nomination<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\nSince 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
But this resistance to Mamdani\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201cHindu vote\u201d over the past few weeks. All of this makes the Hindu community an especially interesting one to watch \u2014 a small but increasingly visible voting bloc whose influence in New York politics is unusually pronounced for a diaspora group.<\/p>\n
Since the primary, all candidates have been visiting Hindu temples across the city and attending various events, including Navratri \u2014 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 \u201cHindus for Cuomo\u201d group. He also attended a Navratri event hosted by Bangladesh Puja Samiti of New York, a Bangladeshi Hindu organization.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Beyond his in-person outreach, Cuomo\u2019s 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 \u201cIndian Americans for Cuomo,\u201d which has spent close to $10,000 on the former governor\u2019s 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 \u201cIndian Americans Call Out Mamdani\u2019s \u2018Hinduphobia.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201czombies\u201d and \u201cenemies of Hindus\u201d and called Mamdani a \u201crakshas\u201d (a demon).<\/p>\n
In 2022, Adams\u2019 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 \u201cextremely important\u201d to Hindus in New York City.<\/p>\n
Later that year, a significant controversy erupted within New York\u2019s 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 \u2014 including Mamdani \u2014 Adams condemned the inclusion of the \u201canti-Muslim\u201d hate symbol in the parade.<\/p>\n
Given his years of outreach, it\u2019s not surprising that Adams is often called a \u201cHindu mayor\u201d 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\u2019s event, he continued to visit temples in the city. His campaign merch included an endorsement in Hindi from \u201cSouth Asian New Yorkers, \u201d and Adams used the rhetoric common among right-wing Hindu online circles to attack Mamdani, accusing him of \u201csmear[ing] India\u2019s Prime Minister as a \u2018war criminal.\u2019\u201d 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.)<\/p>\n
Underscoring the recent shift of Indian Americans to the right, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa also made appearances at Hindu festival events. He attended \u201cRamayan in the Park,\u201d organized by Indo-Caribbean groups, participated in the India Day parade and visited a temple. On X, he highlighted Hinduism\u2019s emphasis on animal protection and referenced \u201cProtect the Animals,\u201d the second, independent ballot line that he is running on alongside the Republican ticket.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a group of progressive South Asian organizations launched \u201cHindus for Zohran\u201d 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 \u2014 a form of poetry that originated in Arabic but has flourished in the Urdu literary tradition and explores themes of love, loss and longing \u2014 reciting works by Pakistani resistance poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and featuring Palestinian art, tarot card readings and food trucks selling dosas and kebabs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt Hindus needed to mobilize to protect Zohran and his campaign against increasingly hateful attacks from Hindutva organizations and spokespeople,\u201d Sunita Vishwanath, who co-founded Hindus for Zohran in a personal capacity, told New Lines. \u201c[We want to] disprove the notion that Hindu New Yorkers don\u2019t support Zohran,\u201d said Vishwanath, who also runs the nonprofit Hindus for Human Rights.<\/p>\n
During Navratri, the group also organized \u201cDance in the Round\u201d 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. \u201cZohran\u2019s campaign has finally given a voice to those that have for far too long been forgotten, which is why it\u2019s important for us to mobilize the South Asian diaspora in a historic way. This isn\u2019t just about this race, it\u2019s about our future in this city and country,\u201d Japneet Singh, who ran for city council earlier this year and is now leading the \u201cSouth Asians for Zohran\u201d group, told New Lines.<\/p>\n
It stands out that, unlike groups supporting Cuomo or Adams, Hindu supporters of Mamdani have maintained easily accessible online profiles \u2014 the Hindus for Zohran account has over a thousand followers on Instagram \u2014 and organized events in high-traffic areas like Union Square. \u201cHindus for Cuomo\u201d and \u201cHindus for Adams\u201d (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 \u2014 like with Shingala in July.<\/p>\n
Since being described as \u201canti-Hindu\u201d 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 \u201cIndian American Community Meeting with Zohran Mamdani.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
At the Ganesh Temple, Mamdani offered prayers and directly responded to Shingala\u2019s comments, saying, \u201cI\u2019m proud of my Hindu heritage. I\u2019m proud to be someone who would be the first Muslim mayor of this city, and I\u2019m proud to hold all those things together as we deliver this vision for the city.\u201d 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 \u2014 he has directly called out \u201cHindu nationalists\u201d and \u201cHindu supremacy\u201d \u2014 as the Democratic nominee, Mamdani refrained from isolating those whom he might govern if elected mayor.<\/p>\n
When asked about groups like \u201cHindus for Cuomo,\u201d Mamdani called out Cuomo\u2019s \u201cpolitics of division,\u201d and said that the former governor will find others who want to participate in that same politics, \u201cno matter where they are from,\u201d before bringing the focus back to affordability, as he has done throughout his campaign.<\/p>\n
As South Asian New Yorkers have emerged as a major political force in the city, galvanized in part by Mamdani\u2019s 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\u2019s mayoralty \u2014 like his campaign \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Become a member<\/a> today to receive access to all our paywalled essays and the best of New Lines delivered to your inbox through our newsletters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On June 11, a few weeks before the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, a banner appeared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[416,7842,9,24,55,54,56,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-9194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-hindus","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-city-news","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}