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Dear pro-CAA Indian-origin protesters, you feed off US secularism but support Hindu Rashtra

Diasporic chauvinism is not unique to the global Hindu community. But a combination of several factors makes India’s case a toxic ideological brew.

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On Christmas eve, I attended a gathering of mostly-Indian origin people outside the Indian consulate in San Francisco to protest the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. At some point during the protest, a man and a woman, also probably of Indian provenance, arrived and took their place across the street. Each held a poster in support of the CAA.

Like the anti-CAA protesters, they were exercising their right to democratic protest in the US. I could not help but wonder if they had any inkling of the several contradictions that their presence highlighted. Visible minorities in the US, by ethnicity and very probably by religion, perhaps not even US citizens, they were claiming and freely exercising the rights of free assembly, expression, and protest that belong to Americans. Yet, they were doing so in support of an Act that denies South Asian Muslims the same rights as Hindus, Sikhs, and members of other faiths in the region.

The placards they held carried banal statements like “I support CAA.” They stood in silence until the end of the protest, then melted away into the crowd of anti-CAA protesters. Many pro-CAA protests have seen thin attendance — a friend on Twitter noted that only one person turned up in Toronto — though it is likely that there are many NRIs who support the legislation but do not take to the streets. 

The pro-CAA protesters in the US — the same ones that thronged Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Houston event in September 2019 — are drawn from two overlapping groups. First, the aggressive Modi supporters from cities like Fremont and Sunnyvale in California that are populated with Indian immigrants who largely work in the technology sector. Second, an older community of Hindu NRIs across the US — from the Bay Area to New Jersey — whose cultural conservatism combined with experiences of social alienation and exclusion have led them to respond positively to the BJP’s outreach over the decades. The mobilisation occurs through a network of organisations that spans the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh — the overseas arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — Hindu Students Council, community groups at local temples, and caste and regional groups in neighbourhoods, even corporations.

But beyond the contradictions displayed by the pro-CAA protester couple, conservative Hindu nationalist Indians and Indian-origin people in the US — who almost invariably are upper caste — embody other bizarre paradoxes too. In the US, they eagerly embrace affirmative action and initiatives related to diversity and inclusion that benefit them, but rant about reservations for Dalits and the supposed appeasement of Muslims in the Indian context. They support secularism in the American setting but sneer at the legacy of Nehruvian secularism in India. They defend a secular democracy in the US but bat for a Hindu Rashtra in India.

This kind of perspective, and its acute lack of self-awareness, is the product of an amalgamation of factors, some with deep historical roots. The messages on posters carried by the pro-CAA protesters at other gatherings in the US offer valuable insights into this weltanschauung.

Indian-origin people in the US carrying protest banners in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) | Photo courtesy: Rohit Chopra | ThePrint

Also read: How Rediff On The NeT first created a template for the Hindu Right online in the 1990s


Victimhood narrative, diasporic chauvinism

The most significant factor in what may be called diasporic Hindu majoritarianism is the idea of Hindus as a historically victimised community whose sufferings at the hands of Muslims have not been acknowledged. This narrative, which has been central to the rhetoric, politics, and cultural agenda of Hindu nationalist ideology since India’s Independence, constructs an imagined Hindu community, which has been the victim of a genocide and ‘Holocaust’ perpetrated by Muslims. 

The narrative converges with the stereotype of the ‘Muslim terrorist’ and the post 9/11 suspicion of Islam as an inherently violent faith. These tropes can be found in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speeches as well as in the near-incomprehensible tweets of low-level BJP IT cell trolls. From this vantage point, any initiative, like the CAA, that denies Muslims certain rights while granting them to Hindus, Sikhs, and others, is both consistent with principles of justice and redressing a historic wrong.

The second major reason is simply that many immigrants from India, Hindu or otherwise, no matter how educated, seemingly liberal, cosmopolitan, or modern in their manner, have a deeply instrumental understanding of principles of human rights, minority rights, inclusion, and diversity. Western commitments to these ideas are simply mechanisms to be gamed toward securing a green card or US citizenship, in the same way that many Indians in the US are careful not to express discriminatory sentiments in public but will often make casteist, communal, or racist remarks in community gatherings. Such a cynical, dog-eat-dog, zero-sum approach views Hindus and Muslims as adversaries, the latter seen as disloyal to India and the logical inhabitants of Pakistan while India is deemed to be the obvious land of Hindus.

Diasporic chauvinism is not unique to Indians or to the global Hindu community. But combined with the history of sectarian conflict in India, the ascendancy of the Hindu Right, and the demonisation of Muslims in Modi’s India, it makes for a singularly toxic ideological brew.

As we know from great Marxist thinkers like Antonio Gramsci and Raymond Williams, it is the job of the ideology to conceal its contradictions. It is likely then that the Indian couple protesting on Arguello Boulevard in San Francisco on behalf of the CAA saw their support as innocent, straightforward, and consistent with Hindu rights. This too is part of the tragedy of Modi’s ‘new India.’

The author is an Associate Professor at Santa Clara University, California, US. Views are personal.


Also read: Once again, an IIT Kharagpur grad is bringing his regressive World Hindu Congress to US


 

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88 COMMENTS

  1. 1) Dear Rohit Chopra,
    You define yourselves as secular but remained mum on plight of non muslims fleeing religious persecution. I call your BS.
    2) Dear Rohit Chopra,
    You legitimize Islamic theocracies yet oppose a fictitious non existent so called ‘Hindu Rashtra’. I call your BS.
    3) Dear Rohit Chopra,
    You call yourself liberal, yet refuse to help refugees unless they are Muslims. Technically you are an Islamist. Google it, that’s literally the definition of an Islamist. I call your BS.
    4) Dear Rohit Chopra,
    You say that Muslims belong in India yet you say Hindus should not seek refuge in the land where Hinduism was born. I call your BS.
    5) Dear Rohit Chopra,
    You talk about Secularism of USA without knowing that the US gave special rights of entry to Christians, Jews, Bahá’í fleeing Iran under the Lautenberg Amendment 1990, without including Muslims in it Yet you oppose India when they make a similar law for persecuted non muslims. I call your BS.
    6) Dear Rohit Chopra,
    You talk about Secularism yet you forget that a secular state Turkey, provided special refuge to 2.6 million Syrian Muslims by prioritizing them yet you raise your eyebrows when India wants to do the same for Afghani Sikhs and Hindus who are now seeing Taliban come back to power. I call your BS.
    7) Dear Rohit Chopra,
    You talk about the rights of South Asian Muslims instead of talking about the rights of South Asians as a people. You are not truly secular if your Secularism is defined by just one religion. It is ‘communalisation of convinience’ & ‘bigotry of low expectations’.
    I call your BS.

    8) You never talked about the Hindus and Afghans who wear the yellow badges under Taliban, like the Jews were made to in Nazi Germany. You never talked about Malaysian Tamil Indians who live in abject apartheid under Mahatir’s regime. You never talked about the riots against Hindus in Bangladesh in 2013 that killed 109 people. You never talked about young Hindu girls who are raped, kidnapped, & forcefully converted to Islam. Some of them are as young as 12&13! You never talked about how Christian girls are sold into sex Slavery in Pakistan to Chinese men as ‘brides’. You never talked about India’s obligation to these endangered ethno-religious communities as per the Nehru Liyaqat pact of 1951. You never mentioned that under that pact it was the non muslims who were covered & not muslims. I call your BS.

    9) You never talked about all the Islamic theocracies exporting terror of Wahhabism yet talk about Hindu extremism. Lol. I mean really.? I call your BS.

    10) You never called out OIC for its religiously supremacist attitude and supremacist Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, 1990 which declared Sharia law for Muslim majority nations as supreme & makes all non muslims as second class citizens yet you call out against CAA which aims to provide citizenship to non muslims who are state less because of Islamic persecution. I call your BS.

    11) You lash out at democracies trying to save people from persecution but stay mum on Islamic theocracies actively persecuting non muslim minorities all over the world. I call your BS.

    12) You talked about

    Request you to stand up for once against the real evil of Islamic ideology and it’s supremacist tendencies. Their is literally no other religion in the world right now which teaches it’s people or advocates for creation of a Theocratic state to rule over its subjects.
    If you have any empathy left in you for any non muslim on the planet, go search the Taliban attacks on Sikhs in 2018 & how the Sikhs were not even allowed to cremate their dead. NYT published articles on it.

    Sincere Regards,
    Child of a refugee family living in India persecuted by Islamization of my homeland, Proudly Indian, signing off!

    PS: I am almost certain you won’t have any tangible arguments to counter with yet, I await any response, that is if you have the intellectual capacity & humility to consider that you are wrong about being anti CAA.

  2. There are no greater hypocrites than Indian leftists suckling the teats of American capitalism while denying the masses in India a chance to escape poverty. This author attains even higher peaks of hypocrisy by implying that the support of CAA is somehow contrary to American secularism. Under the Lautenberg Amendment tens of thousands of Russian Jews and evangelical Christians, and Ukrainian and Armenian Catholics were selectively allowed to immigrate to the US to escape persecution following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Not Chechens, or Azherbaijanis or Tartars or any Muslims from former Soviet Republics, and nary a whimper or protest, let alone the violent destruction of public property, occurred in this model for secular democracy, which had in the recent past blatantly discriminated against Chinese and Indians. Hello Asian Exclusion Act! The Lautenberg Amendment, which was passed by the American Congress is the prototype for the CAA passed by the Indian parliament. Both selectively provided an easy pathway for naturalization/citizenship to certain religious identities who were severely persecuted by illiberal societies that were deeply inimical to American or Indian democracy. The difference being that a predominantly brown and Hindu nation gets held to an entirely different standard to what a white and Christian nation is entitled to. Four legs bad, two legs good. And Hindus must also be shamed and implicitly threatened by brown sepoys for having the temerity to support the equivalent of the Lautenberg Amendment for Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs terrorized and ethnically cleansed from the Islamic Republics next door to India.

    • You are making a breathtaking omelette of concepts.

      The US and India have two totally different histories. India has 200 million Muslims. And the US, being a predominately Christian country, were to make a law keeping out Christians, then all hello would be let loose.

      Is this simple concept difficult for you to understand? India is not only for Hindus. This is the basic mistake all of you CAA supporters are making.

      • The very premise of this fatuous article is that Hindus in American, a minority, need to put their head down to follow what the Judeo-Christian secular democracy says (but doesn’t often do in reality). Your example makes no sense. The US, a predominantly white Christian country has passed laws that selectively allow white Christians (and more recently European Jews) to easily become citizens and no hello (sic) broke loose. Furthermore, there is a sizable Hispanic minority in the country where, incidentally, substantial territories were previously forcibly taken away from them. And this country is doing everything to keep out further Hispanic immigration including building walls and concentration camps where children are forcibly separated from their parents. Furthermore this country has had a long history of excluding darker skinned immigrants from s-hole countries, and let’s not even get into the Muslim ban!

        It is correct that India has a different history; unlike the US it was partitioned to create Muslim homelands within which Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Hindus and Sikhs have been persecuted and ethnically cleansed. Thus the CAA, which is specific to India and why it doesn’t include the American favorites like evangelical Christians, Catholics and a Jews from European countries – although Hindu India in the past was extraordinarily welcoming to Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians fleeing Muslim persecution, and this is what secular India continues to do today and includes Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and Sikhs because the persecution is no longer distant lands in the Middle East.

        When all fails you just try to shift goalposts.

        • You have a very sophisticated command of English: the way you used (sic) to correct the ‘hello’ error from my mobile auto-correct! Congrats.

          What what passion to use the internal contradictions of the US to justify what the BJP is doing.

          You completely misunderstand what’s written in the article. You are unable to understand the difference between the ideals set by a constitution and how they are followed. If you already start with bad ideals (as the BJP is trying to do in India), then the worst in human nature comes out. As it is coming out with Trump. And people in the US are fighting back.

          I’m glad that people in India are fighting this out. All Hindus don’t share this BJP madness.

          • You want to be better than US How? by chanting slogans that you will destroy idols and attack the police. Singing poems usually sung by pakistan backed terrorists and extremists. Before saying anything please read the statistics of the legal and illegal immigrants of india, and firstly read the provisions under the caa 2019. Please don’t be the pseudo intellectual who reads the synopsis of an article and then claims to have done phd in the topic.

      • No you are caught in the midst of a breathtaking cognitive dissonance of an omelette. Firstly, The Lautenberg Specter Amendments were a case of ‘positive discrimination’. The 2004 Specter Amendment to the original Lautenberg amendment were made to include non muslim minorities from Iran ( Christians Jews and Bahá’í) who were being persecuted. This implies saving non muslims doesn’t require validation & permission of the very same muslims from whom these persecuted non muslims are being saved. Exceptional display of bigotry & victim blaming by the way. Secondly, your own premise on USA prioritizing Christians & India not doing the same for hindus or related faiths beats itself in the face of hypocrisy as you advocate for one but oppose the other. The yardstick of measure is not the same. Request you to kindly explore the concept of positive discrimination under the Indian Constitution to understand how sometimes laws have to acknowledge that in order to truly achieve equality, one must recognise first any inequalities that exist in real life & course correct them. Thirdly, while you are at it, kindly go read the Nehru Liyaqat pact,1951 that defines itself on the basis of religious minorities in case of both India & Pakistan. Therefore any policy response by India would be based on originally addressing the law itself. Fourthly, having read the aforementioned Nehru Liyaqat Pact please read up on the Fundamental rights part III of the Indian Constitution under which the National commission for minorities was constituted. India recognizes based on religious faith and so does our neighbors in the West Pakistan except they don’t because they disbanded their minorities commission and merged it with Ministry of Religious Affairs & reduced the scope of any action in case of any rights for minorities. Once you read up on how actual policy making is done and wake up to the realities of the world and then respond to the issues that impact all people and not just muslims then you can call yourself a secular liberal person. Furthermore, the ideals set in the constitution are meant to ensure equality when in case of equality is violated. In this case, the equality is violated because of the problem of lack of rights to these refugees who are stateless due to Islamic persecution. 4) Lastly, these you called seculars and liberals have no right to protest because you never stood up for human rights as long as non muslims were being persecuted, no placards’ or street protests were being taken out. To give you an example , less than 10000 Sikhs are left in Pakistan due to continuous persecution. Tell me how Sikhs as a minority are not important to save right now. Furthermore, explain your lack of protests in this case. Explain your lack of protests for Afghani Sikhs who are not allowed to cremate their dead by Taliban. ? Why didn’t you or any liberal protest, were you too chicken to do so? Ask yourselves these questions, read up on more Policies & most importantly the same constitution before trying to defend it. Your constitution does allow for positive discrimination in order to restore balance to the equality of its prospective citizens.

    • Exactly the befitting reply to theprint.in, i have browsed through several articles, they are completely biased against any difference in opinion than the leftist ideology. I thought liberal meant freedom in thought too.

  3. Indians in the US may not face religious prosecution. But they face severe institutionalized racist and country based discrimination the moment they set foot in this country.

  4. Indians in the US may not face religious prosecution. But they face severe institutionalized racist and country based discrimination the moment they set foot in this country. This country is brimming to its gills with murderous racism and this writer uncle thinks Indians here live in a secular utopia.
    A country that routinely insults its heritage and Hindu roots was bound to become a poor, third world country forcing many of its citizens to migrate to rabid racist countries.
    So a Hindu would be happy to return to a country which is not hijacked by anti-Hindu forces hellbent to keep the country ashamed, deafestist and economically backward by shaming 80% of their population. That is why they support Modi in India while not supporting the racists here. It is a fight for self-respect on both the fronts.
    The day you realize this you will throw your fake, hate-filled intellectualism in the nearesst dumpster and don the saffron colors.

    • i don’t understand how beating unarmed citizens, perpetuating fake and ridiculous stories of ancient science and tech, presiding over a rape epidemic, giving India the dubious distinction of max internet cut, and massacring the economy makes any one proud. the moment you will understand that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, you will take a reg flag and join the crowd.

    • And suppose that I don’t want to don saffron clothes?

      And why do you talk about 80% of the population? We want to talk about 100% of the population.

    • Finally, somebody said it!
      Naked truth. More power to you.
      Saffron goes back to..
      भूल कर भी मुख में जाती पंथ की न बात हो
      भाषा प्रान्त के लिए कभी न रक्तपात हो |
      फूट का भरा घड़ा है फोड कर बढ़े चलो
      भला हो जिसमें देश का वो काम सब किये चलो ||

  5. Frankly, this is BS. The percentage of Christians in USA is as much as the percentage of so called Hindus in India. Selective criticism does not make sense.

  6. They support secularism in the American setting but sneer at the legacy of Nehruvian secularism in India.”

    These US Hindus support genuine secularism. Indian secularism is Faux. In true secularism there is common civil code. In Indian faux secularism Muslims can have four wives, while Hindu or Christians can not have that. Americans would be horrified so called Indian secularism, with it’s allowing some groups with polygamy but no others, is adopted in US.

  7. Wi have read CAA which is just about a two pages law. There’s nothing in it which opposed to the interests of Indian Muslims. But, if people want to form ignoramous opinions, it is their birth right. Regrettably, CAA Protest was hijacked by Islamic radicals. Ordinary protesters don’t shoot at the police.

  8. We definitely support CAA whole heartedly. It should have come long back
    In the name of ultra secularism we can’t let jihadi Islamists to come into our country, outnumber us and at the end kick us out of from our own country as they did with Bangladeshi Hinus, Kashmiri pandits and now doing with West bengal bengalees.

  9. Rohit Chopra doesn’t mention that his twitter accounts @rchops and @indiaexplained were suspended in mid December 2019 for posting death threats towards PM Narendra Modi and HM Amit Shah.

    He somehow managed to get the restored, but immediately repeated this act.

    Now imagine for a moment that he had done this against a US official? He would have been arrested by the FBI/Secret Service immediately.

    The only reason he is anti-CAA is that now there is a provision to bar such anti-nationals from blissfully acquiring defacto dual citizenship.

      • @Theprint A protest marks dissent, from something one doesn’t approve of. You can’t possibly protest “in favour” of something.

        Gosh! Who’s writing these articles? Refer a thesaurus.

        I won’t even start with the obscurity of this article. Lacks information, facts and appears to be heavily leaning towards a certain sect.

  10. No country (state) can be secular if it believes in God. Only a state with an agnostic attitude towards god, afterlife etc. can be considered as secular. I do not think the US fits the bill.

  11. I refer to the responses by ‘cilly mitra’, ‘Rajiv’ and ‘Rohit Desai’ to my comment yesterday where I said that the United States was not secular. It isn’t secular. It was founded by the Pilgrim Fathers. Its constitution and its currency notes refer to ‘God’. It is the center of world-wide evangelism and the Protestant church. The core culture of the United States is Anglo-Protestant. Those born in the US after 1995 however are increasingly non-religious as the Pew Foundation indicates. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a Government body, is largely tasked with the protection of Christian minority rights in Asia even if its mandate is clothed in allegedly ‘secular’ language. Arab Chistian refugees have a much better chance of entry into the US than Arab Muslim refugees. This article is blinkered and highly ideological. Those Indians in the US who are for the Citizenship Amendment Act have a right to their views. The demonization of views that are not ones own is wrong. That said, I would have preferred had the Citizenship Amendment Act been named the Refugee Naturalization Act instead. And by the way, the language of victimhood is not just by Hindus. All religions rely on that.. I also respond to the commentator A.S. Matthews. JNU has been a hotbed of strident student violence long before the weekend events.

    • Thanks. That’s a great reply for all those ‘remote Westernised liberals’ who know the West on a superficial level having NOT ventured out of their geographies more than a few touristy days.

      • It is A wrong reply, buddy! You must be really desperate to buy into such baseless assertions that she had made! atahode whose opinions matter in the world, would tell you without an exception that the US is a secular country! The rest is bakwas!

    • I wonder if you read the Wikipedia article at all. Ditto for the article of Rohit Chopra.

      Yes. The US indeed uses the word God. And indeed it jarring for an atheist.

      But you miss the point that God is a generic word. You would be right if they had used Jesus Christ instead of God.

      So just on this point the US is religious but not Christian.

      You should know the history of the Church-State separation, not only in the US but also in Europe. Just Google it.

      So Western countries *are* Christian (though even that is disappearing), but their constitutions are secular.

      The anti-CAA protests are not only about refugees. They are for all Indians (NRC) .

      I presume that you are one of those privileged Indians who doesn’t care about the fact that there are 300 million Indians who can’t read or write. How will these people produce documents for the NRC? Please don’t say that they’ve done it for Aadhar. The burden of proof is much higher for the NRC.

      And sure everyone has a right to their opi9. But Rohit’s article just points out the contrada in their stand on the CAA.

      JNU a hotbed of strident violence? This can be easily checked. I think you’re spreading fake news.

        • Vish: Do you drink bhang often? I specifically mention that Western nations are Christians.

          Ir do you have problems of understanding plain English?

  12. Seems like negationism and Hindu-bashing has become so de rigueur that it makes up for gross generalizations and lazy intellectualism.

    The author doesn’t seem to realize that secularism has been institutionalized in the US and in India, differently.

    The author has also taken great pains to point out the so-called communication channels which spread ‘chauvanistic’ messages, thinking perhaps, readers of this post don’t know about the rank hindu-phobic messages spread within certain circles of the so-called liberals in the US.

    A question though for the author to consider. It’s clear pro-CAA supporters, endorse the idea of illegal minorities getting fastracked for Naturalization. But what are the anti-CAA protestors protesting against?

    Do they not like the idea of minorities getting fastracked? Or are they advocating of illegal immigrants who self identify as Muslims from neighbouring countries to get fastracked Naturalization too? Is the political refugee category not enough?

    And where would one settle illegal Muslim migrants anyway? Please don’t consider the border regions. They’ve suffered enough generational trauma already. But don’t tell the author that, because apparently that is some kind of narrative being peddled around by temples.

  13. Let us see now,
    Does the current population (not native Americans) of US have an history of being invaded by others – who treated them as second class citizens?
    Does the current government of the US constitution intrude upon one religion and not others?
    Do the descendants of the invasive ideology still adhere to the same doctrine and have establish the same attitudes from Kashmir, Kerala to Kamlesh Tiwari?

    Is this columnist an objective observer or a deluded idiot appreciating Marxists ideologues when every society which practiced communism is the very anti-thesis of liberal values?

    Hmm… but I support such authors and columnists, more then blather nonsense, more people realize the dissonance between what they preach and what is reality, and people like Modi, Trump etc will keep winning.

    Thanks.

  14. How the Jawaharlal University students were beaten by the RSS soldiers inside the campus? How many people were died and wounded in India for their protest against the totally anti-Muslim CAA, then towards the Christians of India.

    In any of the non-BJP ruled State, nobody was beaten by the police. In the U.S. the CAA supporters were not beaten by the police.

    The CAA supporters living in the U.S. are directly supporting the anti-Muslim and anti-Christian RSS rulers of India. The supporters of the CCA in the migrated countries, all of them Christian majority nations must understand that you are all enjoying religious freedom and economic prosperity in the Christian nations and working in the Muslim nations while you are anti-Muslim and Christian supporters of the Central Government of India.

    • A Proud Bhakt here if you say so. You chamchas are are now only found under microscope and that’s too not sure how long will be found. We rule not only India but the whole world. The world politics now revolves around Modiji and us. Every world leader apart from your favourite Pakistan (who has no relevance ) are welcoming Modiji with red carpet. Despite your chaos we have brought triple talaq, infront of your desparate eyes we removed 370, 35A, We built Ram temple in that very place, and now we brought CAB despite your humbo jumbo and we’ll cross 500 margin too in 2024 and lol you say we need burnol!! for what? let peace be upon you. :p

  15. Firstly US is not secular country though it allows people to follow their religious belief something which CAA does not change. Supreme Court in US upheld ban on migrants from some muslim countries which is extreme case of CAA. Also visa caps are also form of CAA as they discriminate against Indian and Chinese. Thus all developed countries have form of CAA so it is a natural for India to graduate to that level.

    • “… graduate to that level” or “relegate to that level”, even if your understanding is that they have “extreme form of CAA”.

      Unfortunately, not only your opinion is wrong (even if the facts are assumed to be correct) but the facts itself are distorted and mix of truth and lies.

      Kindly check what happened when President Donald Trump wanted to bring something like CAA (though CAA is far extreme and incomparable).

  16. Trying to save minorities from Islamic radicals is not same as building Hindu rashtra, its building true secular rashtra. The incident at Nankana Sahib should be a wakeup call for people like Rajiv Chopra. India have every right to oppose radical islamists of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

  17. Dear anti CAA protestors,
    I hope you are prepared for a long and a difficult struggle. The reason you are in for a rough ride is because some of your cheerleaders, co passengers lost the Indian, primarily Hindu middle class a longtime ago. We are talking about the Khangress party 🙄, the leftists, activists of many hues and off course the opposition. You see, the Indian middle class remembers the deeds of all these worthies and has seen their primary colours during long years of public life. They have come to the conclusion that your co passengers don’t give a damn about people like them. Please don’t react to this fact in anger. For every protestor making it to the rally, atleast an equal or a greater number silently support the Govt. I would squarely blame the opposition for this lack of credibility.

    You also have a second problem to contend with. Secularism has become a dirty word in India 🙄. I know you feel you are fighting the good fight for that principle, but calm reflection will tell you that ideal was corrupted, discredited, mangled and bulldozed a long time ago 😞. For you to win this battle, you have to convince the Hindu middle class that ideal is absolutely essential for a multi ethnic, multicultural country like India. Perhaps the first step towards that would be to acknowledge mistakes made in the past😔.

    Finally please don’t take Rohit Chopra seriously. There are a lot of factors at play in the US protests, too numerous for detailed analysis. Indian Americans are not your target audience😁…and to call out hypocrisy first look within.

    PS: I am not a BJP supporter or a bhakt. I am a neutral person with liberal views on many matters.

    • Maybe the problem is with the a Indian middle class? Maybe their mistakes are greater than those of the secularists? And why should the middle class blame everyone else except themselves?

      As for NRIs, their support for Modi is so clearly in conflict with what they enjoy in the West. You don’t require to be a genius to see it.

  18. This is unfortunately, the standard self-loathing view from an Indian academic. US academia is uniformly Hindu-phobic, and sadly, the academic tag gives whatever rubbish they write some credibility. Most Indians in India aren’t familiar with how devastating this institutional Hindu-phobia in the United States is for Hindus that live in that country. This is particularly true for school children. As is should be amply clear from this article itself, most Indian academics actually feed that same monster.

    I do with the editors at Print would carry a counter article by someone like Prof. Vamsee Juluri.

  19. Another Naxalite-Jihadi gang crap article full of lies.
    You are calling attendance at Modi’s US events thin??? Those events had more attendance than even those of American politicians! Because OVERWHELMING support from Indian-Americans just like Indians living in India to Modi’s policies including CAA.
    You Hinduphobic writers never utter a word on plight of persecuted minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh who are waht CAA is all about.

    • Hindus in USA are feeding fascism in India by donating for detention camps in India for non Hindus. The rich Hindus in USA want to flex their economic muscle the same way once Khalistan was fed with support from overseas. India is an economic block created by British. It was once made of 1000 kingdoms with different culture, language.

  20. Indians settle in America, a country which developed and prospered with free market capitalism. But after going there, they vote for leftists!

    • What a pity! Even Modi doesn;’t care for the displaced Kashmiri Pandits! He always used them as a political tool, and never tried to bring them back, and rehabilitate them in Kashmir! You are also using the poor Kashmiri Pandits here as a tool to beat up on anti-CAA gang!

    • I belong to the anti-CAA gang and yes what happened to Kashmiri pandits should never have happened and they should get justice.

  21. This is another piece from a leftist who think only his views are right and all others views are wrong. Why is ThePrint eager to spread the leftists poison filled views in India.

  22. What else would one expect from a Marxist brainwashed academic whose livelihood depends on parroting the lefty drivel? When they can’t deny facts, they hide behind empty slogans and betray their own community.

  23. Rohit

    Respect the right of others to their views even if you disagree with them. This is a blinkered opinion piece. For one, the United States is hardly secular. Those born after 1990 could perhaps be the first secular generation, not those before.,

  24. It is increasingly clear who is pro-Modi and who is not.
    Pro-Modi are those who believe in caste supremacy and think they have exclusive right to rule.
    Anti-Modi are people who believe in equality and raise the voices against discrimination.

    Hindu rastra is the rule of the upper castes over the others.

    • Lol this the greatest joke, caste supremacists are most in regional parties. Modi supporters are those who believe in Hindu unity.

      • 80%+ upper caste people voted for BJP in India, BJP today is what Congress was yesterday, a vehicle for upper caste supremecy.

    • well said! except that it is even narrower: rich upper caste hindu men. poor and women of what ever caste are exploited too.

    • I think it’s excessively clear what bias you hold sir.
      To think ‘pro muslim’ is right in line with secularism and then being a huge hypocrite when a ‘pro christian, hindu, and other sections’ policy comes along and you are ready to throw hands, and calling it caste supremacy.
      It’s people like you, kind sir, who are brainwashing the youth of India, specifically Hindus, to hate their own religion and and align with the so called liberals, (who are majorly rip offs ), in demanding anti Hindu policies to come across as socialist seculars.
      In case you didn’t know…SECULARISM means NO RELIGION LEFT BEHIND, in the most simple of terms, and NOT anti targeting any sect, be it Muslim, or Hindu…
      And don’t you think that if you have entered legally, you should have no problem while proving so? And if you haven’t, and are in India by illegal means, it means you don’t belong, and should be deported.

  25. A timely reminder! the NRIs concerned in fact see no contradiction since they identify with the christian right in their “fight” agaist an imaginary islamic threat. what schocked me is the casual racism – against blacks (kala or kallu), against whites (gora) and even against liberal indians (coconut – white inside and brown outside). in my experience it is easier to persuade a traditional brahmin from hinterlands on a given progressive issue than this brand of NRIs – believe me, i know – since they tried to head-hunt me when i was in the usa.

  26. “In the US, they eagerly embrace affirmative action and initiatives related to diversity and inclusion” – Response to Author

    1. Hope Hindus there are not demanding Hindu Personal Law board to implement Hindu Scriptures in Law ( In India by Law we implement Muslim Personal law board based on medival shariah system )
    2. Hope Hindus there are not demanding to Free Texas ( here Gazwa-e-Hind Ideologues try to implement Jihad in indian Kashmir & then rest of India ).
    3. Hope Hindus there have not damaged churches ( Here Post Independence 1986 500 religious place damaged in Kashmir & 1990 mass exodus of specific religion )

    Many things are still

    • The writer cannot understand self interest, this is Self Interest like every other people does. Those people want diversity in US because it serve their purpose but hindu rule in India because again that serve the purpose. It is more like China (only self interest), anyways India has no responsibility to take high moral grounds.

      • Exactly! these NRIs understand ONLY self-interest. yet altruism is seen even in the animal world and compassion is supposed to ennoble the human kind. you have said it: hindutva and its NRI foot-soldiers are utterly selfish – unable to see beyond me, myself, I. And ready to take what they want by what-ever force necessary and at whatever cost as long as they themselves are not paying it.

      • Self interest could be enlightened which helps in the long run and stupid self interest which takes you and the country down.

      • No, it is exactly the opposite of what you say! They are an ignorant lot, who don’t know where their self-interest lie! They also support the Democrats in the US, who oppose Modi’s policies! Moreover, India is more diverse than any country in the world! So why they shouldn’t support India’s diversity also? Also, Hindus are not united, THEY NEVER WERE, IN THEIR HISTORY! IT WAS A HINDU WHO INVITED THE A RULER FROM AFGHANISTAN WITH THE ARABIC NAME OF MOHAMMAD GHOURI TO INVADE INDIA. GHOURI DEFEATED THE HINDU KING, AND ESTABLISHED A MUSLIM SULTANATE IN DELHI. AFTER THE AFGHAN RULE, CAME THE MUGHAL RULE, AFTER WHICH CAME THE BRITISH RULE! THUS INDIA WAS RULED BY A HANDFUL OF FOREIGN RULERS IN SPITE OF A VAST MAJORITY OF HINDUS! WHY? BECAUSE THE HINDUS WEREN’T UNITED! NOT ONLY THIS, THEY EVEN HELPED THE MUSLIM AND BRITISH RULERS TO RULE INDIA BY WIWORKING IN THEIR EMPLOYMENT!

  27. #Support CAA
    Secularism is not blind eye against Genocide in Neighboring Country.
    We know in India, Jihadi Attempted Gazwa-e-Hind in Kashmir 1990. We also know death by thousand cuts.
    Just Ideology does not make facts. If Ideology could make up fact, then there could no partition violence.

    Yes we took independence by Non-violence is ideology & fact is different.

    Indian Conditions are different & Indian-Americans know that

    Reply

  28. Yawnn… law is passed we are bored next topic plz..how about renoving speakers from all religious place so that I can sleep at peace on play PUBG without terrorist sounds..

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