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I started working on this story for @POLITICOMag over a year ago and am glad and relieved it’s finally out in the world. It’s about how Hindutva, the ideology underpinning Hindu nationalism, is penetrating American politics. Just ask these politicians https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/30/hindu-nationalism-election-indian-american-voters-433608
To its advocates, Hindutva,, or "Hindu-ness," is a benign, catch-all term for Hindu culture that encompasses its history, language, civilization and religion. But its origins and deployment over time are rooted in an ethnonationalist and often violent vision of Indian culture
The influence of Hindu nationalism in the US has long been an open secret. It is now pushing its way forward to becoming a bigger issue in our electoral process — which we can see most viscerally through the experiences of Indian American and Hindu politicians
Few expect the influence of Hindutva to radically move Indian Americans, who are strongly attached to the Democratic party, to the right in American politics. But it could potentially persuade a population that includes some 500,000 voters in swing states
As well as voters in diverse battleground districts in the US, whose populations are not just thinking about their identities in a U.S. context but are influenced by *transnational identity politics* - both with how they see these politicians and the issues most pressing to them
. @SriPKulkarni's district in Texas is a prime example of this. So is @RoKhanna's district in Silicon Valley, which is the only Asian majority district in the continental U.S., as well as the largest concentration of South Asians in the country
As the South Asian diaspora in the U.S. has become more polarized about the advancement of Hindu nationalism in India, they are in turn looking to these politicians to claim them for their own causes - whether it's to reject Hindutva or embrace it
These politicians are criticized for both being too soft and not hard enough when it comes to Hindu nationalism. With the former, you see Muslims, for example, arguing they will now withhold their votes. With the latter, you're seeing pop-up Hindu Republicans running against them
These uncomfortable questions Indian American and Hindu politicians are confronting spotlights a broader conversation that’s long been simmering among the communities trying to claim them....
...The need to tease out faith from nationalism, and innocuous cultural support from violent ideological systems. And the struggle to discuss this w Muslims seeing their counterparts in India lynched, and Hindus who are misinformed of, in denial about, or defending their ideology
How Hindutva has long been mainstreamed as simply Indian or Hindu culture is what Hindus in the U.S. are now actively rejecting - you see this w groups like Sadhana and Hindus for Human rights. This is also why it's been difficult & extremely delicate territory to report on this
Major thank you to my supportive and patient editor @margyslattery, who whipped me into shape so that you're reading a piece of journalism and not a dissertation on Hindu nationalism in the U.S. :) And to @vauhinivara for suggesting I pitch Politico!
And special thanks to @RoKhanna's staff, who welcomed my attendance at his town halls with my shotgun mic, & appreciated the interest of a journalist actually doing ground reporting on something that's also hard for them (and other staffers) to talk about https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/30/hindu-nationalism-election-indian-american-voters-433608
Also, over the course of reporting, I talked to several people not formally quoted in the story, but whose feedback greatly informed the piece, including @sarasadhwan @evianeleidig @MichaelKugelman @SangayMishra @AmarShergillCA & @amitpal. I'm sure I've forgotten others. Thank u!
