Among Donald Trump’s surprising nominees for his next administration is Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for director of national intelligence.
Her lifelong links with a politically active Hindu “cult” raise new questions about a nominee already under fire from both Republicans (John Bolton called her nomination one of the nation’s worst) and Democrats (leaders have called her a “Russian asset” and “national security threat”).
“Tulsi Gabbard’s Ties to ‘Cult’ Could Cost Her Intel Job,” reported The Daily Beast in a Nov. 14 story about her lifelong connections to the Science of Identity Foundation, a politically active Hawaii-based offshoot of Krishna Consciousness, an Eastern spiritual movement founded in America and embraced by Beatle George Harrison.
Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders waves to supporters after being introduced by Tulsi Gabbard, thejn a Democrat, March 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
Gabbard was a Democrat during her first two decades in politics:
- In 2002, she was elected to Hawaii’s state house at age 21, becoming the youngest woman elected to a U.S. state legislature.
- In 2013, she became the first practicing Hindu elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
- In 2016, she endorsed Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.
- In 2020, she ran for president.
Then her evolution: Leaving the Democratic Party in 2022 to become an independent, announcing she was endorsing Trump, becoming a Republican, and campaigning with Trump this year.
Her ties to Science of Identity Foundation previously were reported in 2017 and 2019 and updated by Honolulu’s Civil Beat this year.
She attended an SIF boarding school and met both of her husbands through SIF. But her nomination to a sensitive intelligence position is raising new concerns about her connections to (and financial support from) Hindu nationalist groups in India that support Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s persecution of Muslims and Christians there.
Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda (Chris Butler)
Gabbard’s parents were early leaders of SIF, a group founded in 1977 by former sixties anti-war activist Chris Butler, a guru now known as Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa. He teaches yoga, sings “blissful and comforting mantras” on his own YouTube channel, and claims to have tens of thousands of followers, many of whom describe him as “God’s voice on earth.”
SIF founder Chris Butler was an early disciple of AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who left India for New York in 1965 and founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness the next year to promote Hindu practices in the West.
ISKCON devotees were sent out to cities to chant “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna” and raise funds for a group accused of cultic practices, including overworking members, requiring their absolute obedience and preventing them from having any contact with family or the outside world.
Disputes led Prabhupada to denounce Butler, who split from ISKCON to create SIF, where he was free to break with tradition and teach that devotees didn’t have to shave their heads.
Butler promoted a politicized form of Hinduism, founding a political party, Independents for Godly Government, that backed conservative candidates for offices in Hawaii.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard welcomes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to California in 2015. (Photo courtesy of Gabbard’s House website)
In 1991, Gabbard’s parents created their own SIF-aligned activist group called Stop Promoting Homosexuality. In 1995, they founded the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, which promoted an amendment to prevent same-sex marriage that was passed in Hawaii in 1998.
Gabbard appeared in a campaign ad for the anti-gay marriage amendment as a teen, but during her 2012 campaign she claimed her 17-year military career, which included deployments to Iraq, Kuwait and Africa, led to a “metamorphosis” in her views.
India’s ambassador to the United States spoke at Gabbard’s second wedding in 2015, and she went to India at the personal invitation of Prime Minister Modi. But when questioned about her ties to SIF or her financial support from Hindu nationalist groups, Gabbard has claimed she’s the victim of religious prejudice and “Hinduphobia.”
On Nov. 11, Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Christian Family Research Council, posted on X: “Urgent prayer is needed. As President-elect Donald Trump selects his cabinet and administration, pray that he will surround himself with godly counsel.”
It’s not clear if Perkins sees Trump’s nominees — including two Hindus (Gabbard and Vivek Ramaswamy) and three men credibly accused of sexual abuse (Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy Jr.) — as an answer to his prayer.
Trump has said he will seek recess appointments that allow him to install his choices without Senate oversight or any potentially embarrassing public hearings.
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