Bharat Krishnan, a junior in the School of Public Affairs, is not only a full-time college student but is also a political leader in the making.
Krishnan is working to redefine the Democratic Party with the formation of his new political action committee, Hindu Democrats.
Hindu Democrats is a political action committee focused on raising money for faith-based Democratic candidates, according to Krishnan. The PAC endorses certain candidates, then provides them with strategic advice about how to reach out to the Hindu community. Hindu Democrats will also send out press releases and make advertisements for endorsed candidates. They mainly focus on the issues of immigration reform and the war on terror. Though the PAC is Hindu-based, Krishnan said that Hindu Democrats would endorse “anyone who shares our values.”
Krishnan, who grew up in Northern Virginia, first got the idea for a political action committee in his senior year of high school.
“I had always been interested in politics and the Democratic party, and it had always been my dream to start a political action committee,” Krishnan said. “I started Hindu Democrats so that Democrats of any faith would not be afraid to run on faith and bring values into public discussion.”
Krishnan was also influenced by the emergence of faith-based Democratic organizations in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
“Faith-based Democratic groups had varying degrees of success in these elections, and I think they were essential to rebuilding the Democratic party,” Krishnan said. “I saw that there weren’t any Hindu groups on either the Republican or the Democratic sides of these important elections, so I thought there might be a window of opportunity to capitalize on this idea.”
Hindu Democrats became an official political action committee on Aug. 2, when it was registered with the Federal Election Commission. Krishnan had spent over six months building up Hindu Democrats with the help of his friend and co-founder, Rajiv Srinivasan, a 2008 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, currently deployed in Afghanistan. Krishnan has taken over all day-to-day operations of Hindu Democrats in Srinivasan’s absence, though he keeps his co-founder constantly updated about Hindu Democrats.
Krishnan has been hard at work spreading public awareness for Hindu Democrats. He has over 30 people on the Hindu Democrats mailing list and a list of 100 people that he personally updates about the PAC. At AU, Hindu Democrats has the support of about a dozen students as well as a few professors. Krishnan hopes to gain some support from College Democrats, but he has no plans to create a wider presence on campus.
Krishnan has faced a few hurdles in getting Hindu Democrats up and running. He calls America’s current economic climate “one of the worst environments for fundraising in the history of any political party.” Krishnan has also had problems getting support from the Indian-American community in Washington D.C. He attributes this to the bad connotations that politics and religion have in India.
“There’s also not a whole lot of
impetus from the Hindu community and the Indian-American community to get politically active and to link political activism to religion,” Krishnan said. “India’s biggest political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is to India what the radical Christian right is to America. A lot of Indian-American activists in America came to this country to get away from that binding of religion and politics.”
Krishnan is also trying to strengthen Hindu Democrats through political endorsements. Virginia representative Chuck Caputo recently came out in support of Hindu Democrats and said in a press release, “I’m proud of what they are doing, and I’m grateful to have their support.” Krishnan said that Hindu Democrats could support a congressional candidate from Missouri and a candidate for attorney general of California.
Hindu Democrats will be endorsing a Democratic candidate in the special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by the late-Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Krishnan said. It is too early for him to officially name the candidate but that he said particular candidate embodies the ideals of Hindu Democrats and lives up to the legacy of Kennedy, he said.
Hindu Democrats will have its first public event in January; a fundraiser for Congressman Glen Nye of Virginia’s Second Congressional District. Krishnan hopes to raise at least $5,000 for Nye’s reelection campaign.
Hindu Democrats will focus on bringing religion back into discussion in the Democratic Party in the upcoming elections, Krishnan said.
“For a long time, Democrats were afraid to run on faith or even talk about religion,” he said. “They conceded the religious debate to Republicans. I think that was a huge mistake. Americans are predominantly values-voters. You’ve got to be able to frame debate in terms of values.”
You can reach this staff writer at jryan@theeagleonline.com.
