Described last October by the Washington Post as “the Democrat that Republicans love and the DNC can’t control,” Gabbard offered a sample of her independent streak a year ago, when she spoke out of sync with her fellow Democrats and criticized US president Barack Obama’s handling of Islamic extremism—specifically over his unwillingness to brand ISIL an “Islamic” group. ”[Obama] is completely missing the point of this radical Islamic ideology that’s fueling these people,” Gabbard told Fox News last February.
Her viewpoint on this subject is all the more notable given her military experience in the Middle East, where she served in a field medical unit in Iraq and was a trainer for the Kuwait National Guard.
But it also aligns nicely with the stance toward Islam held by India’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu nationalist leader, Narendra Modi, with whom Gabbard shares a great rapport.
Gabbard was among the few to criticize the US government’s decision to deny a visa to Modi before he was prime minister, in the wake of accusations that his government in the state of Gujarat did not do enough to save Muslims during the horrific communal violence carried out there in 2002. The Gujarat riots claimed more than 1,000 people, including close to 800 Muslims. Gabbard had called the no-visa decision a “great blunder.”
And in November 2013, five months before Modi would win election as prime minister, Gabbard opposed a House resolution that called for “religious freedom and related human rights to be included in the United States-India Strategic Dialogue and for such issues to be raised directly with federal and state Indian government officials,” saying it would weaken the friendship between India and US.
Speaking at a fundraising event for the BJP in August 2014, where she articulated the plight of Hindus around the world who have suffered persecution, Gabbard said that Modi’s election victory was only possible because “people stood up, one by one by one by one, and said we will demand that this change occurs.”
“[Modi and I] had a wide-ranging discussion on several issues our countries have in common, including how America and India can work together to help combat the global threat posed by Islamic extremism,” Gabbard said after the meeting.
For all that and more, Gabbard was treated as royalty on her visit to India last year. As she hobnobbed with the Indian prime minister and foreign minister among others, The Telegraph, a Kolkata-based newspaper,
called her “the Sangh’s mascot” in the US. The Sangh, a moniker for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing hindutva organisation and the ideological guardian of the BJP party that rules India now.