FFirst, Seattle City Hall’s 6-1 vote to ban race discrimination two months ago, and now, the California Senate Judiciary Committee votes in favor of banning race-based bias in its overall anti-discrimination laws. It has passed the first legislative hurdle and has now sent the bill to the next committee for consideration.
It is curious why white-majority America is suddenly waking up and listening to the calls of anti-caste groups of Indian origin. Could it be that they too are trying to identify the Pasmandas among their Indian-origin community, the so-called ‘model minority’? The number of this community increased 150 percent Between 2000 and 2018, making it the second largest immigrant group in the US.
“We have hit a nerve and exposed a form of discrimination that many people were not even aware of,” Said Ayesha Wahab, leader of the Democratic Party, who proposed the legislation. He had earlier told members of the Senate committee that he had also received death threats for his move.
in my last Article, I wrote that these moves were not going to stop in Seattle, and that it would spread to other US states. I was right. And it so happens that the most successful, prominent and wealthy Indians live in California, Seattle and New York – true-blue Democratic states that border on the Left. I said this is part of the larger American culture wars and the growing call to study systemic biases and critical race theories. Wahab now calls this “generational trauma”.
Its all true. Like the pasmanda prejudice is also true among Indian Muslims. There is politics in everything. And timing is everything in politics.
BJP’s project Pasmanda
In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Pasmanda foray began in 2022. PM Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders have sought to demarcate and signal Pasmanda communities. And it has created quite a stir among political observers and Ashraf Muslim intellectuals as well. They see this as part of the BJP’s cynical divide and rule politics – unite Hindus and divide Muslims.
It seeks to split the image of a monolithic Muslim minority community in India by pointing out that there are divisions within. It is a political, electoral and social project. It takes away the voice of Muslim unity and blunts the anti-Hindu narrative that the Ashraf community has been successfully building in India and around the world.
Similarly, the Indian community in the United States has been growing steadily in recent decades – in numbers, jobs, wealth and political voice. people of Indian origin have increased over 4 million, and the community is now looking more and more diverse than it was two decades ago. Unlike other foreign-born immigrants, the Indian community is predominantly middle-class and affluent and occupies high-skilled jobs.
The first and second generations of people of Indian origin were supporters of the Democratic Party. This is in line with the voting patterns of most first generation immigrants to that country. But in recent years, there has been a slow optical shift among the Indian community – though not yet electoral. More and more gravitated towards former US President Donald Trump as he closely aligned with PM Modi and BJP here.
The massive public spectacle of Trump and Modi at Howdy Modi in Texas and Namaste Trump in Gujarat represented something that was going beyond the Indo-US ‘strategic alliance’ and ‘defining partnership of 21’.scheduled tribe century’ template. This personal connection between the two also signaled a political bent – one of the reasons why Democrats tipped Vice President Kamala Harris out of her hat to appeal strongly to Indian-origin voters and the African-American community. .
In the midst of this nascent political churning in America, this direct appeal to the marginalized among its Hindu minority comes – just as appeal Modi had said this while addressing the BJP’s national executive meeting in January. The initial churning is yet to be done for this politics. In 2020, an important Study concluded that Indian-Americans still ‘remain strongly with the Democratic Party’.
There is no survey yet to show the political preferences of American Hindus along caste lines. Perhaps in the coming years, it will be commissioned – given the historic developments in Seattle and California.
Read also: Georgia, California, Seattle – Any criticism of caste is being fought as Hinduphobia in the US
two ends of a spectrum
Earlier this month, Hindu Americans scored a major victory in the Georgia legislature when it passed the first resolution against Hinduphobia in decades, citing documented evidence of hate crimes against Hindus in the US.
In truth, India’s political divide has reached American shores. In the race for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and the forces of ‘opposition unity’ are trying to draw a line in the sand between Mandal and Kamandal – by pitting Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s caste census against Hindutva.
Georgia and California represent roughly the two ends of this Indian political spectrum in the United States. In what American Hindus and Pasmandas will do in the months and years to come, this will be a true strategic alliance between the world’s largest and oldest democracies.
Rama Lakshmi is Opinion and Ground Reports Editor at ThePrint. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Hamra Like)