While rising anti-Muslim violence and sentiment in India has been making global news since Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi’s first election in 2014, many don’t realize that such policies and attitudes also harm American Muslims. Like many other religious ethnonationalist movements, Hindu nationalism claims a hyperlocal focus, but—as a recent Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) survey shows—its ideology is spreading worldwide through online platforms and diaspora networks.
Hindu nationalism, Hinduism, and “Hinduphobia”
Hindu nationalism (or Hindutva) is a Hindu supremacist ideology that insists India is first and foremost a state for Hindus. Hinduism has never been a monolith: the British Raj consolidated a massive cluster of related-but-distinct ways of being into a single unified religious identity now known as “Hinduism,” and Hindu nationalism has been criticized as a British imperial construct. India’s own constitution clearly forms India as a secular state. And a number of organizations like Hindus for Human Rights and its affiliates advocate for pluralism and equity in South Asia and North America.
At the same time, India’s current prime minister and his political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are Hindu nationalists and have handily won the world’s largest democratic elections thrice since 2014. Under their leadership, India has seen increased hostility and violence toward religious minorities, especially Muslims, who comprise the single largest religious minority group in India. The BJP is far from unique in its ethnonationalism and religious nationalism, both of which are on the rise globally as right-wing politicians define their citizenry in increasingly exclusive and exclusionary ways.
Indian immigrants, the largest immigrant population in the world, are also the largest and fastest growing migrant group in the US.¹ Hindu nationalist ideology (and specifically its trademark anti-Muslim hostility) therefore has direct bearing on the landscape of both global and US religious intolerance. In the US, attempts to challenge Hindu nationalism are so often met with accusations of “Hinduphobia,” which scholars have criticized as a “smokescreen” for religious ethnonationalism. Any attempt to understand religious diversity and religious intolerance in the US—especially of Muslims —requires an understanding of this ideology.
A growing sense of exclusion
American Muslims already face an unprecedented level of hostility and violence. CAIR research and advocacy director Corey Saylor told The Guardian that the period between October 2023 and October 2024 “stands out for its enormity” of animosity toward American Muslims. According to Saylor, “American Muslims are facing the largest wave of Islamophobic bias that we have documented since then-candidate Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban announcement in December 2015.” To address this surge, the Biden administration has announced a “First-Ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia.”
Almost 10% of American Muslims are Indian immigrants and nearly 30% of the 5.2 million American Muslims are of Asian descent, a demographic that also includes Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants and their descendants. IAMC’s survey findings show that over the past decade, most of their 950 respondents report facing “religious discrimination or harassment from Hindu contacts in the US,” and many feel a “growing sense of exclusion from Indian American cultural and social events,” especially in the wake of the BJP’s ascendancy.
Those surveyed say they face discrimination, prejudice, and provocation from Hindu friends and social contacts, as well as in professional settings from Hindu colleagues. Nearly half report harassment on social media platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn. Respondents expressed concern that this pervasive Islamophobia adversely affects their psychological and emotional wellbeing and worry about the ramifications for future generations of Indian American Muslims. Hindu nationalism, respondents overwhelmingly said, endangers “social cohesion within the Indian diaspora in the United States.”
Beyond the interpersonal damage of anti-Muslim hostility, nearly all IAMC survey respondents strongly agreed that Hindutva threatens religious minorities and the future of democracy in both India and the United States, noting Hindu nationalism’s “infiltration” into “US politics and academia.” An overwhelming 94% of respondents strongly agreed that Hindu nationalism poses a threat to religious minorities, particularly Muslims, in both the US and India. IAMC’s findings warn that Indian religious and ethnonationalism have effects that extend far beyond the borders of the world’s largest democracy, and threaten to fracture South Asian American diasporic communities and democracy in the United States.
The alignment of far-right Hindu Americans with White supremacists
The IAMC report shows that Hindu nationalism is causing well-founded concerns among Indian American Muslims. Most fear for their family members and friends still in India. One respondent wrote, “I fear there will be another genocide for the minorities in India.” But the report also clearly highlights the international and global ramifications of Hindu nationalism for those living in the United States.
While IAMC’s primary concern remains Indian American Muslims, the organization has called for broad protections against caste discrimination in American universities and other institutions. The IAMC report bears a striking resemblance to those of another report compiled in 2018 by Equality Labs, a Dalit civil rights advocacy group also invested in combating Hindu nationalism and protecting low- or uncasted Indian Americans, including Dalit Muslim Americans.² Equality Labs’ “Caste in the United States” documents extensive US caste-based discrimination, especially in the workplace.
Equality Labs’ work reinforces concerns raised by IAMC’s survey respondents, detailing the alignment between the American White supremacist far-right as well as incumbent president Donald Trump’s currying favor with far-right Hindu Americans. (Trump also recently appointed Hindu and self-described “nonwhite nationalist” Vivek Ramaswamy to co-chair the Department of Government Efficiency with South African apartheid beneficiary Elon Musk.) Both Equality Labs and IAMC compellingly demonstrate a direct link between White Christian nationalism’s increasing ascendancy in the United States and the expanding global influence of Hindu nationalism.
Both India and the United States have constitutional protections for religious freedom, yet both countries are facing a steep and alarming increase in religious intolerance and particularly anti-Muslim hostility. IAMC’s report shows not only that Hindu nationalism plays a concerning role in the spread of Islamophobia globally, but also that we cannot afford to downplay or ignore its growing influence in the landscape of American religious intolerance.
¹ The United States is the second most popular destination for Indian migrants; and as of 2023, Indian immigrants are second only to Mexican immigrants as the largest foreign-born group residing in the US. Indian immigration to the US increased 63% since 2010 (compared to 20% for immigrants to the US overall).
² Dalit identity is contested and not easily defined, but Dalits have traditionally been deemed low or no caste in India, sometimes described with the derogatory term “untouchable.”
