What Got Me Started Studying India?
How I developed a fascination with the region
In the mid-2000s, I had just abandoned plans to join the military after conflicts with my recruiter over my anti-war writings and their refusal to guarantee me a job as an interpreter.
A childhood friend, who knew my interest in international politics and anti-totalitarian sentiments, invited me to meet some Sikh groups who were promoting awareness about the 1984 Delhi pogrom at his college. Growing up, I was horrified by the Holocaust and intensely disgusted by authoritarianism, but I knew very little about India’s post-colonial history and had never heard about the violence of 1984.
Coming from a sheltered childhood, I was fascinated by the multi-faceted cultures of the Indian subcontinent and completely overwhelmed as I swiftly encountered Sikhs, Ambedkarites, Indian Muslims and Christians, and Hindus. I began devouring literature from India, especially writings by Gandhi and Ambedkar as well as by people like SM Mushrif, AG Noorani, Periyar Ramaswamy, MK Dhar, and others. I met people who gave accounts of surviving torture, family members of disappeared activists, and Indians from all backgrounds involved in promoting human rights. Some of them were fascinating stories of their survival as immigrants in the Pacific islands of Fiji and America.
I realized Indian immigrants in America came in different waves and that they had diverse experiences of both privilege and oppression in India and in the US.
Along the way, I was invited to help organize the 100th anniversary celebrations of Stockton Gurdwara, the first permanent Sikh-American institution, and later to speak at Columbia University in honor of Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar’s arrival to study there.
It wasn’t until 2013, however, that I really began grappling with the issue of Hindu nationalism after Narendra Modi was named as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate for prime minister. The US Congress introduced a resolution commending the State Department for denying a visa to Modi in 2005 and expressing concern about Hindu nationalist violence, including the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and Christian killings in Odisha in 2008. I joined a multi-community effort to support the resolution, visiting congressional offices and voicing my support.
At the same time, I began a deep study of Hindutva, reading everything I could find by VD Savarkar and MS Golwalkar as well as more recent writers like Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swarup, and white Hindutva apologists like Koenraad Elst and David Frawley.
In 2015, the issue became deeply personal for me when I protested Modi as he visited my home state of California. Twice during the day, my signs were snatched out of my hands by Modi supporters. The second time, a man began shoving me and threatening to “break” me.
It was shocking that my constitutionally-guaranteed freedom to protest in America was being threatened by supporters of an Indian politician and it galvanized me to dig much deeper.
I discovered that Hindu nationalism and white nationalism share a great deal in common, both ideologically as well as in terms of modern-day interactions, such as the praise white nationalist terrorist Anders Breivik had for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the parent group of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist BJP — or the meetings between the RSS and alt-right publisher Arktos. Historical meetings between BS Moonje (mentor of the RSS’s first leader) and Benito Mussolini, and Moonje’s subsequent praise of the RSS as akin to Mussolini’s fascist groups, as well as the repeated praise for Nazi policies and comparison of Indian Muslim to German Jews by Golwalkar (the RSS’s second leader) and Savarkar (the RSS’s most influential ideologue) convinced me that standing against fascism requires a global focus.
Since then, the intimacy between (now former US President) Donald Trump — the most overtly white nationalist US president in living history — and Modi has deeply concerned me. As I studied the Overseas Friends of BJP (OFBJP), its strategy of dual-interference — which both props up political candidates in the US as well as organizes Non-Resident Indians, who have renounced their Indian citizenship, to campaign in India for the BJP — emerged as an issue of deep concern to both Indians and Americans.
When I finally seized the opportunity to visit India, I was amazed at the chance to meet with so many influential activists, writers, and others. From having coffee with Arundhati Roy to running into Teesta Setalvad, encountering John Dayal to meeting Audrey Truschke, getting a selfie with Shabnam Hashmi to being invited to speak at St. Stephen’s College. Delhi particularly came alive for me as I explored the far reaches — and got rebuked by security guards for wandering too far into wild, unmarked sections — of the massive structures left behind by the Mughal Empire.
Witnessing multiple protests against the RSS-BJP was the cherry on the cake; for those whose blood runs hot and hearts beat faster at a good protest, you’ve never experienced anything like a Delhi protest.
Since then, I’ve had the chance to protest the RSS chief visiting Chicago and Modi visiting Houston, to investigate and make an impact on US congressional candidates linked to the OFBJP and the RSS’s international wing, to call out ambassadors who visit and pay homage to the RSS, and to publish, publish, publish on topics ranging from Gandhi to the Sikh movement to the rise of Hindu nationalism to much more.
The rise in lynchings, the situation in Kashmir, the violence in Delhi this past year, increasing cases of rape against Dalit women and Dalitbahujans in general, arrest of human rights activists and academics — these and so many other issues are what drive me, out of love for my Indian-origin friends who live all around the world, to speak out for liberty and peace in India. That, and an intense hatred of authoritarianism.
I believe that peace in every part of the world is essential for humanity to thrive and this knowledge galvanizes me to write, speak, and act.
