As Hindu Supremacists Seek Influence in US, Liberal Deference Paves the Way

For nearly 90 minutes, the woman in a sari spoke uninterrupted, her voice echoing over the microphone into a cavernous room at the main temple hall of the Umiya Dham Mandir in Edison, New Jersey. “So long as the last enemy is on Earth, peace is impossible!” she shouted. “So long as the last demon is on Earth, peace cannot come!”

As she spoke, some attendees walked into the temple to offer their prayers, and left soon after, paying no attention to the woman on stage. Although a loud minority of those in attendance were rather riled up, some sat still and unmoved. The woman’s speech seemed to turn progressively more virulent. Life in the U.S., she chided the audience, had made them lazy and complacent. They were unaware that the danger was at their door. Its form? A “demon,” a “monster standing on the chests of Hindus” — Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani, the speaker falsely claimed, had been backed by George Soros and his son Alex to the tune of $34 million. And a further $500 million was on the way. “There are only two options: fight or get converted,” she told them. “The choice is yours.”

Soon after, the woman began to lay out how Muslims — whom she referred to alternatively as “braindead zombies,” “treacherous jihadis,” or “living monsters” — were conspiring, through halal-certified food, to make Hindus sexually impotent, and called for an economic boycott of Muslims. “If someone consumes halal food in front of us, and we know it, and remain silent, then we too are committing a sin,” she exclaimed. “Every moment, you must do your religious duty. So stop eating there, stop purchasing halal! Look, who is making the food, and what drugs they are adding to it.” Even fruit bought from Muslims, she baselessly claimed, had been injected with enzymes that make Hindus infertile. Some attendees open their phones, seeking to investigate if their favorite brands were halal-certified or not.

The woman on stage was Kajal Hindusthani. Recorded as the worst purveyor of hateful rhetoric in India in 2023 by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, Hindusthani has multiple cases registered against her in India for inciting violence. Ordinarily, this would make her persona non grata to U.S. authorities, but in the upside-down world we live in, she was instead invited, by a group of Hindu supremacist organizations, for a 38-day grand tour of the United States.

Far from condemnation, New York City Mayor Eric Adams had accepted an invitation to hear Hindusthani speak in Long Island at an event held a few days prior to the speech in Edison. Adams withdrew from the event at the last minute following an outcry by a multifaith coalition of over two dozen organizations, but this controversy was insufficient to prevent the same blunder (and the same strategy) from being repeated. Soon after she spoke in Edison, Hindusthani received a commendation from the Democratic Rhode Island Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos, that, astonishingly, praised Hindusthani’s “commitment to community empowerment, women’s safety, and social harmony.”

As such, Hindusthani’s visit to the U.S. exemplified two key trends that sit at the center of the challenge facing Indian Americans opposed to such bigotry. First, that as the Hindu far right (known as Hindutva) has moved closer to MAGA, united in their hatred of Muslims and the left (exemplified in the figure of Mamdani), they enjoy an unprecedented level of impunity. And second, that this impunity is only heightened by the continuing failure of liberals to recognize this bigotry and condemn it. Even as the Hindu far right sheds its multicultural mask, there are enough of the uninformed ready to believe that the disguise remains.

Moreover, the intervention of a foreign hatemonger in a local mayoral race marks a new development in American Hindutva, a step well ahead of its supporters’ usual investments in simply backing their own candidates. It is also unsurprising that this escalation has occurred in response to Mamdani. Hindusthani’s ire was directed at the Democratic mayoral candidate not just because he is a Muslim or a leftist, as many have observed, but also because Mamdani represents the Hindutva movement’s greatest fear: cross-religious, cross-ethnic solidarity. Mamdani is himself a child of an interfaith, transnational marriage, and campaigned in Hindi, Bangla, and Spanish. For the Hindu far right, Mamdani’s pluralism, his ability to be many things at once and to bring communities together, is the danger. And bigotry is the only response they have.

Indeed, in Edison, Hindusthani explicitly recounted a story from an earlier event on her tour, invoked as a lesson for the audience. It involved a young man who had confronted her at an event, telling her that her hate speech against Muslims was unwarranted, and that Hindus and Muslims lived in harmony. But the man was being duped, she told the audience. “Voh miyan tera bhai nahi, wo kasai hai.” (“That Muslim is not your brother, he is your butcher.”) Hindusthani went on to say that Muslims could not be considered human. “When I speak about Hindu-Muslim, you call me racist, you say I should speak of humanity,” she shouted. “But I told him, ‘Son, humanity is for humans. These are braindead zombies. Humanity can’t be applied to zombies … If even one of them were human, they would try to stop this mob of braindead zombies.’”

“New York is the heart of America,” Hindusthani said to the audience. “And they want to prove, just as Sadiq Khan did in London, the conquest of the world. Their agenda is not just the conquest of India, it is the conquest of the world! They want to convert the whole world to Islam. So long as the last non-Muslim is on Earth, either they will convert him, or kill him. Death will come for everyone — earlier for some, a little later for others.”

The Hindu Far Right’s Outsized Voice

Although Hindu supremacist groups remain a small minority of the Indian American community, they are well-resourced and well-organized. A 2024 survey found that supermajorities of the Indian American community, including two-thirds of Hindus, expressed concern about the rise of Hindu supremacy. The Hindu far right’s presence is narrow but deep, concentrated among the specific caste and linguistic groups it draws its support from, and that offer it a financial heft well beyond its size. Throw in the support of a foreign U.S.-allied regime, noted for its infamous social media cell, and its ability to draw crowds and make noise is undeniable. This was demonstrated by the attendance at the Edison event, which at its peak hit 200, nearly all of whom were middle-aged or older Gujarati men. There were a few women, but seemingly none under the age of 30.

But this would mean little without the second key advantage such groups enjoy: the continued failure of liberal multiculturalism to move away from the unfortunate cocktail of ignorance and deference that now threatens, through clever bad-faith actors like the Hindu far right, to tear liberalism apart.

Media framing counts too. Indeed, Gothamist’s characterization of Mamdani as facing “sharp jabs from within the South Asian American community” runs the risk of legitimatizing Hindusthani’s speech in Long Island by framing it as an organic community divide, rather than the actions of a fringe that proved itself incapable of making any material difference to Mamdani’s primary win in New York City. It is critical for journalists to reveal how Hindusthani’s speeches are a veritable bingo of “jihad” conspiracy theories, each more unhinged than the next, alongside explicit calls for violence. “They have birthed an army. They will enter your homes,” she told the audience in Edison. “When Abdul enters your house with an army of 18 people to kill you, how will you save yourself? If death has to come, why not learn self-defense, and take a few of them with you?”

A few days after issuing their commendation, Matos’s office apologized for the error, noting that the Rhode Island lieutenant governor was “not aware of Ms. Hindusthani’s public statements or affiliations at the time the citation was issued.” Matos was misled, her office claimed, by a “trusted community partner,” the Foundation of Indian Americans of New England, a group whose innocuous and ecumenical name belies the fact that it is committed to the Hindu far right. Again, liberal deference allowed the dressing of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Although Matos condemned “in the strongest possible terms Ms. Hindusthani’s hateful rhetoric,” the damage has been done. After all, Hindusthani is an opportunist and an entrepreneur — one making her way through a market for bigotry cultivated by the organizational infrastructure of the Hindu far right. Hindusthani’s currency is attention and validation, and she has found a unique niche for herself that was visible in the event. She invoked gendered themes repeatedly, fusing trad-wife ideas with bone-chilling calls for violence; repeatedly shamed and guilted her audience, playing on their diaspora anxieties; and was clearly willing to spew ever more bizarre conspiracy theories. The blunders made by Adams and Matos— and the patronage Hindusthani has received from the Hindu far right — augur poorly, sending a clear message to other aspiring hate entrepreneurs in India: Follow Hindusthani’s lead, and you too will be rewarded with lucrative and profile-boosting trips to the U.S.

Hindusthani, as such, enjoys a relationship of symbiosis with the larger Hindu far right institutions that endorsed and platformed her words. The arrangement is simple: they give her a stage, and she does their dirty work, articulating ideas they endorse but are careful not to say themselves. Indeed, Hindusthani was thanked on and off the stage by none other than Tejal Shah, the president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (World Hindu Council of America, or VHP-A). The VHP-A, as the Savera United Against Supremacy coalition’s reports from last year demonstrate, is a five-decade-old organization with an unenviable record that serves as the U.S. wing of the Indian Hindu supremacist militant group, the VHP.

The event at Edison, beyond being held at a large temple, was co-sponsored not just by the VHP-A, but also by two large and well-financed Hindu supremacist organizations: the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, which is the U.S. wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (a Hindutva paramilitary group); and the Coalition of Hindus of North America.

Her speech in Edison, Hindusthani claimed, was her 15th — all of which were similarly facilitated by the U.S. Hindutva network. Earlier in her trip — which had included visits to places as far-flung as Dallas, Los Angeles, Houston, and Charlotte — she was even welcomed into the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C. from which she posted a photo-op for her followers on X.

Hindusthani’s tour speaks to a few key emergent themes in how the U.S. Hindutva movement sees itself in this moment. First, of course, Hindusthani’s speech showed the brazen impunity that the movement enjoys — in India, no doubt, but also that it seeks to normalize in the U.S. in a moment of domestic far right upsurge. If Israeli far right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir can make calls for genocide in New York, they must believe, so can Kajal Hindusthani. Indeed, Hindusthani herself repeatedly referred to the Jewish community, with some typical antisemitic exaggeration, as a model for Hindus to follow, during her speech in Edison.

This epitomizes the way in which the movement sees its deepest glue, and sense of fraternity — not with the rest of the Indian community, but with the broader far right. Its cynical adaptation of weaponized antisemitism claims, its alliances with MAGA, and its harsh turn against Mamdani make clear that U.S. Hindu supremacists see themselves primarily as fellow travelers of a multiracial far right. At a moment when some room seems to be open for loyal non-white followers to position themselves as MAGA appendages, this appears to be the path Hindutva groups are pursuing. That Hindusthani’s speech offered no substantive, positive idea of Hinduism or Hindu identity was beside the point. The fear and hatred that animate Hindu supremacist institutions and their affiliated temples have also emptied out their own insides in the process.

And more importantly, what does this path mean for Indian America, around half of which is non-Hindu, and where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians live side by side in cities like Edison? Hindusthani’s call for an economic boycott is revealing in this regard. An economic boycott is a tactic that could hardly have the same efficacy in the U.S. as similar attempts have in India, but it is not without its logic. We are seeing the inevitable conclusion of a process where a far right network that is loud, powerful, and well-financed is given political room, but even at its point of saturation remains demographically marginal. To retain its power, the movement must turn on the very liberalism that has facilitated its entry into U.S. politics, but that also limits it; it must move and seek new ground.

As Hindutva turns on liberalism, parts of the MAGA movement have sought to take advantage of a chance to broaden its coalition. However, the left has an opportunity too. Mamdani’s campaign, and the bigoted responses to it, open routes for bringing anti-Hindutva organizing into the broader progressive ecosystem. The many alternative articulations of Indian and South Asian American identity that have recently flowered, including those that catapulted Mamdani to victory, existentially threaten the Hindu supremacist belief that they should dominate who speaks for “India.” Hindu supremacists will continue to reveal their bigotry in ways as explicit as Hindusthani’s tour, because, by their own attestations, they see no way out but to wrench themselves from pluralistic notions of “Indian.” At this point, American Hindutva appears more and more a project of articulating “Indian” as distinctly Hindu, epitomized by Hindustani’s demonization of the intimate “enemy” of the Muslim. With Muslims being racialized and demonized further by both the right and the center, the Hindutva project’s need to distinguish itself from them — and from any pluralistic identity that includes them, such as South Asian — will only grow. What is still to be seen, however, is whether liberal actors will midwife this ghastly politics, or whether they will learn to recognize the danger posed by the likes of Kajal Hindustani and the Hindu supremacist network that fuels her.