Nitasha Kaul, a controversial ‘activist’ invited by the Congress government in Karnataka to speak at a ‘Constitution and National Unity’ conference, was deported to the United Kingdom after landing at Bengaluru airport.
The Indian-origin ‘academician’ and ‘author’ took to X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday (25th February) to go on a rant against the Modi government.
Kaul thereafter compared her situation with that of Tibetans and Ukrainians living in exile and cast aspersions on the Indian democracy.
The Twitter meltdown was rather expected, given the fact that she was denied a platform to undermine India’s sovereignty and peddle her propaganda against the country’s Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
Nitasha Kaul, who holds a British passport, has a long history of disseminating falsehoods against India on international platforms and further Pakistani propaganda on Kashmir.
In February 2019, she was seen falsely claiming that the Indian media was justifying violence against the residents of Jammu and Kashmir. Nitasha Kaul alleged that Kashmir was somehow not a part of India before India’s Independence and expressed support for Article 370.
Nitasha Kaul has been invited as an ‘academic’ by Indian varsities such as OP Jindal and Ashoka. Interestingly, she had also prepared course material wherein Kashmir was labelled as an ‘Indian-occupied region.’ The matter first came to light in November 2021.
Nitasha Kaul also compared the plight of Muslims in Kashmir with that of Muslims in Xinjiang province under the Communist regime of Xi Jinping in a 2020 article dubbed ‘China : Xinjiang :: India : Kashmir.’
Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang face religious persecution and cannot practice their Faith. They are not allowed to pray, are force-fed pork, enrolled in re-education camps and have a ban on religious clothing.
On the contrary, Muslims in Kashmir openly practice their Faith, offer prayers at mosques, and celebrate Islamic festivals without fear. The Indian government has launched various schemes for the welfare of the residents of Kashmir.
Thus the comparison between Kashmir and Xinjiang is not only superfluous and devoid of merit but also downplays the plight of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Justification of Terrorism
The anti-India ‘activist’ was seen making a case for radical Islamic terrorism in Kashmir by downplaying acts of terror as a ‘right to protest’ against supposed ‘repression’ by the Indian government.
She shared the statement made by Islamic terrorist Riyaz Ahmad Naikoo, to rationalise his acts of terror and crimes against humanity, following his death.
“”Yes, we have chosen the path of armed struggle, but primarily, we are for peace, not war,” he said. “It is the nature of the occupying Indian state that has compelled us to resort to violent methods of resistance,”” the tweet by Kaul read.
She was seen glorifying Islamic terrorist Burhan Wani, who was gunned down by Indian security officials, in a vicious article published in July 2016.
The terror apologist wrote, “Kashmir is a territory that has been held by force by its neighbours against the will of the majority of the Kashmiris, and hence, both India and Pakistan most fear an indigenous freedom movement that is now firmly entrenched in Kashmiri soil. Burhan Wani was just one prominent example of this sentiment.“
Nitasha Kaul further claimed, “The hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris who gathered for the funeral of Burhan Wani, whom they saw as a freedom fighter and the Indian state saw as a terrorist, are speaking loud and clear by their presence in the public sphere at the risk of death and injury – ‘we do not want to be the disposable bodies for the performance of your ‘democracy’, you do not represent us, we want freedom’.“
She also justified terrorism in the Kashmir Valley as an act of resistance in her 2020 book titled ‘Future Tense.’ An article in Countercurrents describes Nitisha Kaul’s anti-India propaganda as –
“What compels a Kashmiri towards resistance and fundamentalism is the essential subtext of Future Tense. This novel is a story of former militant’s son, Fayaz and a girl known as Shireen. In the novel, Imran, a nephew of Fayaz is a young student. He gets radicalized at the hands of oppressors. This oppression compels him to join a new kind of spectacular resistance. The novel is a quintessential resistance novel.”
Meltdown after abrogation of Article 370
Months after the abrogation of Article 370, Nitasha Kaul gave a written submission before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee on South Asia Human Rights in October 2019.
The anti-India propagandist exploited the opportunity to allege that the Modi government was being a ‘colonial’ power and denying ‘freedom’ and the ‘right to access to the internet’ to Kashmiris.’
She also downplayed terrorism in the Kashmir Valley as an ‘armed uprising’ against the Centre, besides denying the role of Islamic terrorists in the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from their homeland.
“Dear Chair and other members, as you would appreciate, the internet is not a luxury in today’s world. It is essential to survive in modern society. Without access to the internet, millions of Kashmiris have been deprived of means to access information and be active citizens of the world.…Justification of denial of freedom through the promise of development is not only anti-democratic but outrightly colonial...During the beginning of armed uprising against the Indian state, following on from the widely reported electoral riggings in 1987, the mass migration of Kashmiri Pandits occurred,” the written submission read.
Nitasha Kaul spreads lies about RSS
In December 2015, she was seen spreading falsehoods about the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) during an interview of Ram Madhav with controversial Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan.
“The RSS and the BJP, they work hand in glove with each other. The RSS actually has camps where young boys and girls are trained in the use of weapons. There is evidence of this, well documented, where they are taught and they’ve made statements such as we will build bombs, we will kill Muslims,” Nitasha Kaul claimed.
“And there is video footage recorded of Yogi Adityanath, one of their MPs, the BJP MPs, on stage with people whose supporters are asking the crowd to exhume the dead bodies of Muslim women and to rape them. And that was followed by an incident like that actually happening. So this is not somebody making things up,” she brazened out.
“That person is still an MP. The BJP, RSS, the Sangh Parivar ideology is not one of civic nationalism. It’s not one of looking at people in terms of their rights. It is very much along a socially regressive, community-based notion of rights,” the anti-India propagandist further remarked.
In March 2017, she equated RSS to a terror organisation. Nitasha Kaul tweeted, “RSS, the right wing paramilitary organisation in #India that breeds terrorists & of which PM #Modi is a member. #BJP is its political wing.”
Contrary to her baseless claims, the RSS is a cultural organisation rooted in Indian nationalism. It is focused on putting society before oneself and facilitating social cohesion under the common identity of being a ‘Bharatiya.’
Far from terrorism, it is involved in relief work in cases of natural disasters and catastrophes. The organisation also has a minority wing ‘Mulsim Rashtriya Manch’ to cater to the needs of the community.
RSS believes that all Indians are Hindus by virtue of their common ancestry and association with ‘Hindustan.’ Unlike radical Islamist outfits, RSS is not interested in creating a ‘Hindu Ummah’ and is rather focused on putting India’s cultural and nationalist stance above its own.
Nitasha Kaul behind cancellation of PM Modi’s Wharton address in 2013
The year was 2013. Narendra Modi, who was then the Chief Minister of Gujarat, was invited as a Speaker at the Wharton India Economic Forum (WIEF) in Philadelphia. The event was organised primarily by the student community at Wharton.
At that time, three Indian-origin Professors Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul and Toorjo Ghose wrote a ‘strong letter’ against Modi to the Wharton administration.
The letter read, “This is the same politician who was refused a diplomatic visa by the United States State Department on March 18, 2005, on the ground that he, as Chief Minister, did nothing to prevent a series of orchestrated riots that targeted Muslims in Gujarat.”
The Indian-origin Professors were also able to secure the signatures of 270 people. Nitasha Kaul (listed at No.27 in the petition), described as a Professor at the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom, was one of the signatories.
This was despite the fact that the independent Special Investigation Team (SIT), constituted by the Supreme Court of India, gave a clean chit to Narendra Modi in the ‘2002 Gujarat riots case’ in April 2012.
Given that the event at Wharton was scheduled for March 2013, it meant that the Indian-origin Professors and the Penn University leadership were privy to the development 11 months ago.
Nevertheless, the nefarious agenda of the three Professors succeeded and the then University President Amy Gutmann gave in to the pressure mounted by them. The invitation was eventually withdrawn
It must be mentioned that the student body at Wharton was in favour of inviting Narendra Modi and the faculty of the business school did not want to upset a potential Prime Ministerial candidate.
A senior official told Hindustan Times that not a single faculty member of Wharton School wanted the talk to be cancelled. “Make no mistake, the move to not have Modi was a result of UPenn (the workplace of the three Indian origin Professors), not Wharton,” the official emphasised.
Endorsement by Pakistan
Nitasha Kaul had participated in events organised by Pakistani ISI-backed outfits such as ‘Stand With Kashmir (SWK)’ and ‘Kashmir Solidarity Movement (KSM).’
She attended anti-India events, organised by the Islamist outfit ‘Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC)’ and mouthed platitudes about ‘Indian democracy’ and ‘Hindu nationalism.’
According to the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), IAMC has links [pdf] with the banned Islamic terror outfit, Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
Besides, the Indian American Muslim Council has ties with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) through its founder Shaik Ubaid. The IAMC is a Jamat-e-Islami-backed lobbyist organisation claiming to be a rights advocacy group.
In the past, it had reportedly collaborated with and even paid money to various groups in the USA to get India blacklisted by the USCIRF (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom).
IAMC had been caught spreading fake news and misinformation to further the Islamist cause in India. It had also been slapped with the UAPA in 2021.
Due to her anti-India antecedents, Nitasha Kaul was invited as a guest at the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) in July 2020. She was part of a panel discussion titled ‘Bigotry Brigade: Where is India Headed?’ alongside anti-Hindu ‘historian’ Audrey Truschke.
Her vicious piece on India was used by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), founded by Imran Khan, to go on a diatribe against Hindutva and further the dubious narrative of ‘rising Islamophobia’ in BJP-led India.
Anti-India propagandist rakes up ‘Islamophobia’
Kaul, who has been endorsed by Pakistan, was quick to cry Islamophobia during the visit of UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson at a bulldozer factory in Gujarat.
“Day minus 1, bulldozers become symbolic of fascist resembling processes against Muslims in India. Day 1, UK PM Boris Johnson lands in #India, visits a bulldozer factory in Gujarat & poses in one. This is on Indian TV, & Modi et al revel in such validation by spectacles,” she brazened out.
This allegation made by Nitasha Kaul is not rooted in reality. The BJP government has been razing illegal structures, irrespective of the faith or political affiliations of the accused. It is curious that the anti-India propagandist associates only Muslims with illegal encroachment.
The illegally acquired properties of dozens of criminals and mafias have been demolished in UP, and the names include non-Muslims like Vikas Dubey, Yogesh Bhadora, Ramesh Pradhan, Badan Singh, Sundar Bhati, Vijay Mishra and many others.
In September 2022, the Uttarakhand government demolished the resort owned by the son of ex-BJP minister Pulkit Arya in connection to the murder of 19-year-old Ankita Bhandari.
Pulkit Arya is neither a Muslim student nor an activist but that did not stop the government from taking swift action against him. Kaul has deceptively tried to claim that action has been taken unilaterally against the Muslim community.
The anti-India propagandist also mocked the death of former Chief of Defence Staff (CoDS) Bipin Rawat in December 2021. Nitasha Kaul seemed to justify his untimely death by presenting him as an ‘enemy of Kashmiris’.
Given her stance on India and justification of terrorism in the Indian Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, social media users are now urging the Modi government to suspend her Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card.