Hindutva, or Hindu supremacy, is often understood as a foreign policy issue. However, Hindutva has been expanding its global influence for decades, and in recent years has become a notable player in the global far right ecosystem.
In the United States, a network of Hindu supremacist organizations - as well as affiliated politicians, donors, and self-styled activists - has worked to promote the Indian government's interests in the US, cozy up to the white nationalist right, and oppose efforts to protect marginalized communities both domestically and abroad.
Here's everything you need to know about Hindutva in the American diaspora.
What does diaspora Hindu supremacy look like?
The Sangh Parivar is a vast network of far-right groups spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu supremacist paramilitary that took inspiration from World War II-era ethnofascist movements in Europe.
While thousands of Sangh groups exist in India, hundreds more operate overseas, including at least 113 in the United States. These American Hindu supremacist groups are known collectively as the American Sangh, and are in ideological lockstep with the RSS and its Indian affiliates.
Despite this, Hindutva in the diaspora is often cloaked in the language of minority rights and antiracism. American Hindu supremacist groups often position themselves as speaking for the rights of all Hindus, thereby conflating Hindutva with Hinduism itself. Those who criticize Hindutva, Brahminism, and the Indian government, therefore, are labeled as “Hinduphobic” - a tactic that is borrowed straight from the American Zionist playbook.
Similarly, Hindu supremacist policies and atrocities committed in India are often justified using the language of social justice, decolonization, and antiracism. Some key examples include:
The passage of anti-conversion laws in several Indian states has been defended by the American Sangh as preventing “forced proselytization,” or forced conversions. In practice, however, these laws effectively criminalize interfaith relationships, as well as conversion away from Hinduism. Anti-conversion laws are routinely used as justification for Hindu militant groups attacking interfaith couples and Christian congregations.
The 2024 consecration of a Ram Temple on the site of the historic Babri Masjid (which was illegally destroyed by Hindu militants in 1992) was justified as “decolonization” from centuries-past Mughal rule, even as Hindu supremacists in India celebrated the consecration with anti-Muslim mob violence.
Legislation outlawing caste-based discrimination in California and Seattle was met with fierce opposition from Hindu supremacists, who claimed that making caste a protected category would “violate their religious freedom and constitutional protections”.
However, as the Savera coalition notes, American Hindu supremacists have increasingly embraced their alignment with the far right following the 2024 election of Donald Trump.
Who spreads Hindutva in the diaspora?
Some prominent organizations in the American Sangh include:
Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA) — the American branch of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a Hindu militant group with an extensive history of anti-minority violence. The VHPA is also known for its collaborations with white supremacist and anti-Muslim actors such as Laura Loomer, the Middle East Forum, Pamela Geller, and others.
Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) — the overseas wing of the RSS, which operates in more than 40 countries, including the United States. In the past, the HSS has praised RSS leaders like M.S. Golwalkar, who once declared that Indian minorities should live in “subordination” to Hindus. The HSS also has several US-based offshoots that include educational and student groups.
Hindu American Foundation (HAF) — a far-right group that, up until the 2024 election of Donald Trump, styled itself as a civil rights organization. HAF has engaged in coordinated harassment campaigns against critics of Hindutva, deployed SLAPP lawsuits against activists and journalists, and opposed laws banning caste-based discrimination in California, including by suing the California Civil Rights Department in 2020. Senior HAF leadership also welcomed Trump's second term, including by asking Trump to endorse their “Hindu American Project 2025.”
Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation USA — The American branch of the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation, an RSS-affiliated nonprofit organization that operates single-teacher schools in rural and tribal areas of India. These schools are aimed at indoctrinating children from vulnerable backgrounds into the RSS's Hindu supremacist ideology.
Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) — a Hindu supremacist advocacy group that proliferates anti-Muslim, anti-Sikh, and other anti-minority hate speech under the guise of defending American Hindus' rights. CoHNA board member Sudha Jagannathan regularly posts anti-Muslim content on social media, including a tweet calling the mob lynching of a Muslim man a “sob story.”
What's the connection between American Hindutva and the MAGA movement?
The links between the American Sangh and the MAGA movement are both ideological and material. As the Savera coalition writes for Political Research Associates (PRA):
“The Hindu supremacist (or Hindutva) movement's size, wealth, century-long political longevity, and hegemonic power is unparalleled. Global far-right strategists have thus tracked the movement's rise, its organizational sophistication, and its capture of state power with interest. Steve Bannon, for example, once noted that Modi ‘was a Trump before Trump.’”
— Savera, Political Research Associates
In other words, the success of the Hindutva movement in India is aspirational to the American right. On the flip side, the American Sangh has sought legitimacy through its collaborations with Zionists and white supremacists. Savera notes:
“The American Sangh's movement toward the Far Right is likely to accelerate, inspired by the model of the pro-Israel movement, in its pursuit of a dual positioning: simultaneously White-adjacent and an aggrieved minority. Even if this rightward shift becomes unpopular among Indian Americans, it could be advanced by brute force, wealthy donors, and whatever structural advantages the Hindu Far Right retains. In this regard, the American Sangh looks poised to follow their far-right partners in an anti-democratic pursuit of minority rule.”
— Savera
This alliance is only growing more and more visible. Some key examples include:
For the first time in 2024, RSS leader Ram Madhav was given a platform to address global far-right leaders at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., during which he lauded the “success story of conservatism in India—the defeat of the left-liberal-Marxist-radical Islamist cabal in India.”
A leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), Krishna Gudipati, participated in the January 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection.
In 2019, American Hindu supremacist groups organized an event to welcome Narendra Modi to Texas, featuring Donald Trump as a special guest speaker. The event, titled “Howdy Modi,” saw 50,000 attendees.
The Republican Hindu Coalition appointed Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist and close Trump aide, as its co-chair in 2019.
How are these groups attacking minority rights in the US?
1. Weaponizing the language of social justice
In stark contrast to their Indian counterparts, who are explicit in their calls for anti-minority violence, the rhetoric of American Sangh often weaponizes the language of social justice in order to shield their ideology from criticism.
Conflating criticism of Hindutva with hatred of Hindus or Hinduism (a tactic taken directly from the Zionist playbook). This often manifests as bad-faith accusations of “Hinduphobia” against critics of Narendra Modi, the BJP, and Hindutva.
“Scholars of South Asia overall consider the term ‘Hinduphobia’ problematic for several reasons… [the term] relies on flawed analogies with anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, though these are very different. The anti-Semitic ideology of Nazism led to the Holocaust. Islamophobic foreign policies over time resulted in the killing of Muslims across the world, including in South Asia, as well as the recent anti-Muslim ban of the Trump administration. Anti-Hindu bias, on the other hand, cannot be easily linked to casualties on such horrific scales.”
Framing Hindu supremacist policies and atrocities as “decolonization” or “protecting Indian Hindus.”
“In the case of India, authentic anticolonial grievances are selectively mobilized, recoded, and redirected not simply against the legacies of British rule as such but against Indian Muslims, Christians, Dalits, secularism, and Western liberal academia. The first three have historically been targets of far-right violence in India. Secularism has always been defined by Hindu nationalists as a colonial import foreign to India's cultural ethos. And Western liberal academia—and their domestic allies—is seen by them as the site of production of “anti-India” or “anti-Hindu” literature. As such, the Hindu far-right use of postcolonial theory or decolonial language can be understood as a reconfiguration of the expression of the core tenets of their ideology.”
Presenting Hindutva as a reclamation of power for Hindus, despite the disproportionate political and social power exercised by Hindus in India. This sentiment is often seen through the phrase “Hindu khatre mein hai” (Hindus are in danger).
“Alt News has observed that in the past few months, a systematic, synchronised and organised attempt is underway to target Muslims and Christians and paint both communities as criminals and morally bankrupt while constantly painting the Hindu community as a victim. This has been sought to be achieved by weaponising misinformation and targeting the minority communities through distortion and lies… The modus operandi has now become predictable, and operates on the basis of a few set templates- Muslim names ascribed to perpetrators of violence, morphed pictures, forged letters, videos circulated with different context, and sheer rumour mongering. Almost every single day, a fresh claim is circulated and shared widely on social media platforms. While this trend peaks during the election cycle, it generally continues unabated.”
2. Spreading Indian government propaganda for an American audience
The American Sangh works to whitewash Hindu supremacist violence and the discriminatory policies of the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling party of India.
Tactics include:
Denying, justifying, or supporting anti-minority violence. In 2022, Global Hindu Heritage Foundation (GHHF), a Hindu supremacist group based in Texas, held a fundraiser to demolish churches in India. GHHF's website features hundreds of articles with anti-Muslim and anti-Christian propaganda. Prakasarao Velagapudi, president of GHHF and main writer for its website, frequently describes Muslims as terrorists, rapists, criminals, and foreign infiltrators who pose an existential threat to Hindus and Hinduism. He also describes Christians as “exploitative,” associating them with “cruelty, hatred, deception, and brainwashing.” Several articles on GHHF's website attempt to paint both Islam and Christianity as uniquely oppressive, sexist, and violent.
Defending policies targeting Muslims and other minorities. From July 2020 to March 2022, American Hindu supremacist groups “launched a multi-pronged effort” to successfully quash a Chicago City Council resolution condemning the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The campaign involved hiring a lobbyist, smearing Muslim civil rights groups that condemned the CAA as “terrorists”, collaborating with anti-Muslim groups like the Middle East Forum, and labeling city council members as bigots.
Celebrating symbols associated with Hindu supremacy. In August 2022, the Indian Business Association organized an Indian Independence Day parade in Edison, New Jersey, featuring a bulldozer decorated with images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. In India, bulldozers symbolize the Modi government's targeted demolitions of Muslim-owned homes and businesses.
3. Wedge politics, Islamophobia, anti-minority hate
The American Sangh regularly engages in wedge politics to position themselves as a “good” and “model” minority, while painting other minorities - especially Muslims and Sikhs - as violent and incompatible with American values. In this vein, American Hindu supremacists have often taken up causes commonly associated with white supremacists, including calls to stop Muslim immigration into the US, backlash against the construction of a mosque near NYC's Ground Zero, and fighting to overturn affirmative action.
“Indians skipped the ‘ghetto stage’ common to most immigrant stories.”
“I am compelled to come to [the] conclusion that the common link that binds ‘rakshasas’ [demons] of 8th to 17th century with 21st century ones is nothing but Islam. We have heard the stale argument that no religion teaches violence, that Islam is not to be blamed, these are misguided followers, etc. But the questions that beg answers are, why doesn't Islam have a self-correcting feature?”
4. Opposing civil rights protections for vulnerable communities
Caste is the oldest form of discrimination in the world, and continues to impact millions of South Asians today, including in the diaspora. Despite the documented proliferation of caste-based discrimination in the diaspora, including in American workplaces, Hindu supremacist groups have tried to claim that civil rights protections for caste-oppressed communities would harm all Hindus.
In September 2022, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) sued the California Civil Rights Department in an attempt to label protections for Dalits as “anti-Hindu,” despite widespread reports of caste-based discrimination in Silicon Valley. HAF's lawsuit followed a historic lawsuit in 2020 by the Civil Rights Department against Cisco Systems after a Dalit engineer reported harassment, discrimination, and retaliation from his managers. A federal judge dismissed HAF's case in 2023, describing HAF's claim that efforts to ban caste discrimination would harm Hindu Americans at large were “highly speculative and seemingly implausible.”
According to data provided exclusively to VICE News by Dalit advocacy group Equality Labs, 250 Dalits from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, and dozens of others in Silicon Valley came forward in 2020 to report discrimination, bullying, ostracization, and even sexual harassment by “upper-caste” colleagues.
5. Using lawsuits and harassment to silence critics
American Hindutva organizations have engaged in coordinated harassment campaigns to silence their critics, including through litigation, bad-faith accusations of Hinduphobia, and targeted harassment campaigns that involve threats of violence, death, and sexual assault.
One harassment campaigns made global headlines in 2021, after a group of scholars and activists organized a virtual event titled the “Dismantling Global Hindutva” conference. The three-day event, which was co-sponsored by over 53 universities in the US and internationally, was aimed at discussing Hindutva and its ties to Islamophobia, fascist ideologies, and caste discrimination.
After the conference and its speakers were announced, Hindu supremacists protested by sending nearly one million emails to co-sponsoring universities, while thousands more messages were sent, filled with anti-Muslim slurs and expletives, to the organizers by US based far-right groups.
A report released by academics from Columbia University found that over 63,000 tweets were made about the conference, the majority of them negative. Some of the most widely circulated tweets were made by high-profile Hindu nationalists in India, including Suresh Chavhanke, the owner of a right-wing news channel, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician Kapil Mishra.
One of Mishra's tweets calls Hindutva “terror for terrorists,” and declares that “war will be a blistering blow on the cheeks of those who dream of dismantling Hindutva.” The post garnered over 54,000 likes and 23,000 retweets.
Other examples of Hindu supremacist litigation and harassment campaigns include:
In 2006, the Hindu American Foundation sued the state of California for mentioning caste discrimination and Untouchability in sixth-grade textbooks.
In 2021, HAF sued five people - including activists, academics, and a journalist - who had provided critical comments about the organization to Al Jazeera. A Washington, D.C. judge subsequently dismissed the case as frivolous.
Also in 2021, HAF filed a Title VI complaint against the University of Pennsylvania for co-sponsoring the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference.
6. Platforming hate speakers in American communities
Hindu supremacists have organized speaking tours in the United States for a number of hateful public figures from India over the years.
In 2022, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA) organized a series of events with Hindu extremist leader Sadhvi Ritambhara, a key figure in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), one of India's largest and most violent Hindu militant organizations. Ritambhara's hateful speeches have been described as “the single most powerful instrument for whipping up anti-Muslim violence” in various Indian states. In 1992, during the run-up to the demolition of the historic Babri Mosque, Ritambhara's speeches calling for a Hindu war against Muslims were made into audio cassettes and sold across the country.
In 2025, American Sangh groups organized a nationwide speaking tour for Kajal Singhala, also known as Kajal Hindustani. Singhala is a prominent Hindu extremist figure with a history of inciting anti-minority violence. At an event she held in Dallas, Singhala described Muslims as “jihadis”, ordered Hindus to economically boycott minorities, and called on her audience to associate with known Hindu militant groups that operate in India, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal. As part of the same tour, Singhala also visited New York City ahead of its mayoral election, where she called then-candidate Zohran Mamdani a “new demon” standing in the way of “Ram Rajya,” or righteous rule, for Hindus.
7. Pushing Muslims out of civic spaces
Hindu supremacists have launched attacks on Muslims in civic spaces, smearing prominent organizations like Council on American-Islamic and Islamic Circle of North America as “Islamist” or terror-affiliated. They've also launched campaigns of intimidation to crush elected officials' condemnation of human rights abuses in India, including one well-documented campaign to intimidate Chicago City Council members who criticized the Citizenship Amendment Act.
In one case in Illinois, Hindu supremacists influenced the passage of a law instating an Indian American Advisory Council to the Governor, which blatantly excluded Muslims by defining an “Indian” as “a person descended from any of the countries of the subcontinent that are not primarily Muslim in character.”
8. Pushing Muslims out of Indian American spaces
Indian Muslims in the United States have reported being impacted on a personal level by rising Hindu supremacy in the diaspora.
In 2024, the Indian American Muslim Council, the largest Indian Muslim advocacy organization in the diaspora, conducted a community survey with just under 1,000 respondents from across the United States. The responses demonstrated alarming trends:
81% of respondents reported experiencing harassment, discrimination, or prejudice from Hindu friends or social contacts over the past decade.
70% of respondents experienced biased treatment from Hindu colleagues.
48% of respondents reported harassment on social media, including Facebook, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn.
80% of respondents say they feel less comfortable in Indian American spaces since the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India. Not a single respondent reported feeling more comfortable.
Respondents reported feelings of isolation, fear, and emotional fatigue. They noted that Hindu friends and neighbors, people they were once comfortable with, “changed their behavior” towards Muslims. One reported losing friends to Hindu supremacist Islamophobia.
In response to the rise in hate crimes and anti-Muslim hate speech, including explicit calls for ethnic cleansing, mutilation, and torture of Muslims, Muslims in the US are fearing for their family and friends abroad. Several respondents noted that they fear a genocide or mass violence.
94% of respondents strongly agreed that Hindu nationalism poses a threat to religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, in both India and the U.S.
86% of respondents see Hindu nationalism as a threat to democracy in the United States, citing concerns about the infiltration of Hindu nationalist ideology into U.S. politics and academia.
How can I combat Hindu supremacy in the United States?
Combating American Hindutva requires understanding their particular brand of hate speech and narrative-building. You can learn more about Hindu supremacist talking points - and how to counter them - by exploring IMAM's Factsheets & Presentations tab. You can also gain a deeper understanding of Hindutva's supremacist history by checking out our Hindutva 101: A Timeline article series.
Visit IMAM's Get Involved page to see our current campaigns to combat Hindutva in America.
Keep learning
Learn how to recognize and counter Hindu supremacist talking points, and get the history behind the ideology.
