As Indian Americans growing up in the Chicago area, Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings were embedded in our upbringing.
Gandhian principles like truth, equality and nonviolence inspired us.
Two of us were born in the United States to Hindu families, and one of us was born in India to a Muslim family before immigrating here. All three of us grew up in diverse communities with other South Asians, celebrating all we shared.
Yet in recent years, the rise of Hindu extremism in India has grated on our communities. This divide was on display during President Donald Trump’s recent visit to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Hundreds of thousands of Indians crammed into an Ahmedabad stadium to cheer Trump’s pro-wrestling style entrance.
While Trump and Modi visited Delhi, violent Hindu extremists attacked Muslim-majority neighborhoods as the police stood by, resulting in the largest clashes Delhi has seen in decades. At least 24 people were reported killed and 189 injured as of Wednesday afternoon.
At any other time, a meeting of the chief executives of the two largest democracies would inspire the world. Instead, the world was reminded of a growing human epidemic of xenophobia, racism and nationalism.
Trump’s constant attacks endanger every immigrant in the United States. The connection between his rhetoric and violence against our community is well-documented in reports by the nonpartisan organization South Asian Americans Leading Together. After Trump’s 2016 election, SAALT documented a 45% increase of incidents of hate, violence, and xenophobic political rhetoric aimed at Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Middle Eastern and Arab American communities.
Trump has normalized the targeting of immigrant communities, contributing to a number of recent tragedies. In May 2019, a man in California crashed his vehicle into a 13-year-old South Asian American girl and six others. In July 2019, a man in New York attacked a Hindu priest just days after Trump called for three congresswomen to “go back” to “their countries.”
Being attacked randomly for being South Asian American is terrifying and more likely under Trump.
In India, we have seen a similar vilification of refugees, immigrants and minority groups under Modi. Since becoming prime minister in 2014, he has pressed a supremacist vision — India as a country first and foremost for Hindu citizens, who are estimated 80% of the population.
Modi has railed against the secular provisions of India’s constitution, passed wide-reaching legislation to promote this agenda and brutally suppressed dissent as members of his party have incited violence at rallies with no legal consequences.
Modi and the Hindu supremacist networks supporting him have emboldened a wave of radicalization that promotes violence and extremist thought, epitomized by increased support for the Hindu fundamentalist who assassinated Gandhi. This warped development symbolizes India today.
The situation is so dire that the Eurasia Group named India the fifth biggest geopolitical risk of 2020 — a greater risk than both climate change and the Middle East.
Trump and Modi are leading the world’s largest democracies down dangerous paths.
Both men head massive, under-performing economies beset with deep inequities rooted in an oligarchical system. Both seek to preserve power by pitting common people with common interest against one another by channeling fear and division. Both are using their power to bend institutions and break norms, retaliate against dissent, and both are consolidating power in the process.
Both threaten to leave both countries democracies in name only.
We call on our elected leaders to welcome religious diversity, condemn Islamophobia as well as discrimination of all types in the United States and India. Seattle and Cambridge recently passed resolutions to this effect. Our cities and state should follow their lead.
We ask leaders in our community to convene interfaith and cultural dialogues, to reject violence and Hindu supremacist thought, and to end divisions along religious lines. We must stop targeting each other — as we are targets ourselves for no other reason than our skin color. And as a human race, we must start addressing the deep-seeded economic and racial inequalities that are the center of this global epidemic.
We are dividing ourselves on our basest instincts instead of uniting around our common experience.
Which brings us back to one of Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings: “The future depends on what you do today.”
Ameya Pawar was the first Indian American elected to the Chicago City Council and is a senior fellow with The Economic Security Project and senior advisor to The Academy Group. Harish I. Patel is the executive director of Economic Security for Illinois and co-founder of Chicago Votes. Pushkar Sharma is a 2020 fellow at the New Leaders Council; he has worked with the United Nations in Kosovo, the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Colombia and Myanmar.
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