Hindus For Trump And The Remaking Of American Identity Politics

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Hindus For Trump And The

Remaking Of American
Identity Politics
Vamsee Juluri - December 02, 2016, 5:23 pm

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Why did Hindu Americans who supported Hillary not speak up as Hindus for
Hillary, in the direct manner of Hindus for Trump?

Donald Trumps campaign exposed a subtle but important divide in the Hindu
American community. Trump was unabashedly supported by a small group of
Republican Hindus calling themselves Hindus for Trump, but Democratic Hindu
Americans, who are probably a much larger part of the community, simply did not
project themselves as Hindus for Clinton."
This hesitation among Hindus to call themselves Hindus is not uncommon, and
parallels a broader ongoing de-Hinduizing of Hindu culture and history in
mainstream Western (and Indian) academic and journalistic discourse. But the
divide between non-Hindu-identifying Hindus (including but not limited to
identifying South Asians) and the rather blunt and con dent Hindus for Trump is
not a simple Left-Right one, and needs to be understood within a larger history of
postcolonial self-negation rather than the usual academic-journalistic platitudes
about Hindutva, Modi and Trump (there were clearly some proud Hindu Americans
who supported Hillary, or at least opposed Trump, but Hillary supporters on the
whole seemed more enamored by phrases like "South Asians" and "Desis" rather
than "Hindu- "or even "Indian-American").
Unsurprisingly, the Hindus for Trump campaign evoked both mockery and criticism.
Their Bollywood-style charity event for victims of terrorism (Hindus for Trump) in
New Jersey last month, got lampooned by American late night show comedians. In
the days that followed, the RHC group produced several television ads that
appeared regularly on Hindi satellite and cable channels available in the United
States. One of them featured Trump delivering a variation of Prime Minister Modis
famous campaign punchline in Hindi (Ab ki baar, Trump Sarkar! he said, or Its a

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Trump Governments turn now). Another advertisement showed Eric Trump

visiting a Hindu temple in Florida, and a third one, less politely, directly targeted
Clinton aide Huma Abedins Pakistani lineage, leading another Hindu American
advocacy group to condemn this action.
Although Hindus for Trump clearly tried to capitalize on Prime Minister Modis
popularity, the Indian American landscape is too complex to assume that all or even
most Modi supporters are Trump supporters. Prime Minister Modis supporters in
the Indian American community include both Democrats and Republicans. A Pew
Foundation report suggests that 65% of Indian Americans lean left, and the same
people to a very large extent supported both President Obama and Prime Minister
Modi.
However, the question remains as to why supporters of Hillary Clinton did not
speak up as Hindus for Hillary, in the direct manner of Hindus for Trump.
There is, in my view, a widespread hesitation about speaking as Hindu Americans in
the community due to the unexamined and unchecked anxiety about being
perceived as Hindu nationalists, extremists or supremacists. This often turns into a
form of self-censorship and self-negation for younger Hindu Americans seeking to
embrace a place in the American multicultural spectrum on their own terms.
Recently, the question of Hindu identity became one of the main points of
contention between Hindu school children and a group of South Asia Studies
professors who asked (unsuccessfully in the end) for the removal of the word
Hinduism from parts of the California K-12 history curriculum. Perhaps as a result
of a dogmatic academic belief that the word Hindu is a recent invention and its
use therefore amounts to support for an exclusionary and intolerant ideology of
Hindu nationalism, several South Asian activists and writers have) avoided the word
in their discussions about identity in America.
For example, when the Obama White House hosted a summit on bullying last June,
the title above the stage listed Muslim, Arab, Sikh and South Asian as the
identities they were concerned about, ignoring or subsuming Hindu identity
altogether (despite the fact Hindu American children are not immune at all from

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bullying). When an Indian American father visiting his family in Alabama was
manhandled and injured by an overzealous police of cer, South Asian American
activists were insistent that somehow Islamophobia was the main problem, though
he happened to be Hindu.
The word Hindu, simply, has been rendered largely unspeakable in large swathes
of South Asian public and academic discourse. For many Hindus in America, it is an
awkward challenge to live with, as if identifying as Hindu is innately problematic. It
is not unexpected therefore that at least some Hindus who are unafraid to speak as
Hindus have gone on board for Trump.
Like the small portion of Latinos, African Americans and other minorities who have
voted for Trump despite widespread media alarm about racism and xenophobia, the
presence of Hindus for Trump may be an indication that the multicultural and
multireligious reality of the United States is too pervasive now to be excluded
altogether by any major political movement. Hindus for Trump wasnt quite an
elegant start, but in the end it appears that the election, and worldwide democratic
impulses, are favoring those rooted in their historic identities rather than concocted
confectionery coalitions that were no less exclusivist despite their sweet coating
(post election, Hindus for Trump still remains visible with its founder Shalabh
Kumar sharing video clips of Republican leaders expressing their support for India
and for Hindu Americans). The main lesson from this election is that in the future
Hindus in America will matter only if they learn to be unafraid and unashamed to
speak as Hindus, whether they support Democrats or Republicans.

Donald Trump

Hillary Clinton

Hindus for Trump

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Vamsee Juluri is a Professor of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco and the author

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