The Captive Candidate — PART I: THE INHERITANCE
From 1986, a group of families in Houston built the Hindu Heritage Youth Camp under the banner of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America — part of the American network of India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the paramilitary behind Hindutva (or Hindu supremacy) and the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The founding families: Dr. Haku Israni. Ramesh and Kiran Bhutada. Jugal Malani. Vijay and Sushma Pallod.
They didn’t just share an ideology — most of them shared actual family.
Ramesh and Vijay Pallod are cousin-in-laws; Ramesh and Jugal Malani are brothers-in-law — Kiran Bhutada is Jugal’s sister. She was already Kiran Bhutada when she helped plan the first overnight camp in 1986. The family bonds preceded the movement, and the movement was built on top of them.
Sushma Pallod ran the camp kitchen. A commemorative booklet published for the camp’s 25th anniversary quotes her: “This has become our family project.” In fact, it soon became everyone’s multigenerational family project.
The children of these families became the camp’s second generation of directors and counselors — Rakhi Israni, Rishi Bhutada, Maneesh Mehra, Kavita and Bharat Pallod, Nikita and Sapna Malani. In her own essay for the 2009 booklet, Rakhi wrote that she had been “a camper, counselor, and camp director for more than 18 years,” and that she “wanted everyone to know how lucky he or she was to be a part of the greatest culture in the world.”
Jugal wrote in the booket: “I personally have known many of these kids as they have grown up from elementary school to become doctors, lawyers, and business leaders.” Or politicians — like Rakhi, who is now running for Congress in California’s 14th district, which includes Fremont, where she has lived for over two decades.
On March 7, 2026, her campaign held a fundraiser in Houston. The sponsors: Haku Israni. Vijay Pallod. Rishi Bhutada. Ashish Agrawal. Darshan Wadhwa. Hindu American PAC. Jugal Malani — who chaired the organizing committee for Howdy Modi, the 2019 Houston rally at which Modi and President Trump appeared before 50,000 people — also donated. Hakumat and Radha Israni had served as Honorary Committee Co-Chairs of that same rally.
The families who built the network from 1986 sponsored the fundraiser in 2026. Forty years on, the same names, same relationships, different stakes.
This story was originally published in countercurrents.org. Read the full story here.
