Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), has criticised Republican leader Brandon Gill for his remarks on a Gujarati community gathering in Dallas, Texas, accusing him of spreading anti-Indian and anti-Hindu rhetoric.
Shukla responded to Gill’s post on X, in which he described a volleyball tournament attended by members of the Leuva Patidar Samaj as an example of “importing foreign class allegiances.” She called his remarks misleading and inflammatory.
“Respectfully @RepBrandonGill, the misuse of the word ‘caste’ and now your tweet are fomenting the type of anti-Indian and anti-Hindu hate that days ago led to real violence,” Shukla wrote.
She defended the event as a cultural reunion rather than a caste-based gathering, explaining that the Patel community, traditionally farmers, are now small business owners contributing to the US economy. “This Patel community is literally just meeting up with extended family and friends. Would you have said the same thing if Scot-Irish farming families from West Virginia or Menonite families from Pennsylvania were meeting up in Dallas?” she asked.
Gill had earlier replied to a post by Dylan Patel, who described the event as a “caste volleyball tournament” with 8,000 attendees, all from a part of Gujarat and sharing a similar lifestyle in the US. “Everyone here owns a motel or gas station in rural America,” Patel wrote.
Gill responded: “America is the ‘land of opportunity’ precisely because we DON’T have a caste system. We cannot sustain America’s prosperity and liberty by importing foreign class allegiances. Immigration without assimilation is national and cultural suicide.”
Shukla urged elected leaders to be more responsible in their rhetoric. “We need our elected leaders to do much better,” she said.
