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Straits Times
02-08-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
In Delhi and New York, Hindu right wing lines up against NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani
NEW YORK – Two days before New York City Democrats went to the polls to select their mayoral nominee in June, a plane flew over the Statue of Liberty trailing a banner attacking the race's front-runner Zohran Mamdani. 'Save NYC from global intifada,' it read in letters five feet high. 'Reject Mamdani.' The banner, seemingly aimed at the city's Jewish voters, touched on the campaign's most charged foreign policy issue: Mr Mamdani's criticism of Israel . But the group behind it wasn't Jewish or Israeli. Its members are Indian American Hindus, who accuse Mr Mamdani of pushing an anti-Hindu and anti-Indian agenda. For years, Mr Mamdani has assailed the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a populist whose political ideology inextricably links nationalism with Hinduism at the expense of the country's Muslim minority. Mr Mamdani called the prime minister a 'war criminal' in May. Previously, he lobbied to stop Mr Modi from visiting New York, and demanded that a state assembly member return campaign contributions from Indian Americans whom he characterised as 'Hindu fascists'. While campaigning for the state assembly in 2020, Mr Mamdani attended a demonstration in Times Square at which a group protesting the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a one-time mosque in India chanted, 'Who are Hindus? Bastards!' Mr Mamdani has never publicly condemned those remarks, and his campaign initially declined to comment when asked about them, among other matters. Later in the video, Mr Mamdani says he is there to fight for an India that is 'pluralistic' and 'where everyone can belong regardless of their religion'. After this story's publication, Ms Zara Rahim, a senior campaign adviser, said in a statement that Mr Mamdani 'rejects rhetoric targeting Hindus' and attended the 2020 protest to 'stand against right-wing nationalism' in India. She added that Mr Mamdani's mother is Hindu, and that the religion 'is a meaningful part of Zohran's life'. Now, Mamdani is within striking distance of becoming the city's first Muslim and first person of South Asian heritage to become mayor, and he finds himself on the receiving end of attacks by an army of Mr Modi supporters , both in India and the United States. The efforts reveal how sectarian politics in Delhi can affect an election in New York. In India, attacks on Mr Mamdani blare from pro-Modi news outlets across millions of TVs and smartphones. In the United States, Indian American groups, some with direct ties to Mr Modi and his governing Bharatiya Janata Party, are taking a more subtle approach – raising money for Mr Mamdani's opponents. 'There were simultaneous campaigns by India-based Hindu nationalists and U.S.-based Hindu groups, pushing the idea that he would be an anti-Hindu candidate,' said Mr Raqib Naik, director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a watchdog group that tracks Islamophobia online. Despite such attacks, Mr Mamdani has found passionate support among many South Asians in New York. Younger, working-class, Muslim and liberal South Asians including Hindus are energised by the possibility that New York could have its first South Asian mayor, even if some Indian Americans think his views are anti-Hindu. Mr Mamdani won by large margins in some neighbourhoods with sizeable South Asian populations, and he captured 52 per cent of all first-choice votes cast in majority-Asian neighbourhoods. New York City's roughly 447,064 South Asian residents are an important pool of voters, but they are hardly a monolithic bloc, and it is hard to predict the effect some degree of Hindu opposition might have on Mr Mamdani's electoral chances. (Between 2023 and 2024, the Pew Research Center estimated that Hindus make up 2 per cent of New York's metropolitan population, and other survey data places the number of Hindu adherents in the city at close to 80,000.) New York is America's largest city and financial capital, affording its mayor an outsize role on the world stage. As Mr Mamdani prepares for the general election and tries to reassure moderate Democrats that he is a viable contender, he is also facing the ire of a party machine a world away. One of Mr Mamdani's main criticisms of Mr Modi concerns his role in 2002 as leader of the Indian state of Gujarat during sectarian riots. Mr Modi has been accused of failing to slow or stop violence that left hundreds dead, most of them Muslims. In the aftermath, Mr Modi faced sanctions by the United States and at one point was denied a visa to visit. Backlash to Mr Mamdani's remarks has come from the top in India. A BJP national spokesperson Sanju Verma recently called Mamdani a 'Hinduphobic bigot' and 'a rabid liar'. The BJP's talking points have been amplified to a global audience by a network of pro-Modi outlets and influencers. One anchor at a pro-Modi television network recently called Mr Mamdani a 'part-time revolutionary, full-time Modi baiter'. Another announcer said Mr Mamdani associated 'with Pakistani lobbyists in the United States', suggesting that the candidate would promote the interests of India's longtime rival. According to data reviewed by The New York Times and compiled by The Center for the Study of Organized Hate, in the weeks between June 13 and June 30, more than 600 posts criticising Mr Mamdani were uploaded to X from known right-wing accounts in India and global profiles associated with Hindu nationalism, some with hundreds of thousands of followers. Professor Rohit Chopra of Santa Clara University, who studies Hindu nationalism, said Mr Mamdani's Muslim identity and sharp criticism of Mr Modi have been enough to 'discredit him among Indian Americans while also being played to maximum effect for political capital within India'. His parents' backgrounds have provided additional ammunition for the Hindu right. Mr Mamdani, 33, was born in Uganda, but his father is from Gujarat, Mr Modi's home state, where hundreds of people, many of them Muslim, were killed in riots in 2002. His mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, is a doyenne of India's progressive left. In the United States, the distrust of Mr Mamdani among some Hindus has motivated on-the-ground political action, and those efforts have been supercharged by diaspora groups' close ties to Mr Modi and his party. The Gujarati Samaj of New York, an Indian cultural centre in Queens with about 4,000 members, exemplifies the U.S. groups that are in close contact with Mr Modi and are actively supporting Mr Mamdani's opponents. Samaj members visited Mr Modi in India in February and remain 'in touch' with him, speaking to him 'directly', the group's president Harshad Patel said. In July, members held a fundraiser for Mayor Eric Adams, the incumbent running against Mr Mamdani as an independent. In 2023, Mr Adams shared a stage with Mr Modi at the UN's International Yoga Day. Mr Satya Dosapati, the founder of the Indian Americans for Cuomo PAC, which paid for the aerial banner over the Statue of Liberty, previously led protests against the University of Pennsylvania when Mr Modi was dropped as a speaker there in 2013. The Hindu American Foundation, whose members maintain relationships with the Indian government and which is the largest Hindu advocacy organization in the United States, was cofounded by Dr Mihir Meghani, who wrote a Hindu nationalist essay adopted by the BJP. The foundation has not taken a public position on Mr Mamdani's campaign, but its director Suhag Shukla attacked Mr Mamdani in an online post as 'an entitled, dilettante' and said in a statement that he has used 'demonising rhetoric' against Hindus. Other former and current leaders of the foundation have also criticised the candidate online. Mr Mamdani, now running in a general election and seeking a broader base of support, said recently that he would 'discourage' using the controversial phrase 'globalise the intifada,' which inspired the banner over the Statue of Liberty. Many see the statement as a call for violence. The question remains whether Mr Mamdani will similarly temper his criticism of Mr Modi as November's vote approaches. He declined a request to be interviewed for this article. Since the clip of Mr Mamdani calling the prime minister a war criminal went viral among Hindu voters, Mr Mamdani has been less vocal about Indian politics. NYTIMES
Time Magazine
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Islamophobia Surges Online After Zohran Mamdani's Win
Online Islamophobia spiked sharply in the immediate aftermath of Zohran Mamdani's victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, new research has found. The 33-year-old assembly member, a Muslim democratic socialist, defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo by 56% to 44% in the final round of ranked choice voting, marking a watershed moment for the Democratic establishment. Within hours of his win however, Mamdani became the target of coordinated online attacks that framed his faith, ideology, and heritage as threats to public life, according to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH). What comes next is a heated general election campaign, with the 33-year-old assembly member positioned to become the first Muslim mayor of New York City. The primary race was marked by offline Islamophobic rhetoric—most prominently from Cuomo's camp, which included flyers with Mamdani's beard lengthened and darkened. Mamdani condemned them as playing on "racist tropes." The campaign had already seen instances of anti-Muslim sentiment, but the scale of the online response that followed the primary results was considerable. Social media platforms hosted a wave of anti-Muslim content that would generate hundreds of millions of views over the following days. The study by CSOH, titled Digital Hate, Islamophobia, Zohran Mamdani, and NYC's Mayoral Primary and shared exclusively with TIME, tracked 6,669 posts mentioning Mamdani and related themes between June 13-30. The posts generated 419.2 million total engagements—including views, likes, shares, and comments. 'What we've witnessed was not just criticism of his policies,' notes Raqib Naik, Executive Director at the CSOH. 'It was a coordinated multi-platform surge of anti-Muslim hate, ideological fear mongering, and nativist exclusion.' The surge was immediate. From June 13-23, hate-related posts about Mamdani averaged between 56-264 per day. On June 24, the day of the primary, that number jumped to 899 posts. By June 25, it had exploded to 2,173 posts in a single day. The content itself followed distinct patterns. Of the 1,933 posts that researchers examined most closely, 39.4% contained explicit anti-Muslim language targeting either Mamdani specifically or Muslims broadly. These posts frequently portrayed Islam as incompatible with public office, with phrases like 'radical Muslim candidate' and warnings about 'Sharia law takeover.' Posts invoked 9/11 imagery and warned that New York would fall under 'Sharia law.' Many of them included language that described Mamdani as a 'jihadi,' 'radical Muslim,' or 'terrorist sympathizer.' Other phrases called for some level of deportation, including 'send him back.' 'The United States is currently, [in terms of] political polarization within its history, at its peak,' argued Naik. 'And then you have such a polarization and bring these other intersectional issues that could raise people's tempers and reinforce fears of the 'other.' When you blend that information ecosystem with so much hate and misinformation, it ends up eroding our civic space.' A particularly troubling trend for the researchers was the conflation of religious and ideological attacks. Among posts containing Islamophobic language, 51.2% also included ideological demonization, labeling Mamdani's democratic-socialist platform as 'communist infiltration.' Such posts averaged 406,244 total interactions each, suggesting that blended attacks had significantly more reach than single-issue content. 'Those two things fused together give us the broader concern that this content isn't just about Mamdani, it doesn't just affect his candidacy, but it affects Muslim communities in America more broadly and at large,' says Kayla Bassett, the Director of Research at CSOH. 'The way that it's framed often disparages or casts doubts on all Muslims and their ability to participate in American civic life.' The platforms hosting this content were primarily concentrated on X (formerly Twitter), which accounted for 64.6% of all posts in the dataset. The remaining posts were spread across 15 other platforms, including Facebook and GETTR. Beyond religious and ideological attacks, 14.3% of posts contained nativist language calling for Mamdani's deportation or citizenship revocation. A smaller but notable 3.4% included allegations that Mamdani was 'anti-Hindu,' often originating from Hindu nationalist accounts both in India and the diaspora. The broader landscape of Islamophobia in U.S. politics The online backlash against Mamdani mirrors a broader trend of Islamophobia in American political life. The CSOH report situates the digital reaction to Mamdani's win within longstanding patterns of moral panic and political opportunism. It draws parallels to McCarthy-era red-baiting, where public figures were accused of communist sympathies to delegitimize their political participation. In Mamdani's case, religion and ideology were often conflated to create a dual narrative of threat—where being Muslim and socialist were seen as mutually reinforcing dangers. This narrative appears to have significant staying power. According to the report, posts labeling Mamdani as a 'radical communist' also call on President Trump to invoke the Communist Control Act of 1954. High-engagement accounts used hashtags and crisis language such as 'New York has fallen' to amplify alarm. Many paired Islamophobic visuals, including memes of the Statue of Liberty in a niqab, with calls for surveillance, deportation, or denaturalization. 'Both known and notorious far right actors, as well as other participants in political discourse in the States, are all posting [this] content,' says Bassett. 'One of the concerns that stands out from my perspective is that the proportion of hatefulness within the content that we reviewed was exceedingly high.' On June 24th, conservative commentator Charlie Kirk wrote on X: '24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11. Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.' President Donald Trump called Mamdani 'a 100% Communist Lunatic' in a Truth Social post the following day. '9/11 is embedded in the memory of every American,' says Naik. 'So invoking that alongside criticizing someone for his faith, identity and religion in tandem puts that fear in the minds of people, especially people who are going to exercise their right to vote.' While social media companies have taken some steps to combat disinformation, the report suggests that current efforts are insufficient to address surges like the one following Mamdani's win. 'Tech companies, historically, ebb and flow in terms of their willingness to address content that's on their platforms,' says Bassett, 'and most recently this year, I think we've seen a downturn in [their] appetite to moderate content.' This year, Meta announced it would scale back its third-party fact-checking program on Instagram and Threads. Meanwhile, X dismantled much of its Trust and Safety infrastructure after Elon Musk's takeover in 2022 and now relies primarily on the crowd-sourced Community Notes feature, which experts say is slower to respond to coordinated hate campaigns. What this means for real-world violence Mamdani's historic win—both as a Muslim and a democratic socialist—marks a shift in New York City politics. But as the report shows, it also triggered a wave of digital hate that risked turning a local election into a referendum on Muslim political legitimacy in the U.S. The posts depict Islam—not specific policies—as a fundamental threat to the public sphere. Islamophobia was one of the most common hate frames in the analyzed sample, reflecting New York's history of religion-based hate crimes broadly. In late June, a woman was asked 'Are you Muslim?' before being beaten by a man on a subway in Queens. In April, an NYU student prayer room in Bobst Library was vandalized with anti-Muslim graffiti, urinated-on mats and crude drawings. 'It's hard to say that this is going to happen, but I do worry a bit about things like voter intimidation or what that [voting] experience will be like,' says Bassett, 'and what kinds of activities we could see happening around poll day.' If left unchecked, experts at CSOH argue, the kind of digital harassment seen after Mamdani's win could further legitimize and inflame anti-Muslim hate crimes and deter future candidates from Muslim or immigrant backgrounds from seeking office. 'There is this real genuine risk that this digital hate can spill further into real world harm and impact Muslims, those perceived as Muslim, and their supporters,' says Naik. 'It becomes very pertinent on social media platforms to act [and to] take down harmful speech, because we have seen numerous examples of how harmful speech can lead to offline violence, including political violence.'
The Independent
10-02-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Hate speech against religious minorities in India soared by 75% in 2024
There has been a sharp rise in hate speech incidents targeting religious minorities in India, according to a new report by an American think tank. The country recorded 1,165 hate speech events last year, a 74.4 per cent increase from 2023, the report by India Hate Lab said. As many as 98.5 per cent of these events targeted Muslims, either explicitly or in combination with Christians, while almost 10 per cent targeted Christians in some capacity. The report by India Hate Lab, a project of the Washington, DC-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate, noted a 'deeply concerning trend of escalating hate speech' especially in states governed by Narendra Modi 's BJP party and its allies. The United Nations defines hate speech as 'any kind of communication, in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor'. The report found that at least 931 of the recorded hate speech events, just under 80 per cent, occurred in states or federal territories governed by the BJP. This suggests 'a strong correlation between political control and the prevalence of hate speech', it said. The Independent reached out to the BJP for comment, but had not received a response by the time of publication. States ruled by opposition parties in contrast accounted for 234, or about 20 per cent, of the documented hate speech incidents. The states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh led the nation in hate speech incidents, collectively contributing to nearly half of the total events. The report noted that hate speech incidents spiked during last year's general elections, making up 32 per cent of the total events recorded in 2024. 'The persistence of hate speech targeting minorities – and its sharp escalation in the lead-up to the 2024 elections – suggests a deeply troubling trajectory,' the report stated. 'Hate speech is no longer just an instrument of communal polarisation but is becoming increasingly normalised as a standard feature of Indian political culture and electoral campaigns.' As many as 259, or over 22 per cent, of the recorded events featured dangerous speech, including explicit calls for violence. No less than 224 of these events occurred in states governed by the BJP or its allies or in union territories under the jurisdiction of the BJP's central government, the report said. This is an 8.4 per cent increase in dangerous speech incidents compared to 2023. According to the Dangerous Speech Project, a nonprofit research team, dangerous speech is defined as communication that 'can increase the risk that its audience will condone or participate in violence against members of another group'. Social media platforms played a major role in amplifying hate speech, the report said, with 995 of the recorded events first shared or live-streamed on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and X. The platforms did not remove such videos inciting violence even though they were in breach of their community standards, it said. 'Our report clearly demonstrates that anti-minority hate speech is not incidental but follows a deliberate pattern. It is no longer just an instrument of communal polarisation but, shockingly, a standard feature of Indian political culture and electoral campaigns, institutional structures, and social fabric,' Raqib Hameed Naik, executive director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, told The Independent. 'Modi government's politicisation of religious identity has reshaped public discourse on Muslim identity to such an extent that even leaders from opposition parties have largely refrained from categorically condemning hate speech against Muslims. The lack of public outrage over hate speech suggests the disturbing social acceptance and normalisation of the sentiments expressed in such rhetoric. The complicity of Big Tech in enabling hate speech is also very evident from its utter unwillingness to stop the weaponisation of its platforms.' The Independent has contacted Meta, X, and Google (which owns YouTube) for comment. The report further noted that while hate speech incidents nationwide rose by 74.4 per cent from 2023 to 2024, Karnataka saw a 20 per cent decline, with 32 events recorded in 2024 compared to 40 the previous year. Six of the incidents occurred during the 2024 election campaign. The southern state was governed by the BJP until May 2023, when the Congress party took power. 'The new administration implemented measures that contributed to a decline in hate speech incidents,' the report said. India has also witnessed a rise in hate speech targeting places of worship, the report said, with 274 incidents calling for the destruction of Muslim or Christian places of worship. Hate speech against vulnerable communities like the Rohingya and people of Bangladeshi origin has gone up as well. The report argued that 'the degradation of political life through the mainstreaming of hate speech signals a new low in India's political culture, one with grave implications for the security, psychological wellbeing, and fundamental sense of belonging of religious minorities in the Indian republic'.
