Opinion: Don’t Let Hindu Nationalism Undermine Religious Tolerance Among Indian Americans
Not to be confused with the Hindu faith, Hindu nationalism is instead a 20th-century political project founded by ideologues seeking to import European facism into India. It is a supremacist ideology which seeks to render India a pure Hindu nation, in which other minority faiths, especially Islam and Christianity, are not welcome.
In its meteoric rise in influence, it has motivated countless killings of Muslims and Christians, and is now espoused in India's highest political offices, including by current Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Despite its troubling history, it has found many supporters in San Diego.
Organizations like the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America host apparently friendly cultural events in the city, all the while maintaining ties to violent Hindu nationalist paramilitaries in India. Recent celebrations of the Ram Mandir in San Diego — a controversial Hindu temple in India built over the rubble of a mosque razed by mobs — are a case in point of how innocuous-seeming local events can insult and demean the local Muslim population.
After mobs destroyed a historic mosque brick by brick to make way for the Ram Temple, 2,000 predominantly Muslim Indians were killed. Among the lead organizers of the mosque demolition and ensuing pogrom was the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of India , whose overseas counterpart, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, organized celebrations of the temple in San Diego.
These more overt manifestations of Hindu nationalism's wide-reaching influence are joined to deeper changes in everyday life. It saddens me to say that Hindu nationalism has engendered distrust and even hatred of Muslims among the local Indian American community, where Islamophobic remarks have become routine. Indian American colleagues I would never have suspected to hold any hostility toward people of any particular faith have brazenly insulted Muslims, even knowing of my faith.
I know my experience is widely shared. 70% of nearly 1,000 Indian American Muslim respondents to a recent survey conducted by an organization that I volunteer for, the Indian American Muslim Council, said they had contended with biased treatment from Hindu colleagues.
One respondent to the survey wrote, "My son is not included in his Hindu peers' activities at school" while others reported being excluded from neighborhood gatherings or cultural events. Another wrote, "Hindu nationalism has certainly affected me, my family, and my community ... the same people whom we used to feel connected and comfortable with have changed their behavior towards us."
Forty-eight percent of the survey respondents said they had faced Islamophobic discrimination on social media platforms. The vast majority agreed that Hindu nationalism's growth in India had contributed to deteriorating social relations in the U.S.
California politics has also been profoundly influenced by Hindu nationalist goals. According to recent reporting in Harpers , Hindu nationalist groups successfully lobbied governor Gavin Newsom to overturn proposed caste protection legislation in California, preventing caste-oppressed Indian Americans from access to a legal framework suited to their needs.
Earlier, Hindu nationalists sued the California Civil Rights Department over an attempt to formally ban caste discrimination, and fought to change California textbooks. Committed to caste hierarchy in India, these groups refuse to allow criticism of the system here in the U.S.
More broadly, Hindu nationalism's rise in the U.S. has created a climate of fear and distrust in the Indian American Community. The Indian government's alleged assassinations (one attempted, one successful) on Indian American Sikhs, as well as the constant targeting of overseas critics of the Modi regime, has set myself and many other Indian Americans committed to democracy on edge. The Indian government's effort to silence critics extends overseas has meant that many of us now feel we can't speak our minds freely even in the land of the free.
Here in San Diego, we need to start modeling a more tolerant, interfaith approach to religious difference right now. We need to celebrate existing bonds of friendship across religious differences, while also educating our community about the forces trying to tear us apart.
India and the U.S., troubled though our histories both are, were both founded on principles of equality. We Indian Americans our uniquely positioned to enact this legacy. We must show that Hindu nationalism is not the way in San Diego — peace and understanding are.
