Teaneck, New Jersey, an all-American township of 40,000 residents, woke up one fine October morning staring at several freshly installed billboards on their commute to work. The billboards demanded the cessation of bigotry against Hindus in America. They also prominently advertised an URL: StopDemocratsBigotry.com. Ten billboards were installed along the north and central New Jersey counties. They are expected to be up for ten days.
The billboards were in “retaliation against the rise of anti-Indian and anti-Hindu hate speech and hate crimes across the country,” said Satya Dosapati, the Hindu activist behind these billboards. It was “triggered by a resolution passed by the Teaneck Democratic Municipal Committee (TDMC), which sent shockwaves in the community,” Dosapati was quoted in one of the media outlets.
The TDMC passed a resolution on September 12, 2022, that categorized several Hindu groups operating within the U.S. as terrorist groups.
The resolution also tried to intimidate and bully Hindus by calling on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other U.S. investigative and law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute organizations such as the Hindu American Foundation, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), Sewa International, Infinity Foundation, etc. The resolution had the backing of several Muslim and leftist groups operating within the U.S. From their anti-CAA rhetoric to their roles in organizing the Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference – these groups have a history of anti-India and Hinduphobic activities.
Intimidation & Bullying
Intimidation and bullying of political opponents have become part of the current political environment in the U.S. and hence must be taken seriously. Recently, there was a massive uproar across America against school closures, mandates, and woke curricula. When the left-aligned National School Board Association, a federation of locally elected school boards, wrote a letter to the Biden administration documenting “heinous actions” of protesting parents that “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorist,” the U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland promptly obliged his political allies by issuing a memorandum. The memorandum described how the FBI would coordinate with law enforcement agencies to address threats to school administrators and board members.
Indian American politics is deeply intertwined with India due to civilizational reasons. These connections have become more visible since the ascension of Narendra Modi to the center stage of Indian politics. As an economic powerhouse with a Hindu renaissance, a resurgent India has created a massive disconnect between the old Orientalist-colonial perceptions and the current reality in international circles. “Unless managed carefully,” writes Walter Russell Meade of the Hudson Institute in his Wall Street Journal column, “these differences could derail U.S.-India cooperation at a critical time.”
These differences were on full display during India’s abrogation of Article 370, implementation of its Citizenship Amendment Act, and more recently amidst the Russo-Ukrainian conflict when the entire American establishment was critical of India, her leader Modi and his politics. As Meade aptly put it, the new and confident India “wants to increase and develop Indian power, not submerge Indian sovereignty in Western-designed international institutions.”
Disenchantment & Betrayal
These differences have brought out simmering disenchantment within the Indian diaspora from the American political establishments, both the Left and the Right. Indian Americans, to use Aanang Mittal’s words, have also become “the punching bags for the political divide in America.” Mittal, a first-generation immigrant from India, was a staffer for the former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
From last year’s Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference to the anti-Hindu hate speech and hate crimes in Texas, California, and elsewhere, barely any mainstream politician, including those from the Indian American community, rose to speak on behalf of Hindus. A sense of betrayal has come to grip the Hindu-American diaspora.
The Biden administration’s mishandling of the visa situation has made things worse. According to a Wall Street Journal report, “in New Delhi, an appointment for a nonimmigrant visitor visa takes more than 800 calendar days… for a student visa, nearly 450 days.” Some analysts have called this delay a policy of visa denial by the U.S. government as a form of “collective punishment” against India’s foreign policy concerning Russia and Ukraine. “A Communist Chinese citizen can get a visa for travel to the US in two or three days, but a citizen of India has to wait two or three years for the privilege,” wrote M.D. Nalpat in his blistering editorial column in the Sunday Guardian.
For decades, Indian Americans have been overwhelmingly voting for the Democrat Party. However, that started to change with the advent of Donald Trump on the American political landscape. Republican vote share among Indian Americans has been growing since the 2016 elections. The Asian American Voter Survey (AAVS 2020) data suggested that as many as 28% of Indian Americans intended to vote for Donald Trump, compared to just 16% in 2016. Indian Americans had overwhelmingly voted for Obama (84%). However, according to the AAVS 2022, 56% of Indians identified as Democrats, fractionally up from 54% in 2020.
The Indian American Attitude Survey (IAAS 2020) conducted between September 1 and September 20, 2020, had projected 82% support for Biden among Indian American Muslims. However, that support shrank to 67% among Indian Hindus and 49% among Indian Christians.
Activism and Re-evaluating Political Options
After decades of being considered a loyal Democrat vote bank, Indian Americans, especially Hindu Americans, seek new political allies. The last few months’ events have given rise to a new Hindu political activism in the U.S. that may pave the way for political realignment.
StopDemocratsBigotry.com website mentions on its homepage that the billboard campaign across New Jersey is “exposing the bigotry of the Democratic Party.” It accuses the Democratic Party of “fishing in India’s faultlines for Western geopolitical goals.” The Democratic Party establishment is “working with organizations such as IAMC (India American Muslim Council), CAIR (Council for American Islamic Relations) & missionary operatives with questionable records,” mentions the website.
Another website HinduVote.org, helps voters select Federal candidates based on their support for issues important to the Hindu diaspora. It was launched by HinduPACT, a political action group affiliated with the VHPA. The website consists of a location-based listing of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, biographical and social media details of the candidates, responses from the candidates on a Hindu-focused questionnaire, and HinduPACT’s assessment of candidates’ legislative votes.
The website uses crowdsourcing to capture Hindu sentiments. Hindu constituents rate the candidates based on their ideological and legislative positions. The questionnaire covers the growing hate campaign against Hindus across the U.S. It also addresses concerns about U.S. foreign policy affecting Hindu communities worldwide.
Rakhi Israni, Director of Legal for HinduPACT, said that the HinduVote initiative “is the first step in claiming the political power they should have been afforded a while ago.”
Another organization FIIDS (Federation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies, Fiids-USA.org), launched a campaign for Indian Americans to vote in U.S. 2022 elections. As a part of the campaign, FIIDS is surveying Indian Americans’ issues and policies important for voting in the U.S. 2022 elections. The results of this survey will be shared with the media, the Democratic and Republican parties, and candidates.
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