Kumar trying hard again to get Narendra Modi’s attention.
By Sujeet Rajan
Follow @ambazaarmag
NEW YORK: Chicago-based businessman Shalabh ‘Shalli’ Kumar, a staunch supporter of the prime minister of India Narendra Modi, and a Republican Party activist, will launch the Republican Hindu Coalition (RHC), next month, in October.
Kumar has pledged to personally donate at least $2 million and raise millions more for the eventual Republican nominee for the White House, as well as support Republican candidates running for House and Senate seats across the country, according to Fox News, which first reported Kumar’s new initiative.
Kumar has tried in the past too, to help Republican Party candidates win elections. He launched an initiative called the India American Advisory Council of House Republican Conference, in 2013, which strived to put Republicans of Indian-origin on Capitol Hill. It has yet to achieve that goal, with support for candidates like Vanila Mathur Singh in California and Manju Goel in Illinois, failing.
Related story: Vanila Singh distances herself from Shalabh Kumar, but endorses State Dept.’s rejection of visa to Narendra Modi
Kumar, chairman of AVG Advanced Technologies, and the founder of an earlier social organization called Indian Americans for Freedom, compares the America of today to India of the 1970s, in an interview to Fox.
“We are looking more and more like India of the ’70s or the ’80s. In India we say ‘Babu Raj’ – which means the whole country gets controlled by bureaucrats,” Kumar said. “President Obama is pushing us in that direction, creating Babu Raj in the United States,” he added.
“We are actually giving away our economic future to China, the world is a lot less secure today than it was seven years ago, and conservatives and Republicans have to win and take the White House. This is the time when Hindu Americas should very actively get involved,” Kumar told Foxnews.com.
There are approximately 3.7 million Indian Americans in the U.S. and about 50 percent of those are Hindu, according to Pew Research data.
“They make the highest per capita income of any income group, are highest givers to charity and among the least dependent on government. … Yet with all these demographics cited, Hindu Americans tend to be like other minorities when it comes to voting – they are Democrats or are neutral, or they just don’t vote,” Kumar said in the interview.
According to the report, the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will be the honorary chairman of the RHC. Interestingly, Gingrich also appeared prominently on the group launched earlier by Kumar, the Indian Americans for Freedom.
Kumar says that the purpose of the RHC would also be to help the US and India draw closer on a number of issues, including getting the U.S. to rely more on India for manufacturing than China.
It’s no coincidence that the announcement of the launch of the RHC comes close to Modi’s visit to the US. In the past, Kumar has tried hard to put himself in the forefront of initiatives targeted at raising Modi’s attention, but which has not only missed its mark, but also raised some controversies.
Last year, Kumar launched the National Indian American Public Policy Institute (NIAPPI) led NIAPPI Business Council (NBC) to forge closer Indo-US business ties, and help in thwarting anti-immigration proposals on Capitol Hill detrimental to India’s interests.
Kumar got some unsavory attention last year with his support of Indian American candidate for the 8th Congressional district in Illinois, Manju Goel, through a SuperPAC. An ad that ran for Goel’s campaign looked more like that for a candidate running for election in India.
The bizarre mélange in the advertisement that ran on TV during an India-Pakistan match had photos of and messages from the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, yoga guru Baba Ramdev, endorsement from Speaker Newt Gingrich, words like ‘Jaichand’ to describe Goel’s GOP opponent Larry Kaifesh – denounced as a traitor to the community.
Related Story: Ads for Manju Goel’s Illinois campaign for Congress has photos, messages from Narenda Modi, Baba Ramdev
Despite the strident voice over in English, the ad had an unmistakably Indian tone. There was a photo of a goddess – presumably to suggest Mother India; music that reminded of TV religious soap operas. It also flashed the photo of Kumar. The ad also had a message from Ramdev: how the Indian American community can become more powerful than the Jewish American community, through politics.
One of the objectives for the new initiative, Republican Hindu Coalition, would be just what Ramdev advocated in the ad: the Indian American community can become as powerful if not more, than the Jewish American community
Kumar, who also has lobbied to have Pakistan cut off from all aid by the US, and countering radical Islam, reportedly worked for the Business Advisory Council for President Ronald Reagan, according to the Indian Americans for Freedom website.
In an earlier story, The American Bazaar had reported that Kumar sponsored the visit of three members of Congress to visit Gujarat and meet Modi – Aaron Schock, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Cynthia Lummis. The three were lambasted for taking a junket. Soon after the visit, Rogers distanced herself from Kumar.
Last year, Kumar tried hard to be in the forefront of the preparations to help Modi greet the diaspora at his Madison Square Garden speech in New York, but was sidelined by the eventual organizers.
It seems Kumar has not given up on his trying hard to catch Modi’s attention, once again.