About
My cover article in India’s Caravan magazine was the first systematic investigation of the global political networks of India’s Hindu nationalist movement, the RSS. That investigation — tracing organizational connections from New Delhi through Houston to Washington — became the template for everything I’ve reported since: following how ethnonationalist movements operate across borders through money, people, and institutions.
That work made me a target. India banned me from the country. Delhi Police publicly accused me of fomenting protests — a fabricated charge. The Indian government blocks my social media accounts within India. In December 2023, The Washington Post revealed that India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, had created a covert disinformation operation to target critics of Prime Minister Modi — I was among the first targets, subjected to a nearly 100-page dossier containing details that could only have been gathered through intelligence surveillance. I’ve sat with the FBI to discuss threats to my safety. Hindutva networks have run sustained, coordinated campaigns to discredit my reporting and restrict my access to outlets and sources. I’m still here. The reporting continues.
Over the past several years, I’ve expanded from investigating Hindutva’s American infrastructure into broader patterns of ethnonationalist power. I’ve reported on the operational partnership between India’s Hindu nationalist movement and the Zionist project for Mondoweiss and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. I’ve traced settler-colonial displacement in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, connecting it to the same structural playbook operating in the occupied West Bank. I’ve documented transnational repression, religious persecution, and the money trails that link diaspora organizations to state-sponsored violence.
My investigations have been used as source material by Harper’s Magazine, The Intercept, and Slate. Harper’s cited my original reporting on Hindutva donor networks in their October 2024 investigation of the Hindutva lobby in American politics. The Intercept and Slate both built on my investigations of congressional candidates’ ties to RSS-linked organizations. My work has also been cited or featured in The Washington Post, Jewish Currents, Newsweek, Christianity Today, Deutsche Welle, MSNBC, and an Arte documentary on India’s Hindu nationalist movement.
I’ve authored four books, including Saffron America: India’s Hindu Nationalist Project at Work in the United States and Captivating the Simple-Hearted, which has been translated into seven languages. I’ve lectured at Columbia University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and other institutions, and I’m a regular speaker at briefings on Capitol Hill and forums at the United Nations.
Born in California, I’ve lived at length in Europe and Asia.
For assignments, pitches, and speaking inquiries: pieterjfriedrich [at] gmail [dot] com