On June 22, just two days before the primary for the New York mayoral elections, an aerial banner appeared over the city’s skyline. “Save NYC from global intifada. Reject Mamdani”, it read in stark, bold letters, five feet tall. The reference was to Zohran Mamdani, the then frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
Although the message was presumably framed as a warning to Jewish voters and to weaponise Mamdani’s criticism of Israel, the group behind it was neither Jewish nor Israeli. The banner was commissioned by an organisation calling itself Hindus for Cuomo, which also issued a press release accusing Mamdani of being “Hinduphobic” and “anti-Hindu”. Their evidence was based on Mamdani’s vocal criticism of the Narendra Modi government and its treatment of Indian Muslims.
That a municipal election in New York could generate such transnational outrage reveals the political reach of Hindutva and the emotional charge of the Indian identity abroad. Over the last decade, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its affiliates have cultivated a sophisticated network of influence across the Indian diaspora, particularly in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. The diaspora has long been seen as a source of soft power, but under Modi that connection has become more explicitly ideological. Organisations aligned with the sangh parivar have built temples, cultural centres, and youth organisations abroad that function both as community hubs and political staging grounds. In New Jersey and Texas, Hindu-American groups have hosted massive ‘Howdy Modi’ and other rallies for Donald Trump.
The optics work both ways. For the BJP, these rallies signal the global stature of an assertive, modern India. For many Indian-Americans, however, that same nationalism appears exclusionary and authoritarian, out of step with the pluralism they experience daily. As Trump has imposed a series of harsh restrictions on India, including punitive tariffs and a $100,000 payment for new H1-B visas, some opinions among the Indian diaspora may be shifting, once again.
South-Asian-heritage politicians have also become increasingly visible in American public life. On the Right, figures such as Vivek Ramaswamy, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard have embraced forms of cultural conservatism and criticism of Islam that often resonate with sections of the Indian diaspora. On the Left, the former vice-president, Kamala Harris, Ro Khanna, and Pramila Jayapal represent a more progressive current, speaking the language of diversity and inclusion. Each of these politicians is read through the prism of his/her relationship to India, comments on Modi, and positioning on Hindu nationalism. The fact that a city-level race in New York is now being judged on the same terrain shows how Indian politics has become a reference point for diaspora identity everywhere.
There is also a generational divide. The first wave of Indian immigrants, largely upper-caste Hindu professionals who arrived after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, tended to support conservative politics both in India and the US, identifying with messages of meritocracy and national pride. Their children, however, have grown up amid America’s racial reckonings, student debt crises, and housing insecurity. For many of them, solidarity lies not in defending an idealised homeland but in demanding fairness where they live. Mamdani, who came to politics through organising and the Democratic Socialists of America, embodies that shift.
This generational contrast has economic as well as ideological roots. Earlier migrants built their lives in the era of ‘model minority’ respectability and professional ascent, often as doctors, engineers, and IT specialists who prized stability. The second generation is entering adulthood amid political turbulence, climate anxiety, and economic uncertainty. Their understanding of success is less about assimilation and more about equity. That perspective often clashes with the diaspora’s older guard for whom criticism of India, particularly on caste or minority rights, is equated with disloyalty.
Born in Uganda to Indian parents and raised in Queens, Mamdani has spoken about how his family’s migration mirrored the layered histories of displacement that define much of the South-Asian diaspora. His campaign, rooted in socialist politics and focused on affordability, housing, and workers’ rights, barely mentioned India. Yet his refusal to play the role of the ‘good Indian’ abroad, deferential to Modi or silent on India’s minorities, made him a lightning rod for Hindu-nationalist networks online.
According to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a Washington-based research group, more than 600 posts attacking Mamdani appeared on X (formerly Twitter) before the June primary. Many came from right-wing accounts in India and global profiles linked to Hindutva groups. By November, the researchers had counted more than 35,000 posts containing Islamophobic or xenophobic slurs directed at him, with a combined reach of over 1.5 billion views. The language reflected the familiar playbook of Indian online propaganda, branding dissent as ‘anti-Hindu’, conflating criticism of the Modi government with hatred for Hindus, and weaponising diaspora pride against perceived ‘traitors’.
Those attacks, however, failed to derail Mamdani’s campaign. In New York, Mamdani’s story of an immigrant’s son advocating for renters, students, and working-class families felt local and relatable rather than foreign. His campaign visuals borrowed from Bollywood poster art, with bright, blocky lettering and bold colours, but reinterpreted them through New York’s civic identity, using the city’s trademark orange and blue. In viral campaign videos on social media, he quoted classic Bollywood dialogues, addressed potential voters in Hindi, and used cups of mango lassi to explain ranked-choice voting to first-time voters.
When the results came in, Mamdani made history as New York’s youngest mayor since 1892 and its first Muslim and first South Asian mayor. In his victory speech at a Brooklyn venue, he invoked Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Tryst with destiny’ address, linking his win in New York to a broader, decolonial imagination of freedom and equality. As he closed with the Bollywood anthem, “Dhoom machale”, the room erupted in celebration, a striking image of transnational belonging: Indian rhythms marking an American milestone.
Mamdani’s win carries several layers of meaning for an Indian audience. It reminds us that India’s ideological battles no longer stop at its borders and that the country’s internal divisions now play out within diaspora communities around the world. It also signals the emergence of a younger, progressive Indian-American politics that resists both Trumpian populism and Hindutva majoritarianism.
For the BJP and its supporters abroad, Mamdani’s rise is a symbolic setback, a demonstration that the grammar of Hindutva cannot easily be translated into the multicultural politics of the West. For many Indians watching from afar, however, his victory offers something more hopeful: an image of what Indian identity might look like when stripped of fear and reclaimed through solidarity. It also serves as a quiet rebuke to the instrumental nationalism that has come to dominate India’s global outreach, one that measures loyalty by silence.
Mamdani’s triumph suggests that the diaspora’s story need not be one of borrowed ideology but of renewed imagination. The battles over belonging that have defined India’s last decade are being reimagined not only in Delhi or Bengaluru but now in the city halls of New York and, perhaps, in the political imagination of a new global Indian generation.
Carol Schaeffer is a journalist based in Berlin, Germany, and is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C.