Among Donald Trump’s Biggest U.S. Fans: Hindu Nationalists
By JEREMY W. PETERSOCT. 14, 2016
A fire ritual in Donald J. Trump’s honor, held by a right-leaning organization called Hindu Sena in New Delhi last May. Credit Rajat Gupta/European Pressphoto Agency
Your typical Trump rally this was not.
First there was the ritual Hindu fire, a yagna, which burned in his honor. Then there were the posters, standard Donald J. Trump head shots except for a touch of artistic interpretation: a tilak, the red dot symbolic of the spiritual third eye in Hindu culture, smudged on his forehead.
This celebration of Mr. Trump in New Delhi in May, and others like it in India this year, are the work of a small, devoted and increasingly visible faction of Hindu nationalists in India and the United States who see Mr. Trump as the embodiment of the cocksure, politically incorrect, strongman brand of politics they admire.
That some of Mr. Trump’s most passionate followers are Indian may seem, at first, somewhat strange, given how fond he is of scorning Asian countries where cheap labor saps demand for American workers. A poll on Asian-Americans’ political leanings conducted in August and September found that just 7 percent of Indian-Americans said they would vote for Mr. Trump.
But in one of the more peculiar pairings of this most peculiar political season, Mr. Trump has unwittingly fashioned a niche constituency in the overlap between the Indian right and the American right, which share a lot of the same anxieties about terrorism, immigration and the loss of prestige that they believe their leaders have been too slow to reverse.
“There’s a lot of parallels there,” said Shalabh Kumar, the founding chairman of the Republican Hindu Coalition. “Mr. Trump is all about development, development, development; prosperity, prosperity, prosperity; tremendous job growth. And at the same time, he recognizes the need to control the borders.”
As one of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hindu financial backers, Mr. Kumar, who runs an electronics manufacturing company in Illinois and grew up in the state of Punjab along the Pakistani border, has helped organize a speech by the Republican nominee in Edison, N.J., at a Bollywood-themed charity concert on Saturday. The proceeds will benefit terrorism victims.
“It will be an incredible evening,” Mr. Trump said in a video promoting it, one of the few ethnic events he has agreed to do during this campaign.
Mr. Trump may be largely indifferent to the reasons behind his Hindu loyalists’ fervor, but his most senior advisers are not. The campaign’s chief executive, Stephen K. Bannon, is a student of nationalist movements. Mr. Bannon is close to Nigel Farage, a central figure in Britain’s movement to leave the European Union, and he is an admirer of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist Mr. Bannon has called “the Reagan of India.”
Shalabh Kumar, the founding chairman of the Republican Hindu Coalition and a Trump supporter. Credit Joshua Bright for The New York Times
It may be pure coincidence that some of Mr. Trump’s words channel the nationalistic and, some argue, anti-Muslim sentiments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to power. But it is certainly not coincidental that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hindu supporters are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent backers.
At times, the similarity of Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Modi’s political vocabulary is striking. Mr. Modi fed the perception that India’s feckless leaders had failed to allow the country to reach its full potential. And he campaigned as the only one capable of fixing that.
“I will make such a wonderful India that all Americans will stand in line to get a visa for India,” he said once. A centerpiece of his agenda is the “Make in India” program, which is aimed at stimulating economic growth by encouraging more manufacturing in the country.
“It’s all about India first, or ‘Make India Great,’ ” said Sujeeth Draksharam, a civil engineer from Houston who supports Mr. Trump and planned to attend Saturday’s event. “Look at Donald Trump. It’s the same thing. ‘Make America Great Again’ — strong again.”
Another similarly powerful sentiment that both leaders have harnessed is grievance. Mr. Trump has seized on how the working class feels out of place and left behind in a country that is changing demographically and economically.
Even if Mr. Modi’s appeals were never as crass as Mr. Trump’s, his followers say he always understood that many Hindus felt their concerns were ignored by India’s secular and, in their minds, deeply corrupt government, which Mr. Modi vowed to clean up.
“One of the things that Modi very subtly articulated, but was very clear about, was something which nobody wanted to say,” said Subramanian Swamy, a longtime Indian politician and Hindu nationalist who is often a thorn in the side of the country’s political elite. “And that is that Hindus, despite being 80 percent of the population, feel like they got a raw deal.”
There are important differences: Mr. Modi has maintained good relations with President Obama and is a proponent of free trade. Still, Mr. Swamy said, when nationalist-minded Hindus hear Mr. Trump, “they think that this guy talks the same language.”
And Mr. Trump’s Hindu admirers accept him, controversies and all. How can he be anti-immigrant when two of his three wives have been immigrants, as one recently told India Abroad. Why should he be punished for singling out Muslim terrorism when, as Mr. Draksharam said, “you’ve got to call a spade a spade.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India in September. Many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hindu supporters are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent backers. Credit Pool photo by Etienne Oliveau
Manu Bhagavan, who teaches South Asian history at Hunter College, said the Hindu nationalist movement in India and its devotees in the United States shared a belief that what was once pure and virtuous about Indian life has been tainted.
“They locate this in a grand Hindu past,” he said. “If you go before Muslims entered India, before all these foreigners came in and messed things up, Hindus could do this, Hindus could do that.”
The response, Mr. Bhagavan said — whether in India, the United States, Britain or any of the countries experiencing a convulsion of antiglobalism right now — is “let’s barricade ourselves in.”
“These problems are all stemming from these immigrants, these different people, so let’s get rid of them,” he said, describing the views of many nationalists. “And it’s easy answers to not such easy problems.”
But perhaps the strongest link between Mr. Trump’s speech and the Hindu nationalists who find his politics so comforting is the issue of terrorism and how bluntly Mr. Trump is willing to confront Muslim communities about it. Terrorism committed by Islamic extremists is a scourge that has rattled India as well, from the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that left 172 dead to the ambush killings of 20 Indian soldiers last month at an army base near the border with Pakistan.
Mr. Trump’s brand of tough talk, scholars said, gives some Indians a sense that he would be much harder on the country’s longtime adversary, Pakistan.
“What Donald Trump articulates has given them some food for thought,” said Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London. “If there is a Trump presidency, then there might be a stronger Washington policy vis-à-vis Pakistan.”
When Mr. Trump arrives at the Hindu charity gala in New Jersey on Saturday, the estimated 10,000 guests will be taking in a performance with Bollywood stars, a Hindu art temple and exhibitions honoring the contribution of Hindus to math and science.
Mr. Kumar, the Republican Hindu Coalition founder, said neither he nor Mr. Trump was naïve about the fact that most Indian-Americans vote for Democrats. But there could be a few, he said, who hear Mr. Trump on Saturday and discover his message is not all that unfamiliar.
What Mr. Trump should probably not expect is the kind of fawning reception he has gotten from his small bands of followers in New Delhi. There was the time in June when a right-wing group known as the Hindu Sena decided to celebrate his 70th birthday. Absent Mr. Trump, who was in North Carolina that day, they improvised and fed a life-size Trump cutout a piece of cake.
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