New Haven, Connecticut: Arms raised, Jagdish Sewhani posed for a photo in front of an electronic billboard he had organised at Times Square on August 5. Pushed across social media, the image told just the story Sewhani was hoping for: Indians abroad were behind the BJP, celebrating the inauguration of its mandir in Ayodhya.
“It shows how successful Indians are in America that our Ram Bhagwan, our Ram Ji temple and our tricolor is on the most iconic screen in the world,” said Sewhani.
The image did not capture all the politics on display at Times Square that day, however. A counter-billboard on the other side of New York City’s iconic 7th Avenue ran protest advertisements with the words “Kashmiri Lives Matter.” Meanwhile, a mobile van ran advertisements protesting Hindu Nationalist policies in India, reminding passers-by that there “once stood this beautiful mosque in India which was demolished by Hindu extremists.” By the evening of August 5, three separate counter-protests had coalesced into one. They achieved what seems increasingly dangerous in India: an outward display of resistance.
Earlier that week, a coalition of groups held a virtual press conference to oppose the planned billboard, and wrote an open letter to New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. Others lobbied the advertising companies that owned the billboards to drop their advertisements. They could claim partial success — two of the three displays that were initially purchased were cancelled.
Jagdish Sewhani at the Times Square in New York. Photo: Vandana Menon
On this occasion, the groups were caught unprepared by the announcement of the hired billboards, and had only days to muster a response.
“There wasn’t a coordinated effort,” said Aatish Taseer, author most recently of The Twice Born, about the social worlds of Benares. “I didn’t know where the protests were or whether there were going to be protests… Certainly in New York City, we should have been in a more powerful situation. We should not have been scrambling,” said Taseer.
In 2014, Taseer covered Modi’s campaign as a sympathiser. But he changed his opinion of Modi by the end of his first term – which cost him his status as an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) cardholder. At the protests, he noted that attitudes among the Indian diaspora are shifting in the same direction. “I don’t know what the numbers are. Certainly, a split has emerged now, but I don’t know if Modi supporters outnumber us that much,” he said.
The protests also offered him hope. “The last protest was so impressive… Even with the little bit we did do, they [the organisers of the billboard] were pretty cowed. They were pretty astonished with the pushback,” said Taseer.
Also Read: At New York’s Times Square, Both Celebrations of and Protests Against Ram Mandir
Sunita Viswanath, who was involved in the protests, is a White House-recognised activist and the co-founder of Hindus for Humans Rights. Viswanath says her work comes from a position of faith; her opposition to Hindutva has also been a deeply personal endeavor. “By speaking up as a Hindu who insists on an inclusive and egalitarian interpretation of Hinduism, and who opposes Hindutva, I find myself in opposition to many in my family and community,” she said.
File photo of Hindus for Human Rights protesters at the ‘Howdy, Modi’ rally in Houston, Texas on September 22, 2019. Photo: Alliance for Justice and Accountability
For many critics of Hindutva in the US, their first challenge is indeed confronting neighbours, friends and family. For decades, members of the Sangh parivar have embedded themselves in Indian-American communities, turning the American diaspora into a vocal base of support for the BJP. Some were members of the RSS who were compelled to leave India in the 1970s to continue work in opposition to Indira Gandhi’s regime. They helped establish a transnational network that offered enduring strategic, financial and political support to the BJP. NRIs still remain conspicuous as some of the BJP’s most vociferous cheerleaders.
This phenomenon can also be understood in demographic terms. The decades following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 saw significant increases in Indian immigration to the US; however, these remained largely restricted to upper-caste Hindu professionals, particularly in science and engineering. These groups proved to be willing consumers of — and participants in — the Sangh parivar’s cultural politics at a time when it took advantage of heated debates around caste and reservation. Many in the diaspora chose to frame debates around affirmative action and structural inequality in terms of “merit,” a language deeply compatible with their role as a “model minority” in American race politics.
Organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America – established in 1970 – are some of the oldest diasporic groups in the US. They have consolidated a distinct brand of cultural politics among Indian-Americans marked by alleged caste-blindness and various degrees of Islamophobia. When the BJP began to popularise the language of “pseudosecularism”, Indian-Americans were eager to see their communities in India as an oppressed majority. This was facilitated both by political discourse in India, but also their own minority status in the US, where experiences of racism were matched by growing support for majoritarian politics in India.
In an interview about his book The Karma of Brown Folk, Vijay Prashad writes:
“[The VHP] gained popularity because of an opening afforded it by the liberal state. Under pressure from people of color, the U.S. state grudgingly accepted the idea of multiculturalism, in which each ‘culture’ was to be somehow tolerated. The idea of ‘culture’ embraced by the state was static and without history, and the arbiter of ‘culture’ was to be the orthodoxy. Since ‘India’ was seen as spiritual, the ‘culture’ of India was seen as religion, mainly Hinduism. The VHPA was sanctified to begin its exertions amongst the Indian Americans due to this, and it used its massive resources and terrific organization to propagate a rather virulent brand of chauvinism… it tackles the racism felt by desis with a racism of its own.”
Sewhani and others at Times Square were eager to emphasise the Sangh’s organisation and power in the US. But what it maintains in organisational might, it might be losing in numbers, as a new generation considers BJP’s India.
§
As the children of the first wave of Indian immigration to the US come of age, the Indian diaspora is in flux. Younger, American-born generations have instead embraced a politics that encourages them to take note of their caste and class privileges amidst a broader American reckoning with structural inequalities.
This brand of politics is not merely liberal. It is informed by assertive movements for racial equality like Black Lives Matter, and emphasizes justice and equality over mere freedom. It is partially embodied by Kamala Harris, recently chosen as the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential candidate, but also by her critics on the Left – including many younger South Asian American activists who have argued that Harris has not done enough to fight for social justice.
US Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) accepts the Democratic vice presidential nomination during an acceptance speech delivered for the largely virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
“As Attorney-General of California, Harris used the police to enforce truancy laws, further deepening racial divides,” said Saket Malhotra, a student at Yale University. Malhotra also questioned her silence on caste and Hindutva. “Does her South Asian representation only extend to caste-dominant Hindus?” he asked.
Also Read: Kamala Harris Has a Lot Going for Her but Her Old Positions Come Under the Scanner
The very term “South Asian American,” meanwhile, preferred by younger activists, foreshadows a generation that is far less amenable to expat nationalism and is critical of majoritarian politics in India.
Sana Qutubuddin is the National Advocacy Executive for the Indian American Muslim Council, a group which often collaborates with Hindus for Human Rights. She identifies as a member of this new generation – rather than one of “uncles and aunties.” For her, the current political moment has left her noticing shared patterns of marginalisation across the world. Detention centres in Assam, she argued, mirror those run by ICE in the US – something that left her with “an extraordinary clarity about the intersectionality of struggles.”
At the same time, for many South Asian Americans born and brought up in the US and deeply assimilated into American society, Indian politics can feel remote and unrelatable. The generation’s progressive ideals are imagined and understood in an American context, and framed in a distinctly American idiom.
Taseer, himself prone to straddling multiple geographies, explains: “You’ll have people who are very much against that [Hindutva] politics, but in becoming completely assimilated and completely American, they become completely removed from what’s going on in India. When they’re informed about it, they’re fairly appalled, and want to do things, but they’re not living in the Indian reality in the same way as certain people who are devoted to the success of Modi.”
For these committed karyakartas, August 5 was a date for loud and spectacular celebration. It sent a clear message: that a Hindu rashtra has arrived.
But August 5 might have also offered a glimpse of the future. While India watched the events in Ayodhya buoyant in celebration or frightened into silence, New York was host to an impassioned contestation over the Times Square billboards.
Ten days later, on India’s Independence Day, many of the groups involved in protests returned to Times Square to celebrate the Indian constitution and affirm the right to dissent that is protected by it. They were joined by others in Seattle, San Fransisco and Boston. At a moment when dissent in India is silenced with threats and arrests, few in the subcontinent were able to follow suit.
Protests in the US on August 15 to uphold democratic rights in India. Photo: By arrangement
As the Modi government builds new regimes of intimidation and control, the role of Indians in the diaspora will assume increased importance. To survive, protest movements in India will re-appraise this potential, and take diasporic politics seriously – not merely as an echo of Indian politics, but as a political harbor offering support and relative security, and as a battleground in and of itself.
Meanwhile, allies in the diaspora are also increasingly aware that solidarity requires engaging with lived realities in India – while still holding local perspectives close. “It was the Black community and Blacks in America that brought American democracy to life. They made America a democracy, through the Civil Rights Movement, through all of the movements for labour and economic justice,” said Qutubuddin. “I think that is certainly the role of India’s Muslims. It is the voices and the struggle of the most vulnerable than can actualise a beautiful vision.”
Ram Vishwanathan is a student of history at Yale University.
