On 10th September (local time), Leader of Opposition (LoP) and former Congress President Rahul Gandhi met several anti-India lawmakers from the United States (US), including Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna, and Barbara Lee. Photographs of the meeting were shared by Congress’s official handle and Rahul Gandhi’s page on Facebook.
In its post on Facebook, Congress wrote, “Shri Rahul Gandhi met with U.S. lawmakers at the Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC.” The list of attendees, according to Congress, included Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna, Jonathan Jackson, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Barbara Lee, Shri Thanedar, Jesús G. “Chuy” García, Hank Johnson, and Jan Schakowsky. The meeting was hosted by Bradley James Sherman.
Sharing photographs of the meeting, Rahul Gandhi wrote, “It was a pleasure to meet with a delegation of U.S. lawmakers at the Rayburn House in Washington, DC. We had a meaningful discussion about our shared commitment to building a progressive future and strengthening the Indo-US relationsh.” The details of the discussion or any video of the same were not provided by Congress Party on any of the social media platform which raises concerns about the topics they might have discussed.
Who is Ilhan Omar?
Ilhan Omar is a Somalia-born radical Islamist politician from the US. She was was elected to the House of Representatives from Minnesota on a Democrat ticket. Outside the global Muslim brotherhood or the Ummah, Omar is seen as someone running errands for the powerful Islamist lobbies, whose only aim is to push radical Islam in modern societies.
In fact, the origins of Omar, who hails from Somalia, have also been controversial. Omar arrived in the US at the age of 12 in 1995 as a refugee fleeing Somalia’s civil war. She became a citizen five years later, at the age of 17. In November 2016, she won the election to become the first Somali-American in the US Congress.
There are allegations that Omar married her biological brother to bypass the US immigration process. Former President Donald Trump had asked the Justice Department to investigate Ilhan Omar’s marriage to her brother and her subsequent migration to the US illegally.
Ilhan Omar’s history of bias against Hindus, a known anti-India propagandist
A representative of Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, has several times in the past parroted the same lies peddled by the radical Islamists, and Pakistan. For years now, Omar has indulged in propagating anti-India narratives, especially targeting the Narendra Modi government, and has sought Biden Administration’s official help to further her propaganda war.
With support from other ‘left-liberal’ circles, both in India and the West, Ilhan Omar has been at the forefront of raking up the issue of Kashmir in the US House of representatives with a pro-Pakistan stand demanding US agencies to intervene in the matter. Omar has also peddled lies about the alleged attacks on minorities, issues of human rights, and freedom of speech in India, claiming that Muslims in the country are facing atrocities at the hands of Hindus.
Last year, in a US House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on South Asia Human Rights, Ilhan Omar had also attacked Indian journalist Aarti Tikoo Singh, who had testified before the US Congres on the Kashmiri Hindu genocide in the valley in the 1990s.
Ilhan Omar’s connections with radical organizations
Allegedly, Omar is a pawn of the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar’s rulers. She also has ties with radical Islamic organizations such as Islamic Relief and Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), the sister organization of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a Western branch of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a terror group that is banned in India. HHRD also has ties with Islamic terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan.
Ilhan Omar: A hardline Islamist, an anti-semite
Ilhan Omar is a known antisemite and has expressed steadfast support for the terrorist group Hamas. When the Israel-Palestine crisis broke out in 2021, Ilhan Omar sided with Jihadists to whitewash their crimes against Israel.
In 2019, Omar had courted controversy when she had defended the 9/11 terrorists by referring to them as “some people doing something”. She is also a proponent of the ‘one-nation’ solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which effectively means refusing to let Israel exist as a country.
Who is Ro Khanna?
US Democrat Congressman Rohit Khanna is often called by the name Ro Khanna. He is an Indian-origin American politician. In August 2019, Ro Khanna joined the Pakistan Congressional Caucus, becoming the first Indian-American to do so. This move had raised eyebrows in the Indian-American community, while he was welcomed by the Pakistanis, including Pakistan’s ambassador to the US.
On 24th March, US House Representative Ro Khanna stirred the hornet’s nest by making unsolicited remarks about the internal political affairs of India. The development comes after Congress scion Rahul Gandhi was disqualified from Lok Sabha following his conviction in a criminal defamation case.
In a tweet, he claimed, “The expulsion of Rahul Gandhi from parliament is a deep betrayal of Gandhian philosophy and India’s deepest values.” The US politician further added, “This is not what my grandfather sacrificed years in jail for. Narendra Modi, you have the power to reverse this decision for the sake of Indian democracy.”
In August 2019, Ro Khanna courted controversy for presenting a distorted version of Hindutva to his American followers. He had tweeted, “Important article. It’s the duty of every American politician of Hindu faith to stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist & Christians. That is the vision of India my grandfather Amarnath Vidyalankar fought for.”
He gave the impression that Hindutva promotes inequality and discrimination against other religions. In essence, Hindutava (as defined by Veer Savarkar) is an inclusive term that represents everything ‘Indic’. During the anti-farm law agitation in India in 2020, Ro Khanna tweeted, “India & the US share a rich tradition of democracy & peaceful protests. Farmworkers are the backbone of both our nations & must have their voices heard.”
Equality Labs, which is known for anti-Hindu propaganda, has worked with Congressman Ro Khanna to introduce a resolution in celebration of the 129th birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar. The founder of Equity Labs, Thenmozhi Soundararajan has shared the stage with Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is the founder of Khalistani terrorist organisation Sikhs For Justice or SFJ.
He is also very popular amongst Islamist organisations like IAMC.
Apart from these two, Barbara Lee was also present at the meeting. She is a self-styled Modi-hater. She had written a letter against PM Modi’s arrival in the US nine years after a resolution to deny him a visa. In June 2023, she was one of the Members of US Congress who wrote to President Biden asking him him either not to host the State Dinner to Prime Minister Narendra Modi or to raise some specific issues.
