If elected, Democrat Zohran Mamdani would be the first Asian American and Muslim mayor to lead New York City. While his campaign won over many of New York City’s immigrant communities, he’s facing some of his fiercest criticism from South Asian voters who claim he is anti-Hindu, pointing to policy positions and foreign policy statements.
Mamdani —who was born in Uganda to Indian parents, his father Muslim and his mother Hindu — and his campaign have received a high volume of Islamophobic attacks, including from Hindus in India and in the diaspora, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate.
“This message spans both U.S.-based far-right accounts and accounts based in South Asia,” the report states, “showing how a local New York race becomes fuel for a globalized grievance network.”
One of the more extreme examples was on display at a community event at the Gujarati Samaj, a cultural center in Queens last week. Kajal Hindusthani, a controversial Hindu speaker from India, told the event’s 350 attendees that Mamdani is “a new demon” who stands in the way of righteous rule – or “Ram Rajya” – for Hindus.
“As long as demons are alive on earth,” she told the rapt audience in Hindi, “Ram Rajya cannot come.” She urged audience members to get out and vote against Mamdani.
The vitriol shows how religious tensions normally associated with the subcontinent have firmly entered the New York City political landscape, and have the potential to shape South Asian turnout and votes in the November general election. At the same time, Mamdani has generated support from Hindus, including some who claim he champions pluralism.
Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to questions about the attacks, and Mamdani himself has not indicated how he would attempt to bridge the religious divides, if at all. However, earlier in July, after Mayor Eric Adams backed out of the event with Hindusthani, Mamdani told Gothamist, “We should be bringing New Yorkers together, not stoking division.”
The differences, however, could matter in a tight race in a city with 450,000 South Asian residents, including 255,000 Indians, 103,000 Bangladeshis and 64,000 Pakistanis. While nearly half of the Indian-American population is Hindu, approximately 60% of the Bangladeshi and Pakistani population in this country is Muslim, according to the Pew Research Center.
The anti-Mamdani appeals have come in a variety of forms: a New Jersey-based group, Indian Americans for Cuomo, flew a banner over the city that read, “Save NYC from Global Intifada. Reject Mamdani.”
Prachi Patankar, a member of Savera, a network of progressive Indian American groups, said “the majority of the Indian community” does not embrace anti-Muslim beliefs.
She pointed to a recent survey from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace showing that most community members are concerned about Hindu majoritarianism in India as well as white nationalism in the United States.
But Patankar said “there is definitely a vocal minority” within the community that propagates anti-Muslim ideology and aligns with white supremacist causes.
Sangay Mishra, a political scientist at Drew University in New Jersey, said some anti-Muslim attitudes within the community played out against a broader backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiments.
For some Hindus, Mishra said, safety required distancing themselves from Muslims, who are regularly portrayed by the American political establishment as dangerous others. By the same logic, he said, “So as long as you’re Hindu and you highlight your Hinduism, you won’t be targeted as Muslims.”
For Mamdani, opposition to his candidacy has also centered on his own public statements and policy positions. These include his statements about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom he’s called “a war criminal.”
Suhag Shukla, the executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, a national group based in Philadelphia, said Mamdani’s criticism of Modi amounted to “fair game,” but that his “liberal use of the terms ‘extremist’ and ‘fascist’ in the context of Hindu American leaders” was “deeply troubling.”
Shukla also said Mamdani had failed to issue any statements after a Gandhi statue outside a Hindu temple in Queens was destroyed three years ago or later, when it was replaced by a new statue, “which is disappointing given his being a part of the South Asian community, a good majority of whom are Hindu.”
The act of vandalism was initially investigated as a potential hate act but charges were later dropped.
The Coalition of Hindus of North America, a national group, criticized Mamdani and other state legislators for cosponsoring a bill that would make caste a protected category in New York. The legislation seeks to prohibit caste-based discrimination in employment or housing.
Although the legislation, which was sponsored by Queens Assemblymember Steven Raga, does not invoke Hinduism or India, the organization stated in a post on X that it would “unfairly target people of South Asian descent or origin (especially Indian Americans and Hindus), subject them to additional scrutiny, leave them vulnerable to bullying in schools, and deprive them of their fundamental civil rights in the workplace or elsewhere.”
Raga’s office did not respond to questions about the legislation.
But some opposition from Hindu conservatives has focused on Mamdani’s identity, based on interviews, online commentary and remarks at the Gujarati Samaj.
Dr. Uma Mysorekar, the president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, which operates the Ganesh Temple in Flushing, said she’d heard from a number of devotees, worried about the prospect that Mamdani will be elected in November.
“ I fully understand the fears that some people do have,” Mysorekar said. “ They feel that maybe Hindus may not get fair treatment.”
But she said the fears weren’t justified.
“It’s just not fair to judge him based on the fact that he’s a Muslim or a follower of Islam,” she said, adding, “ we should learn to see what he can do best for the city of New York.”
But some Hindus said they were not willing to wait.
Amita Parikh, a resident of Bellerose, Queens, said she appreciated the message of women’s empowerment from Hindusthani, and was moved to oppose Mamdani.
“If you vote [for] him, then everybody will come here and it will become a Muslim country. America will become Muslim,” Parikh said, adding that she had voted for Trump for similar reasons, but hadn’t decided whom she’d support in the mayoral election.
However, Jagruti Shah, an immigrant who said she’d moved to the United States more than 40 years ago and had since retired from the medical profession, was unsettled by Hindusthani’s speech.
“She was too much opposite the Muslim culture,” said Shah, who like Parikh attended the Hindusthani event at the Gujarati Samaj. “We don’t like fights. We need peaceful life.”
Hindus for Zohran
But Mamdani also has vocal Hindu supporters, including Lavanya Daradhalli, an immigrant from India who lives in Manhattan and is part of a group called Hindus for Zohran. The group has other members with Indian roots, she said, as well as Sri Lankan, Nepali, Tibetan and Indo-Caribbean members.
“He really reflects everything we are,” Daradhalli said. “We are very pluralistic. So is he.”
For the same reason, she said, she rejected the message offered in Hindusthani’s speech, arguing that it amounted to “hate” and had no place within the multicultural fabric of New York City. “ I think an event like that is a gross misunderstanding of who we are,” she said. “People are just being silly at this point.”
Other supporters noted that Mamdani has taken part in Hindu festivities as a candidate, including those conducted at a Nepali Hindu temple in Ridgewood. He also addressed a crowd at the Divya Jyoti Association’s Let’s Light Up Liberty Avenue Diwali Celebration last November, in Queens, where he delivered his talking points about affordability within the context of Hindu values.
“This celebration, Diwali, is about the triumph of light over darkness,” he said to attendees. “It is hard sometimes to find that light in this city when you can’t afford your Con Ed bill, you can’t afford your water bill, you can’t afford your rent, and we got a city that’s driving up all those costs.”
Despite the criticisms coming from some of her fellow Hindus, Mysorekar, the longtime head of the Ganesh Temple in Flushing, said she had few concerns about the possibility of a Mamdani mayoralty. One of the temple’s biggest events is the annual Ratha Yatra, a vibrant celebration in which the god Ganesha is paraded through nearby streets on a chariot. Adams had taken part in the event, and if Mamdani were elected, she said she would surely extend an invitation to him, too.
“No question about that,” Mysorekar said. “There’s no doubt. We’ve invited every single mayor. Doesn’t matter what religion he belongs to. We respect the position of the mayor.”
Correction: An earlier version of the story misidentified the religious backgrounds of Zohran Mamdani’s parents. His father is Muslim and his mother is Hindu.
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