For years, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) presented itself as an advocacy organization pursuing a “Hindu human rights” agenda in the U.S. The organization snatched up political credibility among Democrats, civil liberties groups, and progressives, all while supporting the far-right Hindu supremacist movement both in India and transnationally, according to a new report by research group Savera, which details how this carefully constructed image is starting to slip.

In its early years, HAF pursued causes that could be said to advance religious freedom, diversity, and inclusion. Behind the push for the public commemoration of Hindu holidays and “taking back” yoga, however, lays a more nationalistic and chauvinistic agenda, advocates say. In January, Savera joined a chorus of observers in pointing out HAF’s connections to a fascist movement in India that not only extols Hindu supremacy, but also holds real political power through India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. 

Savera’s report, released in October and titled “HAF Way to Supremacy: How the Hindu American Foundation Rebrands Bigotry as Minority Rights,” tracks how HAF has hidden its true ideology behind a pretense of advocating for Hindus in a Christian-majority country. The report asserts that this approach has made the group palatable to progressives in the U.S.

This latest report builds upon a series of investigations by Savera into the activities of the “Sangh Parivar,” the “family” of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist, organizations across the globe dedicated to transforming the Indian state into a theocracy.

“We have no response to the Savera report,” said Mat McDermott, HAF’s senior director of communications. He went on to describe Savera’s allegations as “baseless” and accused the organization of being affiliated with India’s opposition Congress Party.

Prachi Patankar, an activist and writer whose work against caste-based oppression informed many of Savera’s findings, has meticulously dissected HAF’s strategic facade. 

“Hindu American Foundation is leading with this idea of Hindu victimhood,” she said.  Some of this sentiment can be traced back to genuine sources, like anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. and the persecution of Hindu communities in Pakistan and Bangladesh; Patankar notes, however, that this idea of victimhood is not deployed to address structural inequality or oppression. Instead, HAF mobilizes to “go after other oppressed minorities within the Indian American community, like Dalits and Muslims, because Hindu supremacy is inherently Islamophobic and casteist,” she said.

Appearing across South Asian religions, cultures, and countries, caste refers to a system that allocates social privileges, wealth, occupations, and interpersonal associations based on birth. Dalits, in particular, are treated as complete outcasts.

Savera notes that self-proclaimed “Hindu rights” organizations in the U.S. have a vested interest in preserving this system because their origins lie within upper-caste, conservative Indian circles. The issues HAF has brought before state and federal lawmakers have included reframing protections against caste-based abuse as anti-Hindu or “Hinduphobic.” The activist base HAF and others have cultivated within the Indian American diaspora involves itself in localized, overtly bigoted actions, including accusations of terrorism and fanning calls for violence against the Sikh community.

“To challenge the Hindu supremacist far right, we need to bring together the majority that rejects Hindu supremacy—and that necessitates an intercaste, anti-caste, and multifaith coalition,” Patankar said. Savera itself is headed by members of diverse South Asian backgrounds, including Hindus who reject the supremacist aspirations of organizations such as HAF. Since Hindu supremacists in the U.S. have begun aligning explicitly with white supremacists and have also expressed support for punishing groups opposed to the genocide of Palestinians, Savera has attempted to build coalitions with Black Lives Matter, Standing Up for Racial Justice, and progressive Jewish organizations.

When fascists play the victim

HAF was founded in 2003 when it split from the American branch of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council. A year before, this parent organization became infamous for instigating genocidal violence against Muslims that roiled the state of Gujarat, allegedly in collusion with Modi, who was the state’s chief minister at the time. Thousands of Muslims were killed or displaced in a matter of weeks by armed mobs and complicit law enforcement. Over the years, evidence of Modi’s involvement has mounted. 

The Hindu American Foundation arose from a growing frustration within the transnational movement that rhetoric celebrating fascism hindered outreach in countries such as the U.S. Instead, HAF’s founders opted to reframe their messaging as an appeal for minority rights and multiculturalism.

This approach inarguably has won the organization much success. Savera has documented how leading progressive organizations were, at least at one point, convinced they shared principles with HAF. The American Civil Liberties Union reportedly felt comfortable allowing HAF to weigh in on legal cases involving religion in courtrooms, civic spaces, and schools, according to a list of past HAF legal advocacy work listed on its website. In 2019, Americans United for Separation of Church and State spearheaded an initiative with 43 “religious, civil rights, and secular organizations” against Christian nationalist curricula being placed in public schools; HAF was among the groups. HAF Executive Director Suhag Shukla has held up the group’s relationship with the Interfaith Alliance, which includes lobbying the Senate to codify same-sex marriage protections as a pluralistic bona fide.

Savera’s report shows that all of this occurred over the past two decades, during which HAF consistently and publicly advocated for the Sangh’s theocratic interests. This included defending Modi, who could not enter the U.S. for nine years due to “severe violations of religious freedom,” over suspicions of his culpability in the Gujarat carnage. 

The ACLU and the Interfaith Alliance did not respond to requests for comment. Moises Serrano, media relations manager for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said that the organization was “unaware” of Savera’s report and was unsure when someone from the group would read it.

Lobbying politicians

HAF has also won friends with more formal political power, particularly within the Democratic Party. In 2019, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., a recipient of HAF’s “Friend of the Community Award,” exhorted his colleagues to attend the “Howdy Modi” rally in Texas where Modi and then-President Donald Trump appeared together, according to the Daily Beast, despite alarm over Indian crackdowns in the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir. This past spring, Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., introduced a congressional resolution against alleged incidents of “Hinduphobia,” drawing criticism from marginalized caste, Sikh, and Muslim commentators who noted the term had been used to mask attacks against their communities.

HAF is also tied to the considerable war chest of the Hindu American Political Action Committee. Though the groups are not officially affiliated, most of the PAC’s board is involved with HAF, according to Al Jazeera. Sherman, at $20,600, is HAPAC’s third-largest recipient of donations between 2012 and 2024, according to aggregate Federal Election Commission data compiled by Al Jazeera. Thanedar received a more modest $5,000. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence in his next administration and a known Modi supporter, took in $8,500.

HAPAC donated a grand total of nearly $183,000 to 27 Democratic candidates and just under $52,000 to 11 Republicans, according to Al Jazeera’s analysis. Notably, this breaks ranks with other American appendages of the Sangh, who prefer Republicans, though Savera notes that the gap is narrowing.

Sherman, Thanedar, and Gabbard did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.

“Critical caste theory”

Thanendar’s efforts on Capitol Hill are hardly the first instance in which the Sangh, through organs like HAF, has attempted to safeguard its ability to abuse people of marginalized caste backgrounds behind a dubious aegis of “religious freedom.” 

When Senate Bill 403, a bill that would put protections in place against caste discrimination, was introduced in the California State Legislature in 2023, it “triggered a veritable moral panic within the American Sangh,” according to Savera’s report. By HAF’s own admission, it spent nearly $300,000 opposing the legislation under the auspices of defending Indians and Hindus from being vilified. Ultimately, the Sangh’s efforts helped compel Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto the bill. 

HAF’s relatively moderate line is that banning caste discrimination is a moot point since not enough data shows it to be a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. But instances of caste abuse in the U.S. are proliferating alongside calls for its abolition; in 2020, a Dalit employee filed a lawsuit against Cisco Systems due to caste discrimination. One year later, Indian laborers constructing a Hindu temple in New Jersey sued, attributing their low pay and coercive work environment to caste abuse.

Savera’s report criticizes HAF for “fearmongering” about what it calls “critical caste theory.”

“Borrowed from the contemporary Far Right’s preferred bogeyman of ‘Critical Race Theory’ and the Christian Far Right’s appropriation of the language of religious freedom to argue that their particular beliefs entitle them to discrimination, such as against Queer people, the term seeks to manufacture a sense of victimhood by falsely claiming that the movement to ban caste discrimination is itself discriminatory against Hindu Americans,” the report says. 

It’s unclear how HAF will move in the wake of the Trump victory. Patankar said that maintaining the tenuous balancing act between playing the victim on the one hand and pursuing a supremacist agenda on the other is essential to the organization, regardless of how things play out. 

“In order for them to talk about Hindu victimhood, they need the liberal space because those are the spaces where this narrative can thrive. Because the MAGA far right doesn’t care about that,” Patankar said. “HAF throwing in with MAGA is ultimately going to hurt them too. That’s just the reality of it.”