Chris Butler, using the pen name Bo Zhongyan (
柏忠言
), coauthored anti-Western books in China with his wife Wai Lana (Zhang Huilan,
张蕙兰
). They described Westerners as
"no more than dogs"
and dedicated their 1986 book to
"the great and magnificent Chinese nation"
—
这个伟大，壮丽国家的全体中国人民.
Source
Note: Thousands of decrypted documents and emails from Butler's secret political operation have been independently examined by the Washington Post. The content on this website is attributed solely to the site's author.
Tulsi Gabbard's embrace of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not personal conviction. Her guru, "Jagad Guru" Chris Butler, directed a behind-the-scenes campaign to defend Modi, align Tulsi with the BJP, and brand her critics "anti-Hindu" bigots.
In September 2014, Tulsi Gabbard met India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi, and gave him her personal copy of the Bhagavad Gita, the one she had carried on her deployments and taken her oath of office on. She would become one of Modi's most prominent defenders in the United States. 1
What the public did not see is that the forensic archive of her guru's political project office shows Chris Butler personally directing how "Tulsi" would handle Modi, including how to defend him in the press and how to attack anyone who raised concerns.
Modi was previously banned from the U.S. for human rights violations
Modi was not an uncontroversial figure to embrace. In 2005, the U.S. State Department denied him a visa under a provision barring foreign officials responsible for "particularly severe violations of religious freedom," citing his role as chief minister during the 2002 Gujarat riots, in which more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. The ban stood until he became prime minister in 2014. 2
Modi has always denied wrongdoing, and in 2012 a Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team found no prosecutable evidence against him, a finding the Indian Supreme Court upheld in 2022. 3
"Start putting our own information out there"
In May 2014, as Modi rose to power and Hawaii's Civil Beat covered Tulsi's outreach to him, Butler dictated a plan to seed pro-Modi material into news coverage, locally and nationally.
"When you have an article about Modi… then people comment. You can put in a comment… So that people are educated, in other words. Start putting our own information out there… this should be done not just for Civil Beat, but it should be done for the national media so that the national media starts getting educated."
Chris Butler, SIF political transcript, "Educating people about Modi," May 19, 2014 4
He wanted Hindu-nationalist allies enlisted to run the same play, faulting the BJP's American supporters for not doing more of it.
"Maybe Sunil needs to contact Suhag and these guys and tell them that they should start educating the national media… We're surprised that the BJP and those guys… haven't made more of an effort to educate the reporters."
Chris Butler, SIF political transcript, May 19, 2014 4
Critics recast as "anti-Hindu" bigots
When a University of Hawaii professor criticized Tulsi's outreach to Modi, calling Modi an anti-Muslim figure, Butler's instinct was not to debate the riots. It was to flip the charge and brand the critic a religious bigot, and to do it in scripted comments posted under other names.
"It's obvious that Mr. Freeman's attitude toward prime-minister-elect Modi is rooted in anti-Hindu, anti-Krishna bigotry. What galls me is that I, as a taxpayer, am paying his salary. My question is, why in the world would University of Hawaii Hilo have such a religious bigot on its staff?"
Comment scripted in the SIF project office, "Civil Beat Comments Modi article," May 18, 2014 5
This is the same move at the heart of the network's "Hinduphobia" defense: reframe any scrutiny, of Modi or of Butler himself, as an attack on all Hindus.
"Pull pictures of Obama with Modi… holding hands"
By 2015, when critics argued that Modi's record made Tulsi's closeness to him disqualifying, Butler directed a simple deflection.
"On these articles that are saying Modi is evil and therefore Tulsi is evil, go on the web and pull pictures of Obama with Modi walking and holding hands, hugging."
Chris Butler, SIF political transcript, "Comment re Obama and Modi," February 23, 2015 6
The coordination: Sunil Khemaney, the Hindu American Foundation, and "fabricated" profiles
Butler's directives did not stay inside the project office. The archive's coordination records show his operative Sunil Khemaney executing them with national Hindu organizations, above all the Hindu American Foundation. In May 2014, Sunil Khemaney alerted the Hindu American Foundation's co-founder Mihir Meghani to the "Modi backlash" on Civil Beat, and Meghani offered to help.
"Do you want me to post anything here?… I could post some facts here or opinions."
Mihir Meghani, Hindu American Foundation co-founder, to Sunil Khemaney, May 19, 2014 7
Why did Butler's operation need outside Hindus to post comments? Because, as his own staff admitted, the network's online commenters were not real people. In an October 2014 exchange about seeding comments, the project office's Allison Hoen acknowledged the problem, and Sunil Khemaney's answer was to bring in genuine Hindu Americans from the Hindu American Foundation.
"All our profiles are pretty much fabricated, so it's a bit dicey when we want to post 10+ comments." Sunil Khemaney's reply: "Jay Kansara of HAF would be good… There are a bunch of HAF connected people that we could ask."
Allison Hoen and Sunil Khemaney, SIF project office, October 3, 2014 7
The same network was activated for years, including a January 2017 coalition letter Sunil Khemaney sent to The Atlantic's editor-in-chief carrying the signatures of 33 Hindu organizations, and blog posts and letters from the Hindu American Foundation defending Tulsi. 7
Tulsi's documented ties to that world were real: in 2014 she appeared at events celebrating Modi's election wearing scarves bearing the BJP logo, and her campaigns took thousands of dollars from leaders of the international wing of the RSS and the Overseas Friends of the BJP. 1
Tulsi Gabbard has publicly said she is "not a Hindu nationalist" and "not partial to BJP," and in 2019 she declined an invitation to the "Howdy Modi" rally. Yet leaders of the Hindu American Foundation, an organization widely reported to be aligned with Hindu-nationalist networks, were given editing access to her 2020 presidential campaign website and helped rewrite its policy sections.
9
The hypocrisy at the center
Here is what makes the Modi campaign so revealing. Butler built a machine that weaponizes "anti-Hindu bigotry" to defend a foreign Hindu-nationalist government and to silence critics at home. Yet for four decades Butler himself wrote propaganda for the People's Republic of China under the pseudonym Bo Zhongyan, in which he called Westerners "no more than dogs." 8
A private citizen with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party spent years scripting a future U.S. Director of National Intelligence into a public champion of India's most controversial leader, and teaching her to answer every question with the cry of "bigotry." That is not religious devotion. It is influence.
The "Hindu" cause Butler claims to defend is a weapon. He aims it at journalists, professors, and whistleblowers, while serving interests that have nothing to do with the faith he hides behind.
