On June 11, a few weeks before the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, a banner appeared over the city’s skyline. “Indian Americans for Cuomo,” it read in black, bold lettering. Two days before the June 24 primary, a second one appeared, this time directly attacking the 33-year-old assemblymember Zohran Mamdani with “Save NYC from global intifada. Reject Mamdani.” Until then, it was assumed that Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to Indian-origin parents — academic Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair — and raised in New York, would be the preferred candidate for Indian Americans. After all, he had been campaigning heavily in South Asian-majority neighborhoods in the city and had been featured in a video where he was seen eating lentils and rice with his hands, drinking chai. In another video, he explained ranked-choice voting using retro Bollywood songs, Shah Rukh Khan and mango lassi, the South Asian yogurt drink.
Both banners made plenty of noise online, particularly on X, where a group called “Hindus For Cuomo” circulated images of the aerial ads along with a press release that warned voters about “mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s extremist agenda and history of hateful rhetoric.” A report from the Washington, D.C.-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate tracked online Islamophobic sentiment against Mamdani between June 13 (two days after the first aerial banner emerged over the Hudson River) and June 30, and found an overwhelming presence of posts labeling him as “anti-Hindu,” which came from accounts in both South Asia as well as the United States.
Around the same time, the American Hindu Coalition, a nonprofit based in Virginia, circulated a flyer on WhatsApp groups announcing that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo would be attending a “Rath Yatra” (chariot parade for Hindu idols) annually held at the popular Ganesh Temple in Queens. It also urged Indian Americans to reject “candidates who are openly anti-Hindu” and those who support “Hinduphobia.” The organization later endorsed the current mayor, Eric Adams, who recently dropped out of the race, but had endorsed Cuomo during the primary. This initial support for Cuomo from a section of the Hindu community came through even though he had avoided speaking to the press and was barely doing public events during the campaign for the primary. Nor did he have a strong past association with South Asians in public memory.
To anyone following the campaign, the backlash from Hindu groups to Mamdani’s campaign wasn’t surprising. Earlier, at a mayoral forum in New York, Mamdani refused to host a joint conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi if he were to visit the city, calling him a “war criminal” for the “mass slaughter of Indian Muslims in Gujarat.” He was referring to the 2002 Gujarat riots, in which more than a thousand people, a majority of them Muslim, were killed under Modi’s tenure as chief minister. Mamdani’s own Gujarati Muslim roots lend a personal edge to his opposition to Modi.
The late pushback from a few Indian-American groups (which, despite claiming to speak for all Indian Americans, nonetheless spoke the language of the Hindu right) failed to stop the “Zo-mentum,” however, and Mamdani went on to win the Democratic primary, beating Cuomo by 13 points. Mamdani’s win reshaped the city’s electorate, adding millions of new voters, many of them South Asian. Yet a question emerged because of the backlash: Were Indian Americans, the most visible group from the South Asian community, divided over support for Mamdani?
Many Indian Americans have come to expect prominent politicians of Indian origin to stick to the right-wing Hindu playbook and toe the line on Modi, in exchange for their support (notable exceptions like Rep. Pramila Jayapal notwithstanding). Democrats like Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi from Illinois, who was the keynote speaker for a Hindu nationalist convention in Chicago in 2019, and Rep. Ro Khanna from California, who, despite his progressive stances, including more recently on Gaza, advocated for Modi to address a joint session of Congress during his 2023 state visit, have received endorsements and support from the Hindu right ecosystem. So have other global figures like Usha Vance, wife of Vice President JD Vance, British politician Priti Patel, and former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar, a close aide to Adams, was called out by Mamdani in 2020 for receiving funds from right-wing Hindu groups.
Unlike them, Mamdani has had a history of challenging the policies of the current Hindu nationalist Modi government, which has been harmful to Indian Muslims. In 2019, Mamdani was among the few New York elected officials to protest India’s Citizenship Amendment Act, a law that grants citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from South Asia, introducing religion as a basis for citizenship. He also spoke out against the construction of a massive temple dedicated to Ram at the site of the demolished Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, long a flashpoint of Hindu-Muslim tensions. Moreover, as the offspring of an interfaith Hindu-Muslim marriage, Mamdani’s Muslim identity and steadfast opposition to right-wing Hindu politics affirmed that he would never be an Indian media darling like his fellow compatriots.
However, by selectively aligning itself with a coalition of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Nepalese communities as well as Sikh Indian communities, Mamdani’s campaign managed to successfully circumvent opposition from certain Hindu groups and secure his nomination. Now, as the Democratic mayoral nominee and the widely popular frontrunner in the race, Mamdani is running a different campaign than he was as a long-shot candidate who started out with a 1% chance of winning.
Since June 24, Mamdani has been focused on consolidating his support from the Democratic establishment; meeting with Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who donated heavily to Cuomo’s primary campaign; adding campaign staff with experience of running more conventional races; and paying more attention to pushback, whether from Jewish or Hindu New Yorkers.
But this resistance to Mamdani’s agenda (and, in the case of some Hindu groups, to his identity as a Muslim person of Indian heritage) has created space for other candidates to align themselves with his opponents. Cuomo, in particular, has repeatedly attacked Mamdani over his support for Palestine and has been working hard to find common ground with right-wing Hindu groups that are anti-Mamdani. But it’s not just Cuomo. Adams, before he quit the race, and even Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa have all made rounds in the community to win the “Hindu vote” over the past few weeks. All of this makes the Hindu community an especially interesting one to watch — a small but increasingly visible voting bloc whose influence in New York politics is unusually pronounced for a diaspora group.
Since the primary, all candidates have been visiting Hindu temples across the city and attending various events, including Navratri — a nine-day celebration that is one of the most important events in the Hindu calendar. Cuomo has been regularly meeting with Hindu community members in and around New York, and since July has visited at least five Hindu temples and attended one private fundraiser with the “Hindus for Cuomo” group. He also attended a Navratri event hosted by Bangladesh Puja Samiti of New York, a Bangladeshi Hindu organization.
His temple visits included one to the BAPS Swaminarayan Temple in Queens. Its parent organization, Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), was recently under a federal investigation on charges of trafficking Dalit stonemasons as religious volunteers and employing them for the construction of the Akshardham temple in New Jersey. In September, BAPS claimed that the federal investigation had been dropped, but a civil lawsuit for wage theft is still pending.
Beyond his in-person outreach, Cuomo’s campaign has sought to utilize the attacks on Mamdani from the Hindu right to its advantage. A piece in the New York Post featured some Indian Americans who did not support Mamdani, one of them being Satya Dosapati, a telecom worker in New Jersey. According to Campaign Finance Board data, Dosapati belongs to the group “Indian Americans for Cuomo,” which has spent close to $10,000 on the former governor’s campaign. More recently, Fix the City, the pro-Cuomo super PAC formed by donors like Bloomberg and food delivery app DoorDash, spent over $7,400 on social media ads, some of which prominently featured the New York Post headline “Indian Americans Call Out Mamdani’s ‘Hinduphobia.’”
Not all Hindu groups have been behind Cuomo from the start, however. Many, like the Gujarati Samaj, one of the oldest Hindu organizations in New York, have instead shared a close relationship with Adams. As mayor, Adams has attended several Hindu festivals across the city, including Janmashtami and Ganesh Puja celebrations that are less well known outside South Asian circles. In July, just weeks after Mamdani’s primary win, news broke that Adams was planning to attend a Gujarati Samaj event with Kajal Shingala (also known as Kajal Hindustani), a right-wing Hindu agitator known for her anti-Muslim and anti-Christian rhetoric, including speeches accused of inciting communal tension and hate.
But Adams, who has routinely appeared at multiple public and private events with the organization, was forced to withdraw following protests from local South Asian organizations. Later, at the event, Shingala described Muslims as “zombies” and “enemies of Hindus” and called Mamdani a “rakshas” (a demon).
In 2022, Adams’ administration secured passage of a resolution, co-sponsored by Rajkumar and Mamdani, to declare the Hindu festival of Diwali a public school holiday and organized the first-ever five-borough Diwali tour a year later. He famously made an appearance with Modi to celebrate International Yoga Day and later said the Ram Temple was “extremely important” to Hindus in New York City.
Later that year, a significant controversy erupted within New York’s Indian community when Adams allowed a float based on the temple to be included in the India Day Parade on August 15. The float was organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, a U.S. affiliate of a Hindu nationalist organization in India. Following pushback from progressive Indian-American organizations, state senators and elected officials — including Mamdani — Adams condemned the inclusion of the “anti-Muslim” hate symbol in the parade.
Given his years of outreach, it’s not surprising that Adams is often called a “Hindu mayor” within the community, indicating his popular appeal within the base. During his campaign for reelection, Adams used these relationships to garner support for his candidacy among Hindu New Yorkers. Even though he declined Shingala’s event, he continued to visit temples in the city. His campaign merch included an endorsement in Hindi from “South Asian New Yorkers, ” and Adams used the rhetoric common among right-wing Hindu online circles to attack Mamdani, accusing him of “smear[ing] India’s Prime Minister as a ‘war criminal.’” Even as he faced pressure to drop his campaign, Adams attended a Gujarati Samaj event a week before announcing his exit, signaling his enduring close ties with the group. (The organization declined to comment when New Lines reached out to ask if they were endorsing Cuomo now.)
Underscoring the recent shift of Indian Americans to the right, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa also made appearances at Hindu festival events. He attended “Ramayan in the Park,” organized by Indo-Caribbean groups, participated in the India Day parade and visited a temple. On X, he highlighted Hinduism’s emphasis on animal protection and referenced “Protect the Animals,” the second, independent ballot line that he is running on alongside the Republican ticket.
Meanwhile, a group of progressive South Asian organizations launched “Hindus for Zohran” to counter the pro-Cuomo narrative in the community and mobilize Hindu voters. They hosted an inaugural fundraiser in August, along with other South Asian groups, drawing upon multifaith, syncretic traditions of South Asia, like performances of ghazal — a form of poetry that originated in Arabic but has flourished in the Urdu literary tradition and explores themes of love, loss and longing — reciting works by Pakistani resistance poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and featuring Palestinian art, tarot card readings and food trucks selling dosas and kebabs.
“We felt Hindus needed to mobilize to protect Zohran and his campaign against increasingly hateful attacks from Hindutva organizations and spokespeople,” Sunita Vishwanath, who co-founded Hindus for Zohran in a personal capacity, told New Lines. “[We want to] disprove the notion that Hindu New Yorkers don’t support Zohran,” said Vishwanath, who also runs the nonprofit Hindus for Human Rights.
During Navratri, the group also organized “Dance in the Round” by the Gandhi Statue in New York, an inclusive Garba performance where participants perform the traditional Gujarati stick dance in a circle, as is customary during the festival. “Zohran’s campaign has finally given a voice to those that have for far too long been forgotten, which is why it’s important for us to mobilize the South Asian diaspora in a historic way. This isn’t just about this race, it’s about our future in this city and country,” Japneet Singh, who ran for city council earlier this year and is now leading the “South Asians for Zohran” group, told New Lines.
It stands out that, unlike groups supporting Cuomo or Adams, Hindu supporters of Mamdani have maintained easily accessible online profiles — the Hindus for Zohran account has over a thousand followers on Instagram — and organized events in high-traffic areas like Union Square. “Hindus for Cuomo” and “Hindus for Adams” (which has seemingly disbanded; calls from New Lines went straight to voicemail and emails bounced back), on the other hand, have operated mainly in private, through closed-door events, at addresses that have been undisclosed or difficult to find, possibly as a precaution to avert scrutiny around the speakers and attendees — like with Shingala in July.
Since being described as “anti-Hindu” by a section of the Hindu society, both in the United States and abroad, Mamdani has made an extra effort to reach out to Hindu New Yorkers. On Raksha Bandhan, the Hindu festival celebrating sibling bonds, Mamdani congratulated his followers on Instagram (which he has also done in previous years during his term as an assemblymember). On Sept. 22, Mamdani met with a group of Hindu leaders in Queens at an event titled “Indian American Community Meeting with Zohran Mamdani.” On Oct. 5, in a historic first for his campaign, Mamdani visited two popular Hindu temples in New York, which included the Ganesh Temple (the same one Cuomo attended before the primary) and BAPS Swaminarayan Temple in Queens, where he met with some of the same members who had hosted Cuomo a few months ago.
At the Ganesh Temple, Mamdani offered prayers and directly responded to Shingala’s comments, saying, “I’m proud of my Hindu heritage. I’m proud to be someone who would be the first Muslim mayor of this city, and I’m proud to hold all those things together as we deliver this vision for the city.” As the clip of his interview circulated online, right-wing Hindu accounts from South Asia as well as the U.S. used it to attack Mamdani and those who had facilitated his temple visit, some alleging that Hindus in India would not have allowed him inside a temple. However, in contrast to his time as an assemblymember — he has directly called out “Hindu nationalists” and “Hindu supremacy” — as the Democratic nominee, Mamdani refrained from isolating those whom he might govern if elected mayor.
When asked about groups like “Hindus for Cuomo,” Mamdani called out Cuomo’s “politics of division,” and said that the former governor will find others who want to participate in that same politics, “no matter where they are from,” before bringing the focus back to affordability, as he has done throughout his campaign.
As South Asian New Yorkers have emerged as a major political force in the city, galvanized in part by Mamdani’s campaign as well as his background, the politics of the subcontinent have been prominently reflected in this historic mayoral election. If elected in November, Mamdani’s mayoralty — like his campaign — will have the chance to help move the diaspora away from the fissures that have run in South Asia for generations, toward a more inclusive vision that includes not just Hindu but also Muslim, Sikh and Dalit New Yorkers. How that will unfold, given the growing alignment of some right-wing Hindu groups with the Trump administration, which has heavily attacked Mamdani, is yet to be determined.
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