This is another comment since this has to do with a different topic of Friedrich’s smear article.
Friedrich and other Tulsi critics like to make the claim that in the past the Gabbards or the Science of Identity claimed to not be Hindus. The idea being that they falsely claim to be Hindu for political gain.
That shows how little actual research those critics do.
- “Hindu” is a Persian word and the word “Hinduism” didn’t exist until the British invented it. Many Hindus therefore do not like those words and purposefully disavow them for indigenous words, e.g., “Sanatana Dharma” instead of Hinduism, and instead of “Hindu,” they like to use words like Sanatani, Vaishnava, Shaivite, Bhakta, Shakta, Advaitin, Tantric, and many more.
- Tulsi follows the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, which is renowned in India and among Hindus around the world in the western bhakti yoga and Hindu community as a very traditional Hindu denomination. It is very popular all over India, with ordinary people and celebrities.
- They are one of many traditions in India who dislike the foreign words Hindu and Hinduism. So they often like to say “We are not *Hindus* and We do not practice *Hinduism*” Instead they say “We practice Sanatana Dharma,” or “We practice Vaishnavism,” or “We practice Bhakti,” and so on. But sometimes for expediences sake they will claim to be Hindu because of the situation, i.e., a lot of Hindus do not have a problem with the words Hindu and Hinduism, so not wanting to get into a semantic argument over words everyone goes along to get along. All this is doing is replacing one set of foreign words with another set of indigenous words. THAT IS THE ONLY DEBATE and it is between Hindus.
- It is common and there has been a long time debate on whether or not to accept or reject the words Hindu and Hinduism as authentic to traditional Indian religious cultures. Many argue that the words Hindu and Hinduism should be promoted as authentic since so many people identify as “Hindu,” but many others disagree and want to change the identification to more traditional words. Tulsi happens to belong to one of those traditions where many of the spiritual leaders want to use traditional words to define their tradition. For example a recent twitter thread from a few months ago: