Opinion: Don't let Hindu nationalism undermine religious tolerance among American Indians

There are over 50,000 Native Americans in San Diego and our community continues to grow. Like any other group, we have our agreements and our disagreements, our ups and our downs. We still come together to celebrate each other's holidays, with Hindus participating in Ramadan, Muslims participating in Holi, and our other faiths and non-believers coming together for barbecues.

But there is also a more worrying undercurrent that appears to be growing in the local diaspora: Hindu nationalism.

Not to be confused with the Hindu faith, Hindu nationalism is rather a 20th century political project. founded by ideologues seeking to import European fascism in India. It is a supremacist ideology that seeks to make India a purely Hindu nation, in which other minority faiths, including Islam and Christianity, are not welcome.

In his meteoric rise in influence, he motivated countless murders of Muslims and Christians, and is now adopted in the highest political offices of India, notably by the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Despite his troubling history, he has found many supporters in San Diego.

Organizations like the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America apparently friendly cultural host events in the city, while maintaining ties to violent Hindu nationalist paramilitaries in India. Recent celebrations of the Ram Mandir in San Diego a controversial Hindu temple in India, built on the rubble of a mosque razed by mobs, illustrate how seemingly innocuous local events can insult and demean the local Muslim population.

After mobs destroyed a historic mosque brick by brick to make way for the Ram temple, 2,000 mostly Muslims Indians were killed. Among the main organizers of the mosque demolition and the pogrom that followed was the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of Indiawhose foreign counterpart, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, organized the San Diego Temple celebrations.

These more overt manifestations of the considerable influence of Hindu nationalism are accompanied by more profound changes in daily life. It saddens me to say that Hindu nationalism has bred distrust, even hatred, of Muslims within the local Indian American community, where Islamophobic remarks have become commonplace. Native American colleagues whom I would never have suspected of being hostile to people of a particular faith have openly insulted Muslims, even knowing my faith.

I know my experience is widely shared. Seventy percent of the nearly 1,000 Native American Muslims surveyed in a recent survey conducted by an organization I volunteer for, the Indian American Muslim Council, said they had disputed with biased treatment from Hindu colleagues.

One survey respondent wrote: My son is not included in his Hindu classmates' activities at school while others reported being excluded from neighborhood gatherings or cultural events. Another wrote: “Hindu nationalism has certainly affected me, my family and my community… the same people we felt connected and comfortable with have changed their behavior towards us.

Forty-eight percent of those surveyed said they had faced Islamophobic discrimination on social media platforms. The vast majority recognizes that the growth of Hindu nationalism in India has contributed to the deterioration of social relations in the United States.

California politics have also been deeply influenced by Hindu nationalist goals. According to recent information published in HarpistsHindu nationalist groups successfully pressured Governor Gavin Newsom to overturn California's caste protection bill, preventing caste-oppressed American Indians from accessing a proper legal framework to their needs.

Previously, Hindu nationalists continued the California Department of Civil Rights to attempt to formally ban caste discrimination and fought to change California textbooks. Committed to the caste hierarchy in India, these groups refuse any criticism of the system here in the United States.

More broadly, the rise of Hindu nationalism in the United States has created a climate of fear and distrust within the Indian-American community. Indian governments have alleged assassinations (one attempt, one successful) on the Native American Sikhs, as well as on the constant targeting foreign critics of the Modi regime, has put me and many other Indian-Americans committed to democracy on edge. The Indian government's efforts to silence critics extend abroad, meaning many of us now feel we cannot express our opinions freely, even in the land of the free.

Here in San Diego, we must begin now to adopt a more tolerant interfaith approach to religious differences. We must celebrate the bonds of friendship that exist across religious differences, while educating our community about the forces that attempt to tear us apart.

India and the United States, however troubled their histories, were both founded on principles of equality. We Indian-Americans are in a unique position to implement this legacy. We must show that Hindu nationalism is not the way forward for peace and understanding in San Diego.

Mohamed Nasrullah is the San Diego leader of the Native American Muslim Councilthe oldest and largest Indian Muslim organization in the United States.