A few weeks ago FBI director Kash (Kashyap) Patel, son of Gujarati Patidar immigrants via Uganda, was trolled by the American ‘fringe’ simply for wishing people a Happy Diwali. Soon after Vivek Ramaswamy, son of Tamil Brahmin immigrants, Republican Party’s young conservative star, was mocked for being Hindu, not Christian. Sensing the shift in public narrative following the killing of Charlie Kirk, now seen as a Christian martyr, Vice President JD Vance declared publicly that he hoped his wife, Usha, daughter of Telugu Brahmin immigrants, would convert to Christianity. But in today’s America, that is not enough.
As Dinesh D’Souza – another Indian-origin rightwing figure, a Goan ‘Bamon’ Catholic from Mumbai – has painfully discovered. For the American Christian Nationalist, to be Christian means to be White. You can change your religion, but you cannot change your brown skin.
Bulldozer karma
For decades, Indians were celebrated as the “model minority” – hardworking, educated, apolitical. They added value without threatening local culture. But in recent years, that perception has shifted. Viral videos of noisy Diwali firecrackers in New York or Ganesh Visarjan processions in Australian rivers have transformed the Indian immigrant’s image from polite contributor to cultural nuisance.
The change is partly global. In an age of anxiety and economic contraction, borders harden and tolerance shrinks. In the 2022 New Jersey parade, a group of Indian Americans displayed a bulldozer float – a symbol of rising ‘Hindu power’ associated in India with demolishing homes of allegedly illegal Bangladeshi migrants. The irony was brutal: members of a traditionally vegetarian, nonviolent community proudly identifying with an instrument of destruction. When criticised, they defended it as an act of “dharmic” outrage against 1,000 years of slavery and colonisation.
Now, the bulldozers of American White Christian Nationalist outrage are rolling towards them. Indians abroad are learning what Muslims and Jews long knew – that in racialised nationalism, today’s defender can become tomorrow’s enemy.
Old dharma, new drought
Ancient Vedic texts like Shatapatha Brahmaṇa describe a simple law of scarcity: when the rains fail and famine spreads, the strong consume the weak. Dharma, they say, is the opposite – when the strong protect the weak. Once, immigration embodied that spirit: strong nations offering opportunities to the less privileged. But today, the global economy is drowning in debt rather than water, and drought has returned. Scarcity squeezes out wisdom and compassion. The non-violent satvik vegetarian displays bloodlust. The Lady of Liberty is turning into a Karen.
When compassion dries up, people cling to the most visible marker of belonging: the body itself. National borders can be crossed. Religions can be joined or left. But race cannot be escaped. You can baptise your name, but not your skin. Hence, in America, Christianity is not so much about being Jesus. It is about being White. Secularism in America, since the Declaration of Independence, has been about different Christian denominations, not Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus.
The irony for India
Indian Brahmins, who for decades positioned themselves as global interpreters of Hinduism, are watching uneasily. They once believed that aligning with Western power structures – speaking English, quoting Sanskrit and eating vegetarian would ensure acceptance. They even argued that America was part of ‘akhand bharat’. That America was Patala or Sutala of Baliraja, and California was actually ‘Kapilaaranya’.
Like American Mormons, whose Bible of Latter Day Saints says Jesus resurrected in America, Sanatanis propagated a creative mytho-fiction that ancient Nagas travelled to America in Pushpak Viman and built the Mayan empire – based on principles of Maya. It helped explain the similarities seen in ancient native American civilisations and ancient Hindu Tantra. One social media post even found Hanuman on the lost ruins of a temple in Honduras, linking it to Hanuman’s adventure with Mahiravana, ruler of the subterranean world.
But the new Christian nationalism has no patience with this ‘paganism’. They see Hindu vegetarianism as the seed of the ‘woke-vegan’ movement. They see Ganesh and Hanuman as demons. American Christian fundamentalists are aware of how Christian missions in tribal Northeast and central India are being attacked. They have not forgotten murder of missionary Graham Staines and his children in Odisha in 1999 by Hindu extremists.
And perhaps this is the warning for India: when nationalism becomes racial, no myth of purity can save anyone. Someday, someone will ask whether the Aryans themselves were immigrants – outsiders who came on horseback 3,500 years ago. When that question returns, as it surely will, every bulldozer of identity will find its target.
