Tulsi Gabbard Still Dogged By Krishna Cult Rumors

HONOLULU — Eleven years ago, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, now a rising star in a Democratic Party, was a little-known state deputy from a West Oahu district. It was her then-Republican father, Mike, who was in a domestic limelight.

The elder Gabbard, famous for his destructive anti-gay electioneer in a 1990s, was severe Democratic obligatory Ed Case in a competition to paint Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District. So, for a form piece, a author during Honolulu Magazine emailed him and asked about his family’s ties to a guru named Chris Butler, aka Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa

But Tulsi Gabbard jumped in. “I smell a skunk,” she emailed back

Much has altered with Tulsi Gabbard given then. She enlisted in a Hawaii Army National Guard and served dual tours in a Middle East before successfully using for a chair on a Honolulu City Council in 2010. Then, in 2012, she got what eluded her father — a chair representing Hawaii in Congress.

For years, rumors about their ties to guru Chris Butler have hounded U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and her father, state Sen. Mike Gabbard.

But one thing has remained: The Gabbard family’s ties to Butler still chase her — in a hallways of a Hawaii State Capitol, on blogs of domestic observers, on pages of online contention forums, and in reason sections of several news sites, including Civil Beat’s.

Now, a puzzling universe that’s been swirling around Gabbard all her life is entrance underneath closer inspection as a 33-year-old congresswoman’s status on a inhabitant theatre customarily rises, and her views on inhabitant and general issues — possibly she’s station adult for veterans or severe President Barack Obama over his position on a Islamic State — continue to pull a media spotlight.

During a past few weeks, conjecture about her place in that universe has intensified, interjection in no tiny partial to dual new developments in her life, one personal and one professional: her arriving matrimony to Abraham Williams and a appointment of Kainoa Ramananda Penaroza

Both organisation grew adult in a same offbeat eremite universe as Gabbard. Many of a people who still speak about and obsess over a Gabbard family’s ties to Butler try to also paint both Williams and Penaroza as devotees of a guru.

A Civil Beat examination of decades’ value of annals and Internet postings, as good as interviews with a Butler group’s insiders and observers alike, found that, as with Gabbard, there is no justification that possibly of a organisation adheres to Butler’s teachings.

Tulsi Gabbard is set to marry Abraham Williams, who grew adult in a family with clever ties to guru Chris Butler.

Gabbard declined to be interviewed for this story but, by her spokesman, released a created matter to Civil Beat. The statement, however, does not residence a theme of this essay — that was explained in fact to a orator — and instead customarily offers her thoughts on being a initial Hindu inaugurated to Congress.

Williams and Penaroza could not be reached for comment. Gabbard’s parents, Mike and Carol, and other staff members also could not be reached or did not respond to Civil Beat’s ask for comment.

Still, a Internet continues to yield a prepared forum for a turmoil over Gabbard to decay — we need demeanour no offer than a threadCult Education Institute’s forum

For this story, Civil Beat drew on information from a forum that could be verified, along with other publicly accessible papers and news articles, as good as interviews with people who have insinuate believe about a village of Butler devotees.

What emerged is a fascinating demeanour during a universe Gabbard and her tighten associates grew adult in. It’s another lens by that to perspective a fast-rising congresswoman.

“Science of Identity:”

The Cult Education Institute’s forum on Chris Butler began behind in 2004 and is still going strong. It has lasted prolonged adequate to strech scarcely 500 pages, containing thousands of extensive posts dictated to strew light on Butler and a middle workings of his group, called a Science of Identity Foundation

The organisation shaped in a early 1970s, and a leaders after sought to spin a classification into a domestic force in Hawaii by fielding a series of possibilities for pivotal domestic offices over a years. By and large, a possibilities pushed for a code of amicable remodel that seemed to impersonate Butler’s teachings, that stressed environmentalism, vegetarianism, and antithesis to homosexuality and “illicit” sex.

And they had some successes: former state Sen. Rick Reed; former Maui County Council Member Wayne Nishiki; Mike Gabbard, who came behind from his detriment to Case to win a state Senate seat; and Carol Gabbard, who was inaugurated to a Hawaii Board of Education.

It’s no consternation that longtime observers see Tulsi Gabbard’s solid stand from a Honolulu City Council to Congress as somehow connected to Butler.

Butler, a Kalani High School connoisseur and son of a distinguished Kailua doctor, Willis, was a footman of A.C. Bahkitevedanta Swami Prabhupad, who founded a International Society of Krishna Consciousness 1966. The organisation is improved famous in Hawaii as Hare Krishnas, and it was widespread via a nation in a 1960s and ’70s. Its members were rarely manifest here — with their shaved heads and orange robes, they were mostly seen in Waikiki, chanting and soliciting contributions.

Chris Butler, aka Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, shaped a Krishna village in Hawaii in a 1970s.

An inner energy onslaught eventually led Butler to mangle divided from ISKCON in a early ‘70s and form his possess Krishna village in Hawaii. The organisation has given quickly expanded, reaching a mainland and as distant as Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and a Philippines.

By many accounts, a village was done adult of a loose-knit collection of people who eschewed a street-begging and instead chanted in a remoteness of their homes or temporary rite centers. Over a years, they banded together to start a series of businesses, including Down to Earth grocery stores and a horde of other health-food associated businesses underneath a association called Healthy’s Inc. A apportionment of a deduction from these businesses customarily got diverted to support a movement.

Around 2012, after Tulsi Gabbard announced her candidacy for Congress, a concentration of contributors to a Cult Education forum incited from Butler himself to Gabbard and efforts to pin down her ties to a guru. The result: More than 100 pages of a thread now request a activities of Gabbard and her parents, as good as her 4 siblings and associates.

Many, if not most, of a posts enclose claims that are not corroborated adult by ancillary material, and they can be straightforwardly discharged as rumors and innuendo — even plainly false. The posts are all anonymous, created by people who go by names like “zombiefied,” “dharmabum” and “jaggedguru.” Even a forum’s unchanging contributors have concurred that a calm needs to be noticed skeptically.

But Civil Beat was means to determine a series of a ties that couple Butler to Gabbard’s family and associates:

• Kainoa Penaroza, who was allocated as Gabbard’s Washington, D.C.-based arch of staff final month notwithstanding his relative miss of domestic experiencethree-partinvestigativeseriesbought Healthy’s in 2007

• Abraham Williams, Gabbard’s 26-year-old fiancé, is a freelance cinematographer who also grew adult in a family with clever ties to Butler. His mother, Anya Anthony, is listed as a purebred representative of Wai Lana Productions LLC, a association named after Butler’s wife, Wai Lan, that runs www.wailana.comintroducing Anthony as her soon-to-be mother-in-law

• Sunil Khemaney, who accompanied Gabbard on her Dec tripnonprofit purebred in Arizona

• Mike Gabbard has prolonged confirmed that he’s a Catholic, not Hare Krishna. But, in Honolulu Magazine’s 2004 profile, he concurred his ties to Butler: “Although I’m not a member of a Science of Identity Foundation, I’m evermore grateful to Chris Butler … whose teachings of kismet yoga (selfless service) and bhakti yoga (devotion to God) have brought me behind to my Catholic roots and a elemental teachings of Christ.”

Plenty of justification suggests that there’s some-more to a story than that.

Mike Gabbard was in a assembly during a taping of Chris Butler’s TV show, “Jagad Guru Speaks,” that aired for several years in a 1980s and 1990s.

Multiple chronological papers uncover that, during several points in a story of a Science of Identity Foundation, both Mike and Carol Gabbard sat on a board. According to several reports, they were bestowed Sanskrit names, “Krishna Katha das” and “Devahuti dasi,” respectively.

The Gabbards were also in assemblage during during slightest one taping of Butler’s internal TV uncover called “Jagad Guru Speaks,” that aired for several years in a 1980s and ’90s. In aged footage of a show, they can be seen in a audience, listening and shouting as Butler lectured on spirituality.

The Gabbards also owned a vegetarian grill in Honolulu called a Natural Deli, housed inside a Down to Earth health food store on King Street. But they were forced to sell a grill to Down to Earth in 1992 after an anti-gay critique Mike Gabbard done on a internal radio uncover triggered romantic protests.

Tulsi Gabbard’s World:

Civil Beat found no justification that Tulsi Gabbard is — or ever was — a Butler devotee. And we could find no record of her ever vocalization publicly about it.

She has veered divided from her earlier, regressive positions on amicable issues and uttered support for same-sex matrimony — in sheer contrariety to her father, who still maintains his anti-gay stance, in line with Butler’s teachings.

In 2012, Gabbard told Civil Beat that a changes were partial of her “gradual metamorphosis

When it comes to eremite choice, Gabbard has plainly described herself as a Hindu given her 2012 campaign. At her swearing-in rite in Jan 2013, she took a promise of bureau on a Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, and became a initial Hindu in Congress.

“I chose to take a promise of bureau with my personal duplicate of a Bhagavad Gita since its teachings have desirous me

In a matter to Civil Beat sent Sunday, Gabbard touted a impression of Hawaii electorate for selecting “a Vaishnava Hindu” to paint them in Congress. “I make a many of each event we get to tell a universe that Hawaii is a place where people live a dream of Martin Luther King — where a chairman is judged not by a tone of their skin, ethnicity, or religion,” she wrote.

Gabbard added: “Many Hindus have not felt they would be truly supposed for who they are, that they would have to change their religion. … My instance and my difference are really liberating to them, as we share with them and their children: ‘Every American has a right to run for domestic bureau or offer a village in any ability he or she competence choose.’”

But her celebrated overpower on her family’s ties to Butler — generally after a many times it’s come adult in open discussions — has customarily done her detractors some-more suspicious.

Even if she were a Butler devotee, does it matter? As Honolulu Weekly, in a 1992 form of then-U.S. Senate claimant Rick Reed, put it: “Hey, possibilities with a growth eremite worried amicable bulletin are a dime a dozen these days, even if many of them are doing it in a name of Christ, not Krishna.”

By and large, this doubt is met with a common head-scratching. Beyond a deceptive thought of transparency, nothing of a people Civil Beat has interviewed, or even a Gabbard skeptics on a Cult Education forum, can indicate to any sinful tract being concocted by Butler or offer an clear reason as to since Gabbard’s voters should be dumbfounded by Butler’s intensity change on a congresswoman.

But that hasn’t stopped them from looking for justification of a tip agenda. And there’s been no necessity of element for them to inspect in new months, given that Gabbard’s form on a inhabitant theatre has been rising to a new turn — on a behind of her unconventional, and mostly controversial

To some, all this courtesy to Gabbard’s faith is troubling. In fact, they have been arguing that a whole thought of examining Butler’s change reeks of eremite bigotry.

Historically speaking, they competence have that evidence on their side. After all, a minority faiths of politicians — be it Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, Joe Lieberman’s Judaism or John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism — have during times been singled out and met with hypocritical backlash.

Gabbard gifted this firsthand in a run-up to a 2012 debate when her GOP opponent, Kawika Crowley, told CNN that Gabbard’s Hinduism “doesn’t align with a constitutional substructure of a U.S. government

But others disagree that deliberating a eremite identities of open officials and domestic candidates, quite those on a inhabitant stage, has prolonged been deliberate satisfactory game.

And a questions, satisfactory or not, are pier up. University of Hawaii domestic scholarship highbrow Colin Moore says it competence not make clarity for Gabbard to keep her overpower most longer.

“There comes a indicate where it starts to demeanour some-more and some-more questionable than maybe it already is,” Moore said. “With this issue, it substantially has reached a indicate where it is to her advantage to start opening adult and articulate some-more honestly about this, since this isn’t expected going away.”

John Hart, a longtime domestic pundit who chairs a communications dialect during Hawaii Pacific University, also points out that Gabbard’s new critique of Obama’s refusal to tag a Islamic State as “Islamic extremists” bolsters a evidence for those perfectionist transparency.

“Representative Gabbard has argued publicly on a ISIS emanate that we need to cruise eremite affiliations to know what we’re traffic with,” Hart said. “If that’s a case, afterwards we shouldn’t be astounded to see that some people are going to request that same standard” to her possess faith.

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Civil Beat reporters Chad Blair and Nick Grube contributed to this report.

Rui Kaneya is a contributor for Civil Beat. You can strech him by email during rkaneya@civilbeat.com or follow him on Twitter during @ruikaneya

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