On a Wednesday morning in September 2022, a lobbyist reached out to a congressional staffer in Washington, DC. He wanted to set up a meeting on behalf of his client to discuss some human rights concerns in Pakistan and a newly introduced resolution in the United States House of Representatives regarding religious minorities in India.During the meeting a few weeks later, the client made an appeal: Could the congressional office where the staffer worked back a ban on sustainment packages for F-16 fighter jets sold to Pakistan due to that country’s alleged persecution of its Hindu minority?
This client was not a foreign government or a defence policy think tank. It was a domestic nonprofit called the Hindu American Foundation.
The staffer was taken aback. Despite being familiar with the group and its advocacy on behalf of Hindus in the US, the staffer did not expect it to be so deeply involved in geopolitics.
The Indian government at that time had been publicly pushing back against a $450m F-16 package for Pakistan. India’s defence minister had expressed concerns about it to his US counterpart, and the external affairs minister had openly disparaged the US government for the package.
“In that moment”, the staffer said, “it became clear to me that the Hindu American Foundation was acting on behalf of the Indian government.”
The foundation, …
