Advani, one of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s most prominent leaders, launched the Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP) to directly “educate American lawmakers, the American people, and the Indian American community about the true principles of the BJP.” The OFBJP became the protector of India’s external image. They have become an important channel of support for the right-wing government of Narendra Modi and a regular source of hostile flak for Modi’s critics. In doing so, they consciously modeled themselves upon the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States and forged close ties with its leading organizations. A series of overlapping Hindu nationalist organizations were developed to make India synonymous with Hindutva. The Indian American groups that began to emerge in the 1990s looked to characterize themselves as representative of the larger Indian American community. Of those 1.4 million are naturalized citizens, and 1.2 million were born in the United States. Today there are around 4.2 million people of Indian origin in the US, with around 2.6 million being American citizens. In the early 1990s, Indians comprised a tiny minority in the United States.
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