We saw how in the previous part of this series how Angana Chatterji’s anthropological heart bleeds for every atrocity, brutality, and massacre committed in the name of liberating people and fighting against neo-imperialism. The fact that she finds America, not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan a very conducive place to pontificate on the liberating virtues of Islamic terrorism is telling: use their money, their infrastructure, their media, and their government to help those who’ve sworn to destroy the same country. But there is another side to this. Which brings us to the mountain of hate-filled literature she has written on Kashmir. Much of her fame as a crusader-activist rests on the foundation of mountain. Of course, Angana decks up this atrocity literature in the garb of academic-sounding and heartwarming phrases such as “gender and identity issues,” “self-determination,” “liberation,” “human-rights causes,” and “against militarized governance” in Kashmir. What this means is simple: Angana Chatterji was the soft-porn advance reconnoissance party who would make the passage smooth for the jihad-crazed goons of international terrorists like Hafeez Sayed. The only problem is that this Kashmir she spoke has now been reintegrated with Indian territory. But back when she wrote, the logical conclusion of her own line of reasoning implied that she was fighting against the Indian state.
Like most committed ideological terrorists, Angana Chatterji, on a fine day, went to Kashmir uninvited wantonly declared herself as the saviour of the Kashmiri people who she thought were suffering everyday trauma inflicted by the Indian military. To be more precise, Angana’s deadly Kashmir circus began in great earnest and with deeper involvement around 2006. Which is not coincidental at all. The BJP-led NDA government had lost power just two years ago and it had taken two full years for the new Italian Congress Government to reactivate the old templates and place their loyalists in key positions.
Angana’s circus had multiple tricks—now widely familiar—woven exactly around one theme: to “liberate” Kashmir from India. Common tricks include blaming the Indian army for committing atrocities against Kashmiri Muslims, blaming the Indian government for allowing this to happen, and to generally repeat Pakistan’s slogan a billion times.
So why did an Anthropology Professor based in the United States feel the need to involve herself in an issue that’s so politically sensitive? The answer takes us back to a few years prior to 2006.
In 2003, a certain Pakistani eminence named Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai from the Kashmiri American Council spoke at a discussion forum on the Kashmir situation at San Francisco. Angana Chatterji was one of the prominent exhibits adorning the forum. Guess what Fai spoke about at that forum as well as on hundreds of other occasions: India should give up Kashmir to Pakistan. On July 19, 2011, the FBI arrested Fai on charges of being an ISI agent. More specifically:
Fai’s stay in the US was to carry out a “decades-long scheme with one purpose — to hide Pakistan’s involvement behind his efforts to influence the U.S. government’s position on Kashmir.”
His handlers in the ISI “funneled millions through the Kashmir Center to contribute to U.S. elected officials, fund high-profile conferences and pay for other efforts that promoted Pakistan’s “cause” in Kashmir to decision-makers in Washington.”
The final goal was to “to persuade the United States government that it was in its interest to push India to allow a vote in Kashmir to decide its future.”
One of the more dangerous revelations from the FBI’s arrest of Ghulam Nabi Fai is the fact that Angana Chatterji was codenamed “Mary,” showing the extent to which the enemy had cultivated Indians willingly volunteering to backstab India.
But let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth: the FBI charge sheet mentions a certain Mary who
would be testifying in front of a United Nations working group. Mary is a human rights activist; Major General Mumtaz Ahmad Bajwa had requested that Fai introduce him to Mary in July 2009. [Emphasis added]
Major General Bajwa was the head of ISI’s Security Directorate, which was responsible for nurturing and helping Kashmiri terrorist groups.
With such strong evidence that nail Angana Chatterji’s credentials as a willing stooge of the ISI, it’s unsurprising that she consistently hushed up and whitewashed Pakistan-backed terrorism in Kashmir and has repeatedly taken an anti-India line, a chilling echo of the ISI’s words, and guns and bombs set off by the terrorists it backs. What’s worse is the fact that her claims about India’s alleged human rights abuse in Kashmir are based on total fabrications.
That Angana Chatterji got away with such dangerous subversive activities also points a finger at the climate in the United States. The extent of Ghulam Nabi Fai’s lobbying success is evident when Republican Congressman Joseph “Joe” Pitts from Pennsylvania “introduced a resolution in 2004 calling for peace between Pakistan and India in the disputed territory of Kashmir – just days after he had received a $2,000 campaign contribution from Zaheer Ahmad, one of two men charged with distributing Pakistani money to U.S. politicians.” In this backdrop, the full significance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s methodical dismantling of Pakistan followed by the abrogation of Article 370 becomes evident. In one stroke, he has ensured that Pakistan’s sleazy network that reached even US Congressmen has been shattered for good.
A panicked Pitts donated that money to charity since Fai was discovered to be an ISI agent but the question remains: didn’t he do due diligence before accepting said $2,000? If the answer is yes, and he still took the money, serious doubts arise regarding Pitts: is he implementing Pakistan’s sinister agenda of breaking India? If the answer is no, it says a lot about Pitts’ capabilities as a man who represents the people of Pennsylvania’s 16th congressional district. The same applies in equal measure to Indiana Congressman Dan Burton, who took $10,000 from Fai. Dan Burton already carries the tag of being “too pro-Pakistan” on the exact same Kashmir issue.
If Ghulam Nabi Fai was able to buy such powerful support using terror money, Angana Chatterji was able to drum up political support in her own way. She had a pretty strong supporter in Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona 2nd District who shot off a peeved press release in support of Angana with such phraseology as
on November 1st, 2010, Professor Richard Shapiro, Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, was denied entry indefinitely by the Immigration Authorities in New Delhi. Professor Shapiro’s wife, Angana Chatterji, who is the Co-convener of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK) and also Professor of Anthropology at CIIS, has reportedly experienced repeated harassment in India for her work on human rights.”
It would also be nice if an interested researcher or journalist investigated the role of an American citizen, Richard Shapiro visiting India on a tourist visa but was actually indulging in political activism against India. There is a plot for a political thriller web series right there.
But the story of Trent Franks doesn’t end with Fai or Angana. He’s associated with the Dalit Freedom Network, a group that claims to work for the Dalits of India but is engaged in rather shady activities. It’s actually a group run by White people and everything about it starting from its address is fake. The groundbreaking work, Breaking India by Aravindan Neelakandan and Rajiv Malhotra provides a full dossier on this dangerous organization. A few years ago, when a subpoena was served on them and the person serving the subpoena was sent to the address of Dalit Freedom Network, he found that it was actually a Church!
In May 2007, Trent Franks introduced a resolution on untouchability as an unacceptable practice, a move aimed at furthering the cause of the Dalits. Except that this selfsame resolution was pasted verbatim on a website [now defunct] that talks about the prowess of Pakistan’s defence establishment! The reach of Congressman Trent Franks is as truly amazing as it is mysterious.
The picture that emerges of Trent Franks is highly disturbing: a Republican Congressman who is associated with a shady “human-rights” outfit, who supports a Communist professor, Angana Chatterji (and her life-partner), who is herself the stooge of ISI, which in turn has nurtured Al Qaeda, the group responsible for 9/11. Even more disturbing is the fact that Trent Franks sits on the Committee on Armed Services, and Committee on the Judiciary in the House of Representatives. It’s not too farfetched to conclude that the American people who reposed trust in Trent Franks were unaware that the Jihad-mongers in ISI were skillfully manipulating Trent Franks.
Which brings us back to Angana Chatterji who along with Shapiro, were terminated from employment at CIIS. It’s hard to know the real reason but it’s likely that she seriously alarmed the US administration with her sordid record of support for subversive activism. Consider the timeline: the FBI filed its affidavit against Fai on July 18, 2011. Angana Chatterji was suspended from CIIS on July 19, 2011. News reports of her suspension indicate a “gag order” that restrained CIIS from giving out any details, and restrained Angana from talking about it. And the news report of Oct 25 2011 states that the CIIS Academic VP recommended her termination.
Yet, it is a testimony to the durability of her Jihadi network that she remained largely unpunished. And bounced back almost immediately. A year later, she co-founded another front organization titled International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir along with another of Fai’s Children, Gautam Navlakha who has consistently been on the Indian Government’s radar for subversive activities in Kashmir.
You cannot teach new tricks to an old pony especially when the old pony has been trained by Pakistan. And so, in last week’s Kangaroo court called US House Foreign Affairs Committee on South Asia Human Rights, Angana Chatterji resurfaced with the same anti-India mumbo jumbo, a sample of which is given below:
The 2014 and 2019 elections have led to the repositioning of India as a majoritarian state. This new era combines nationalism, authoritarianism, majoritarianism, minoritization and populism.Persistently gender/hetero-normative and deeply xenophobic, these inequitable relations between majority and minority/Othered can no longer be viewed as an aberration or a fringe phenomenon.
But for Narendra Modi’s consecutive electoral victory in 2019, the locust-swarm of a million Angana Chatterjis would’ve been back in business just like in the 2004 electoral defeat of the BJP.
Concluded
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