Indian Americans have a role to play in educating Californians about Hindu nationalism

In March, the overseas wing of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, organized car rallies and prayer gatherings throughout California in support of his reelection bid. These groups surely celebrated Modi’s third electoral victory earlier this month.

However, not all Desis in California are elated. For many of us, Modi’s anti-Muslim campaign speeches and slew of authoritarian policies cast the victory in a different light. As an Indian Muslim, the BJP’s loss of a majority in the Indian parliament is the real ray of hope in these last elections. 

Reports of the Indian government attempting two assassinations on North American soil this year — and hearing of how other U.S. critics have had their India-based relatives detained and persecuted — myself and many other Indian Americans fear speaking out against Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism.

But with the opposition in India increasingly mobilized and capable of resisting Modi’s rule, there is a sense of obligation to do our part in California, home to the largest Indian population in the country. India and California are joined at the hip through political, economic, cultural and familial ties, which means these elections impact local life and vice versa. 

Indian Americans bear a special responsibility to educate our neighbors and lawmakers about these elections, and to prevent the most divisive issues in Indian politics from gaining a foothold in California.

Of them, none is more important than Modi’s favored ideology of Hindu nationalism. First conceived in the 20th century by admirers of European fascism, Hindutva calls for the creation of a pure Hindu nation in which other religions, particularly Islam and Christianity, are violently suppressed.

In pursuit of this vision, the Modi regime has bulldozed hundreds of mosques and churches, arrested opposition politicians and journalists, and attempted to criminalize the practice of minority faiths, passing laws that criminalize interfaith marriage or wearing a hijab. 

A violent clash in Anaheim two years ago — where protestors of Modi’s anti-Muslim citizenship law were called “stupid Muslims” — is just one sign that Hindutva has found ardent supporters, as well as fierce opponents, in California.

In January, California Hindutva groups organized a gathering near the Golden Gate Bridge to celebrate Modi’s consecration of the Ram Temple in India. Though their festive car rally might have seemed like an innocuous celebration, the Ram Temple had in fact been built on the ruins of an ancient mosque, which was torn down by rioting Hindu nationalist mobs in 1992. 

In the ensuing violence, thousands of predominantly Muslim Indians were killed.

One of the lead local organizers of the rally, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, is in fact the U.S. counterpart to one of the Hindutva groups most responsible for tearing down the ancient mosque and killing Muslims decades earlier. Linked by financial and organizational ties, the American branch is one of many groups seeking to import and legitimize Hindu nationalism in California. 

Other California Hindutva groups sought to eliminate mention of caste oppression from California schoolbooks in 2005 and 2016, running campaigns that closely aligned with the Modi regime’s efforts to erase the reality of caste-oppression from Indian textbooks.

Some of these groups also led the charge against California state Sen. Aisha Wahab, who received numerous death threats after spearheading an effort to make ‘caste’ a protected category in state civil rights laws, which Gov. Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed.

We must teach our neighbors and local legislators to distinguish between Hinduism the religion and Hindutva as a supremacist political ideology. We must teach our communities about the Hindutva groups preying on the ignorance of U.S. citizens operating events in their midst. 

Above all, we must promote the tolerance and pluralism at the heart of the American and Indian constitutions alike.