The Hindu diaspora are having an identity crisis (and it isn't cute)

The latest diaspora identity crisis, unlike others that have preceded it, strikes at the heart of the idea of a secular, pluralistic and more equal India.

A still from @wanderingkamya’s Instagram video| Instagram

When Anupam Kher recently posted on Twitter that there is no place like home, with pictures of a beautifully decorated apartment with panoramic views, it was hard to disagree with him. Now Kher is a self cast patriot. He campaigns for his wife, actress Kirron Kher (who is a member of the ruling right wing BJP and a sitting member of the Indian parliament), he viciously attacks Indian liberals, once compared the arrests of JNU student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid to “pest-control”, often retweets Prime Minister Modi’s statements and has vociferously pushed himself as the voice of Kashmiri Pandits. It was a little surprising therefore to find out that the place Kher calls home is, in fact, the very American and rather liberal city of New York, New York.

Unfortunately, Kher isn’t an anomaly. Meet the new, cosmopolitan, liberal, cultured, Hindu American. Liberal in the streets, Hindutvadi in the sheets (Or, you know, vice versa, if they happen to be visiting India).

From @wanderingkamya, the Indian origin peace loving influencer, whose tearful video explaining how she just couldn’t understand why people were being so mean to her about the demolition of the Babri masjid and why they couldn’t “just be happy for us” on the construction of the Ram Mandir went viral, to the Texan Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni (‘Sri’ is his name, not an honorific) whose grassroots campaign for Congress has the support of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, recasting the Hindutva story as one of victimhood and persecution (and therefore as one palatable in the US to the Democratic mainstream) is surprisingly common.

Kulkarni has described the founder of the Houston chapter of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (the overseas wing of the RSS), Ramesh Bhutada, as being like a father to him, attended the Howdy Modi rally at Texas in 2019, and has accepted significant donations from the HSS. While Kulkarni, facing a storm of criticism, has attempted to distance himself, and pointed out that he has also attended a speech given by the Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, he hasn’t yet publicly denounced the HSS or returned the money they contributed to his campaign.

In Mindy Kaling’s ditzy desi Netflix series, Never Have I Ever (2020), the college-returned cousin of the heroine explains his presence at the local Ganesh puja by earnestly telling her how he had learnt how to take pride in his own culture from his Native-American roommate. Leaving aside his casual comparison of a public Ganesh puja (popularised by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the early 20th century to unite the Hindu community in Mumbai) with a Native American pow wow, the implications are clear. Somehow, the 1.2 billion strong global Hindu population is facing an existential threat to their identity on par with that faced by the Native Americans, and that young (usually upper-caste) Hindu Americans need to act to save it.

Now desi identity crises are not new, and we homegrown Indians have generally enjoyed watching them from afar. From Amrish Puri’s nostalgic Punjabi shopkeeper Chaudhary Baldev Singh in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1994), who wants his UK raised daughter, Simran, to return to India and marry the land owning, gun toting, very Punjabi Kuljeet instead of the boy she meets on a European holiday, Shahrukh Khan (named Raj, and not well, Shahrukh, which would have been an entirely different movie), to the good-looking but terribly confused Bengali hero of Jhumpa Lahiri’s award winning novel, Namesake, we’ve generally been able to treat desi confusion as some sort of first world problem. Growing up in newly liberalised India, the fact that our distant American desi cousins didn’t have to wear school uniforms or braid their hair into tight plaits and had lockers in schools where they could actually store their things in school, more than made up for any compulsory Bharatnatyam classes they had to attend. The greatest challenge facing most of then seemed to involve whether or not to marry someone who wasn’t Indian, which wasn’t a situation any of us were likely to be faced with. It really had very little to do with us, apart from providing us with blockbuster movies to watch and stories to snigger over.

Unfortunately, that is no longer true. The latest avatar of the American Born Confused (and very Hindu) Desi, has taken up a mantle that hits at issues that sit in the heart of Indian social and political affairs today- whitewashing communalism and denying the existence of caste.

The Indian diaspora has always been courted by Indian leaders, but never on the scale at which they've been courted by Prime Minister Modi. His government’s foreign policy initiatives have relied heavily on the effect he has on the diaspora. Huge rallies with flashy speeches and sell out crowds (Madison Square Garden, and the more recent Howdy Modi rally immediately come to mind) have characterised Mr. Modi’s foreign tours. In the first 55 months of his tenure as Prime Minister, he spent a staggering Rs. 2,021 crores to visit 92 countries (In comparison, Manmohan Singh visited 93 countries over a 10 year tenure and Indira Gandhi visited 113 in her 15 years as prime minister). He has invited the diaspora to be a part of the India story, and they’ve responded enthusiastically.

In return, they’ve taken on the role of the defenders and protectors of his domestic policies. Criticism of the Indian government’s human rights record or treatment of its minorities is immediately recast as Hindu-phobia and dismissed. Similarly, attempts to discuss caste and caste related discrimination and violence (whether in India or abroad) are also shushed up as being detrimental to the global image of India.

In 2017, the UK government called for discussions on the banning of caste-based discrimination prevalent in the UK. This followed a 2010 report commissioned by the UK government that had detailed several instances of caste discrimination and harrasment within the Hindu community in the UK. The suggestion was met by swift criticism by Hindu diaspora groups, one of whom, with the (supposed) support of the Indian High Commission managed to convey the impression that anti-caste discrimination legislation would be “an attempt to embarrass India”. The right wing National Council of Hindu Temples went further and released a report that classified such anti-discrimination legislation a hate crime against Hindus. Caving in to pressure from this powerful lobby, nothing further was done on the matter, and no legislation banning caste-based discrimination was enacted in the UK.

This narrative of “embarrassing” India on the global stage, so deftly supported and propped up by the Hindu diaspora also has frightening implications at home. The language is used repeatedly by the Indian state while stifling dissent domestically. From the anti-CAA protests, to the Delhi riots chargesheets, to the Hathras rape case, the first reaction of the Indian government in any situation where its handling warrants criticism has been to point to an “international conspiracy” to defame India. This charge allows them to use draconian laws including colonial era sedition laws, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the National Security Act to detain and harass dissidents, for months (sometimes years) on end, without trial or bail.

It is increasingly clear that the Hindu diaspora is being used effectively to soft-face the bigotry spreading at home. They work to legitimise it, rebrand it and make it palatable abroad. Their latest identity crisis, unlike others that have preceded it, strikes at the heart of the idea of a secular, pluralistic and more equal India. We can’t afford to ignore it.