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In parts of Shasta, Modoc, Siskiyou, Tehama, Butte, and Glenn counties, it is not a given that you are in California. At the very least, many residents feel that there are de facto two Californias. Theirs is the resource-rich hinterland where an undomesticated sense of freedom is still possible, while the other California lies in the coastal cities, where power has been consolidated. It is the residents of the latter who benefit from statewide policies, which only serve their needs, their value system, their version of “inclusivity,” and their consumption habits, all too often at the direct expense of the other California, out of mind and out of sight. Aside from the Rancherias and Tribal Nations that actually do exist partly beyond California’s authority, somewhat hazily between federal control and actual sovereignty, there are citizen militias, intentional communities, preppers, and bands of feral wanderers, hoping to live as if the embalming effects of state bureaucracy have not yet reached them.
Though SB 509 did not name specific countries, debate around the bill has inflamed political divisions among South Asian groups in California. Three Sikh organizations, alongside progressive Indian and Kashmiri advocacy groups, stressed that the bill would protect vulnerable immigrant and refugee communities in the state. While one Sikh organization had opposed the bill, the most vocal criticism came from two influential Hindu advocacy organizations: Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA). In their joint campaign, they argued that Hindus’ political speech would be criminalized should it align with the Indian government, including criticisms of the Khalistan movement that some Sikhs advocate for.
In the langars and prayer halls of certain gurdwaras across the Golden State, it is difficult to distinguish between men and shadows. For example, in the process of reporting this piece, a source told me that someone I happened to have a meeting with in the coming weeks was possibly an informant for the Indian government. Multiple interviewed subjects felt certain that their temples were being infiltrated by bad actors. “Anyone can grow a beard and pretend to be a Sikh,” one doctor remarked wryly over a cup of chai near the Oregon border. He claimed that other members of his small congregation, who work menial jobs at gas stations, pull into the temple parking lot with flashy sports cars clearly above their pay grades. “Where could they be getting the money for that?” he asked with a knowing look.
When California became a state in 1850, Lindsay explained, militias played a key role in American settlement, particularly at a time when the new state’s funds were scant. “There was no money to actually have a regularly organized California militia,” Lindsay said, mentioning that the California National Guard didn’t form until 1903. Instead, the Golden State legalized the activities of volunteer soldiers — with a caveat. “But, big capital B-U-T, only if authorized by the governor,” Lindsay emphasized. As officially state-authorized groups, the volunteer militias of California’s past had a more formalized relationship with the government than the Cottonwood Militia has today. Part of that formalized relationship, as Lindsay has examined closely in his scholarship, was the militia’s role in perpetrating the genocide of California Indians. This kind of violence has a long legacy. As early as 1637, the New World’s first settler militias attacked Native communities shortly after crossing the Atlantic.
On its surface, HAF looks like a typical advocacy group. Created in 2003, ir purports to provide school boards, law enforcement, college campuses, and journalists with “a better understanding and inclusion of Hindu Americans.” On an ideological level, many have said HAF is to India what the Anti-Defamation League is to Israel. The foundation—increasingly influential as the South Asian population increases in the US—operates aggressively to help shape a particular consensus on the most divisive political issues in the diaspora. HAF has publicly condemned caste abolitionists in California, Sikhs rallying for self-determination, and reporters who frame India’s military and human rights abuses in Kashmir as an occupation.
From what can be seen in the photos of the suspects, Zendejas–gaunt, bearded, physically restrained on a hospital bed, and dampened with some kind of clear liquid–bore no visible signs of injury. McLaughlin, on the other hand, arrived at the hospital peppered with inflamed puncture wounds, each the shape of a dog’s incisor. Scabs crusted around the rim of his nostrils, while splotches of bright red blood red, fresh and not yet oxidized, speckled his blanket and pillow. In the photo, McLaughlin looks away from the policeman’s lens. Peering out of the frame now, more than two years later, he still wears the unmistakable look of anguish on his face.
Bethel’s hands-on approach to steering politics is one of the features that aligns the Church with a growing and influential revivalist movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. Churches identified by religious scholars as part of the NAR movement, share a common goal of uniting the nation under a religiously-motivated doctrine known as the Seven Mountains Mandate. Each “mountain” represents a pillar of society that observant Christians should take an active role in shaping, including the areas of government; religion; media; business; education; family; arts and entertainment. While it qualifies as a church under tax law, Bethel is more than a religious institution. From Bethel’s educational institutes and media channels to its outsized role in city politics, the Church’s sprawling enterprise has already begun to create a blueprint for what a Seven Mountains future might look like.
A certain telling of the Pandit story at the onset of India’s counterinsurgency in the 1990s has captured the imagination of Indians in the subcontinent and beyond–one in which Hindus were simply the victims of genocidal Muslims. But this version is alienated from the political context of the popular uprising, and vests significant responsibility in Muslim civilians rather than in India’s complete destabilization of Kashmiri society. What can be observed, often by Pandits themselves, is that their community’s tragic dissolution has been wielded by Indian politicians and media to garner public support for the military occupation of Kashmir. Whatever should come after–resettlement or reconciliation–is beside the point. For the purposes of India’s military occupation of Kashmir, eternally dispossessed Pandits are far more valuable than ones who could be meaningfully reintegrated into their homeland.
We would be remiss to think of any graveyard as a dead space. Perhaps the greatest threat to the Zionist state is sewn into the earth beneath the treads of a tank—a network of social, political, and historical relations that challenge an exclusively Jewish civilizational claim over the whole of Palestine in the form of the burial ground. The subterranean targets of the IDF are both Hamas guerrillas and the deceased that Israel alleges are being used as human shields, even in death. The violation of the Bani Suheila cemetery and others like it is not merely collateral damage wrought by this latest war: the destruction of Palestinian graves was part and parcel to the violent founding of the Israeli state, and its continued encroachment onto the lands where Palestinians live and die.
“At most of the events was a company called My Home in Israel, brought along to showcase available properties in both Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies: multiple units in a building near Givat HaMatos in East Jerusalem, townhouses in near Ari’el University in the heart of the West Bank, and a five-bedroom villa with a pool in the luxury enclave of Efrat south of Bethlehem. The latter apparently ‘transcends mere housing; it embodies architectural brilliance. Conceived by the esteemed architects at Shahar Ben Hamo, this project graces the slopes of Fig Hill, promising a setting of unrivaled serenity.’”
“The physical infrastructure of Israel’s occupation offers numerous visual symbols to represent life—and death—in the Palestinian territories: the wall surrounding Gaza, military checkpoints, Palestinian identification cards, the black tanks that collect rainwater atop Palestinian homes, and as of recently, ashen bodies excavated from rubble. But the cage that encircles Palestine goes beyond the visible. It also exists as a matrix of policies designed to cripple the Palestinian economy.”
“Towers of Silence, called dakhma in Farsi, are the architectural structures where Zoroastrians traditionally perform their final rites and where corpses are left to decompose under the sun. Historically, dakhmas were erected in places with sizable Zoroastrian communities — Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. As dictated by the Vendidad, a central text of Zoroastrianism, burying or cremating a body defiles the earth with dead matter. Towers of Silence, however, align with a core principle of Zoroastrianism: leave no trace on the Earth.”
Even After Death
“The detention of Palestinians after their deaths is a decades-old practice. The contours of the law that defines postmortem detention have changed dramatically since 1964, when the first Palestinian was buried in an unnamed grave in Israel’s infamous “Cemetery of Numbers. While Israeli courts have enshrined this practice in the language of maintaining security, bereaved families feel that they are being collectively punished. Human rights organizations cite postmortem detention as just one of many ways that Israel’s military apparatus extends its complete control over Palestinians, from the time they’re born to beyond their deaths.”
“‘In a way, it is God telling us that no matter how difficult it is, the miracle is still happening,’ he said. For those whose movement is restricted by the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, receiving the flame bears profound meaning, as it literally transcends the checkpoints, soldiers, and separation walls that comprise Israel’s military apparatus. In Bethlehem, many Christians welcome the Holy Fire at the Church of the Nativity, built around the grotto where Christ was born.”