes SIF. It leans on Vaishnava traditions rather than Butler’s own musings, he pointed out, and its leader doesn’t influence followers beyond spiritual matters. As is evident in Gabbard’s participation in other Hindu ceremonies and events, SIF doesn’t silo itself from other groups.
Earlier this year, more than 50 Hindu organizations signed a letter of solidarity with SIF, citing what the letter termed an influx of “anti-Hindu rhetoric” in the media.
RELATED: On Gita Jayanti, Hare Krishnas celebrate the birth of the sacred text Bhagavad Gita
Anuttama Dasa, communications director for ISKCON, called Gabbard a great friend to ISKCON who “regularly sends messages of good will and hope” on holy days, offers her “appreciation of Lord Krishna’s sacred teachings” and “often mentions (ISKCON founder) Srila Prabhupada as one of those from whom she seeks wisdom and guidance.”
U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, at a news conference in Honolulu, Jan. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, File)
In a statement, Dasa said, “Especially during these times of great polarization, we request that Tulsi Gabbard’s faith, the Vaishnava tradition, and the Hindu religion more widely, be offered the respect they are due.”
Anang Mittal, former head of digital communications for House Speaker Mike Johnson, said Hindu Americans of Indian origin have had no issues accepting her into the Hindu fold. In fact, he said, many Indians are surprised to know Gabbard, whose mother is of European descent, doesn’t have any Indian heritage.
“We’re not beholden to some community leader or group leader,” he said. “That lack of solidarity is our benefit and it’s our superpower.” This feature of the faith can be a weakness, he said, because its lack of unity makes it hard to fight against attacks, but he added: “It also allows us to be free of any sort of ideas, or that ‘Hindus think one way, or Hindus think another way.’ You just can’t say that. There’s just not a possibility.”
Mittal also dismisses as “vile” accusations that Gabbard is a defender of Hindu nationalism. One anti-Gabbard website has been urging the public to be aware of the “political chameleon whose principles and allegiances are malleable.” Other Gabbard critics have noted her relationships with dozens of American Hindus who are organizationally linked to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, particularly the Overseas Friends of BJP.
The Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group for the American Sikh community, has been working with some senators on the intelligence committee to raise concerns about Gabbard’s history at her Thursday hearing. The coalition’s executive director, Harman Singh, pointed to the Indian government’s alleged attempts to silence its critics on U.S. soil, including at least two assassination plots on Sikh opposition leaders. Gabbard’s friendliness with India, the coalition says, raises questions about her suitability to stand up to the Modi regime.
These concerns, said Singh, have nothing to do with her religious background, but solely with her public positions on legislation recognizing India and Modi’s track record.
The Hindu American Foundation, a group whose members have also been accused of having connections with India’s nationalist organizations, chalks up the doubts about Gabbard to what it calls “dual loyalty smears” familiar to any Hindu in prominent spaces, especially in politics.
“While the meaning or intent behind the label of Hindutva may not always be obvious, the impact is,” executive director Suhag Shukla wrote in 2019, after Gabbard gifted a copy of the Gita to Modi. “It paints legitimate Hindu American efforts to self-define as inherently suspect and robs them of their agency to engage in the public square, invest in their community needs, and contribute possible solutions rooted in Hindu teachings to the most critical issues of our age.”
Mittal compared the accusations to past fulminations that Italians were loyal only to the pope, or the Jewish people were instruments of Israel. “We’re going through the same cycle of skepticism, derision, some level of hate, and then eventual acceptance,” he said. “At some point, that will happen.”
Senators Peddle Debunked Lies To Attack Gabbard for Supporting Snowden Pardon
Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as Director of National Intelligence is one of the more hopeful signs that President Donald Trump will make good on his pledge to be a peacemaker.
While Gabbard is not a peacenik, she has fought against some of the worst abuses of the American Empire. She opposed the “regime change” wars in Syria and Libya, the NSA’s mass surveillance of Americans, and demanded a pardon for whistleblower Edward Snowden.
To little surprise, these are the issues that Senators attempted to attack during Gabbard’s confirmation hearing on Thursday. Among the smears were claims that Snowden recklessly disclosed the documents and that he fled to Russia.
The attacks on Snowden leveled by the Senators were outright lies. They shamelessly misrepresented his heroic decision to inform the American people that their government was running a massive surveillance program that violated the Constitutional rights of every American.
In this excerpt from Scott Horton’s new book, Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, Horton explains the truth behind Snowden’s saga and how it was weaponized as anti-Russian propaganda.
~ Kyle Anzalone
Tapping My Telephone
In the spring of 2013, Edward Snowden, a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton working for the National Security Agency, liberated a trove of documents essentially proving that all the previous NSA whistleblowers like Russel Tice, Edward Loomis, J. Kirk Wiebe, Thomas Drake and William Binney, and great journalists like James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets and The Shadow Factory, had been right on and much worse. The NSA, Snowden’s leak proved, was violating the civil liberties of virtually all Americans, working with telecommunications and Silicon Valley firms to compile endless amounts of metadata and cellphone location data, search, web traffic, email and instant messenger histories. This is all not to mention their wide-scale surveillance of the rest of the people of the planet, in cooperation with the “Five Eyes” of the Anglosphere alliance, which includes Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand — six if one counts Israel. Snowden’s leak to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Ewen MacAskill and Barton Gellman was a heroic service to the American people and to mankind. Snowden has said he was motivated to do this when he saw National Intelligence Director James Clapper perjure himself before Congress, falsely denying that the NSA was collecting data on innocent Americans.
The U.S. government, which was apparently too busy keeping tabs on all of us to take care of their own secrets or track down their missing contractor, was embarrassed. So naturally they lied, claiming Snowden was a spy working for Russia and China. Well, he had originally gone to Hong Kong, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant he released was the most recent version. You just have to imagine the rest of the case, because those total non sequiturs were all they ever had beyond wild anonymous claims.
Stranded
To this day people accuse Snowden of being a Russian spy just because the Obama administration deliberately stripped him of his passport while he was stuck there on a layover in his attempt to make it to Ecuador. The Democrats decided that it would be better to leave him in Russia, where the security services could presumably forcibly interrogate him about everything he knows, just for the public relations mileage they would get out of tarring his name with that of Putin and the Russian Federation. He would have been much easier to arrest in Ecuador if they had let him continue on his way. When they later mistakenly assumed he was escaping on the Bolivian president’s plane, the administration ordered their Western European clients to deny them entry to their airspace, forcing the plane to land in Austria in what would have been an absolute outrage if any country other than the U.S. had done it. Then, after Putin granted Snowden temporary asylum, Obama canceled a previously scheduled side meeting with Putin at the G-20 meeting in September 2013, making this self-inflicted diplomatic blunder another cause for worse relations between our two countries.
Importantly, Snowden denies that he has ever revealed a word about his previous work for U.S. intelligence to Russian operatives. He has also sworn he would return to the United States if Congress would amend Woodrow Wilson’s Espionage Act of 1917, which currently forbids defendants from even attempting a “just cause” defense for violating the law. In other words, if he could get a fair, American-style trial in America.
It is clear that Snowden is a patriot who liberated those documents out of a public-spirited concern for the American people’s rights. Those who accuse him of serving foreign nations are simply desperate liars, and those who accuse him of refraining from criticizing the Russian government are wrong, as even Michael McFaul has acknowledged.
If it is true that Putin is taking the opportunity to provide the hero safe haven from his U.S. government tormentors for public relations reasons, that is their fault. They could do the right thing and drop the charges at any time.
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