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My name is Kavita Pallod Sekhsaria. Because I am a frequent target of Pieter Friedrich, a paid political hack, I want to introduce myself before I explain why his framing of me and my family goes well beyond inaccuracy into something more deliberate: an effort to stigmatize and silence ordinary Hindu Americans like me.

I was born in 1988 to two Hindu American immigrants, Vijay and Sushma Pallod. They raised me with love, but also with expectations — not about status, but about service. Ramesh Bhutada and Jugal Malani were warm and steady presences in my childhood. My father and my uncles made time for their families, for the Hindu community, and for the broader Houston community they felt deeply responsible to. They also raised me to be critical — to interrogate what I believed, not inherit opinions unthinkingly.

In his recent piece on Rakhi Israni — a mother of four, nonprofit attorney, and educator running for Congress in California's 14th district — Friedrich opens with a line designed to make a Hindu youth camp, a family network, a congressional candidate, a federal filing, and a guilty plea feel like parts of a single dark revelation. The frame is clear: same network, same families, same surnames, same suspicion.

But that is exactly the problem. He does not begin with proof of wrongdoing or follow the evidence where it leads. He begins with Hindu association itself — family ties, camp ties, religious ties, community ties — and invites readers to treat all of it as presumptively sinister.

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Yes, we are connected. Yes, many of us know one another. Yes, families in the Hindu community serve together across generations. That is not a scandal. That is what community looks like.

The Hindu Heritage Youth Camp he gestures toward so ominously is not proved in his piece to be a site of indoctrination, hatred, or criminality. If Friedrich wants to claim that such a space produced something nefarious, he should present actual evidence: testimony from campers, parents, counselors, or staff about specific teachings, harms, or acts. Instead, he offers insinuation.

One of his favorite targets is Aruna Miller, the lieutenant governor of Maryland, whom he has branded a "Hindu nationalist" through the same lazy logic of association while barely grappling with her public record. It would be inconvenient for him to contend with my actual relationship with Aruna. The most meaningful conversation we've shared was the moment I tearfully gave her a knit Bernie Sanders doll and we reflected together on how deeply we both admired his moral clarity. An odd scene for two supposed puppets of the BJP government.

And as for Rakhi Israni: I've called her Rakhi Didi since the day I met her. She was the person who sat with me over meals at Hindu Heritage Camp when I struggled to find my footing socially — which is to say, my childhood was not spent being crowned the "Hindu nationalist princess" of some sinister "family project."

A particular problem with Friedrich's flattening is that it does not help identify extremists. It makes it harder. If every Hindu institution is suspect, then nothing is actually being analyzed. If every family network is treated as a pipeline, then no one has to do the harder work of distinguishing between ordinary religious life, cultural pride, conservative politics, diaspora networking, ugly prejudice, and actual extremism.

I can say that personally. Growing up in Houston, immersed in the Hindu community, I did hear Islamophobic things. I am not pretending otherwise. But what is striking is that the people who actually say those things are never the focus of Friedrich's work. Instead, he consistently targets people who, in my experience, do far more to push back on that ugliness.

I have seen it up close. Recently, some people in the community objected to IMAGH, the Indian Muslim Association of Greater Houston, having a picnic at the Texas Hindu Campsite. A small but vocal bunch launched an ugly smear campaign attacking Vijay Pallod, Rishi Bhutada, and Ramesh Bhutada for "allowing this to happen." What was the Pallod-Bhutada response? Strong, unequivocal pushback against that absurd display of sectarianism.

That matters because it reveals something Friedrich does not understand: for all of his so-called research, he has no real grasp of the moral and political dynamics inside Hindu communities. He writes as though the people he targets are engines of extremism when, in reality, they are often the people holding the line against it.

If Friedrich believes a person is dangerous or extremist, he should show us. Quote them. Document the conduct. Speak to people who have worked with them, disagreed with them, been harmed by them, or been helped by them. Show the public actual evidence for the moral conclusions he wants them to draw. Too often in his work, a congressional staffer's quote substitutes for proof. When you pull the thread, the sources lead back to Friedrich's own prior pieces, bolstered by fringe organizations in a self-referential loop. Since real evidence does not exist, what remains is not serious journalism but stigma-by-network.

This matters even more in the American context. Major public overviews of terrorism and extremist violence in the United States emphasize other categories of threat. There are no arrests, no documented incidents, no pattern of threat to American life from "Hindu nationalism." And if that sounds too convenient, the comparison should be obvious. In the United States, there have in fact been real acts of jihadist violence — and yet we rightly understand that Muslims cannot be treated as inherently suspect because of that. Civil liberties advocates have spent years arguing, correctly, that profiling and communal suspicion are unjust and counterproductive. Friedrich's work does the opposite.

So what exactly is the justification for his method when it comes to Hindus? If there is no demonstrated pattern of "Hindu nationalist" violence in the United States, then what remains is not prudence. It is prejudice dressed up as analysis.

Friedrich presents himself as a progressive champion of democracy targeting "Hindu nationalism." But his method sweeps far wider. It tells readers that if Hindus organize, fundraise, build institutions, remain close to family, or take pride in their heritage, all of that is fair ground for suspicion. The problem is no longer a specific ideology proven through words or deeds. The problem becomes Hindu life itself — and the realization that there is little, if any, difference between Pieter Friedrich and a white Christian nationalist.

Say it plainly: when every Hindu camp becomes suspect, every Hindu network becomes sinister, every Hindu donor becomes contaminated, every Hindu family connection becomes political evidence, and every expression of Hindu pride becomes grounds for moral suspicion, this is no longer a narrow critique of an ideology. It is a broader attempt to make Hindu identity itself radioactive in public life.

That is why so many of us reject Friedrich's project. Not because we oppose scrutiny. Not because we think powerful people should be beyond criticism. But because criticism without standards becomes propaganda, and propaganda built on association becomes prejudice.

My own family should make that obvious. We are not a hive mind. We do not vote the same. We do not think the same. We argue. We disagree. We make fun of each other's politics. Some of us are progressive. Some are conservative. What binds us is not obedience to a foreign government or some secret ideological script. It is family. It is community. It is a religious and cultural inheritance that taught us service, obligation, and connection.

If journalists are genuinely curious, let them come meet us. Let them ask hard questions. Let them examine actual beliefs, actual conduct, actual institutions, and actual differences among us. But let them also interrogate the lazy premise at the heart of Friedrich's work: that being related, being Hindu, serving together, or taking pride in one's faith is enough to turn ordinary people into evidence.

It is not.

And no amount of ominous prose can make it so.

Discover more at New India Abroad.