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A DIASPORA AT A CROSSROADS  
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Ankur Singh
June 12, 2025
The Progressive
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_ At two events in the suburbs of Chicago this spring, members of the
Indian diaspora responded to the rise of ethnonationalism in very
different ways. _

Sadhvi Rithambara tying a rakhi bracelet to Prime Minister Narendra
Modi on Raksha Bandhan, August 201, (Government of India).

 

When I pulled into the parking lot of the Hanuman Temple of Greater
Chicago on a Saturday evening this past April, the first thing I
noticed was a man standing in front of a parked car adorned with the
flag of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the far-right Hindu
nationalist party that has held power in India since 2014. The temple,
which is located in the northwest Chicago suburb of Glenview,
Illinois, was at standing-room-only capacity that evening, the space
packed with hundreds of devotees. The audience, which included
grandparents, adults with children in their laps, and bored teenagers
scrolling on their phones, rose from their seats to applaud and chant
the nationalist slogan “_Bharat Mata Ki Jai_”—“Victory to
Mother India”—as the guest of honor arrived.

Glenview is an average middle class suburb that overwhelmingly voted
against
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Trump in the 2024 election, which is why it was alarming to see a
crowd of hundreds cheer enthusiastically for Sadhvi Rithambara, a
far-right Hindu nationalist whose rhetoric over the past four decades
has incited violence against ethnic and religious minorities in India.
In the 1990s, Rithambara traveled the country delivering fiery
speeches that ultimately incited violent mobs to demolish the Babri
Masjid, a Mughal-era mosque in the state of Uttar Pradesh. In January
2024, just months prior to India’s national election, Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP celebrated the grand opening of a
new Hindu temple where the mosque once stood. A year later, Rithambara
is touring the United States to share the tale.

The BJP subscribes to Hindu nationalism, an ideology which aims to
transform the secular government into an explicitly Hindu one, leading
to the subjugation of Muslims, Christians, lower-caste Dalits
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minority groups in India. This ideology has a growing presence in the
United States, where Indian diaspora groups are funding Hindu
nationalist projects in India and increasingly influencing U.S.
political leaders. The Hindu Republican Coalition
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founded by an Indian-American businessman in suburban Chicago who
donated nearly $1 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign, even has Steve
Bannon as a co-chair.

Rithambara’s tour coincided with a time of rising ethnonationalism
across the world, as well as growing alliances between the far-right
movements of India and the United States. In attendance for her April
talk in Glenview were members of the Overseas Friends of the BJP, the
Chicago Indian consulate, and Bharat Barai, a major supporter of Modi
who has also stumped
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President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance was
preparing for his first official trip
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India, during which he hoped to strengthen economic and geopolitical
ties between the two countries. 

Despite dozens of organizations and individuals signing on to
a letter
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the temple cancel the talk, Rithambara’s event went on as planned.
Her talk didn’t quite resemble a political stump speech, so much as
a yarn of her campaign to demolish the Babri Masjid. With pride, she
described her daring escapes from police and whipping up crowds of
supporters while riding trains and walking streets, mythologizing
herself like a hero in a folktale. 

“I once climbed to the rooftop of a college, and as soon as I
shouted, “Jai Shri Ram,” something remarkable happened,”
Rithambara told the audience. “Millions of people emerged from their
homes, responding with the same powerful chant: “Jai Shri Ram, Jai
Shri Ram, Jai Shri Ram.” At that moment, I realized that when you
are truly determined, nothing can stop you from succeeding.”

Her performance was accompanied by background music, with a live piano
and tabla joining in as her voice crescendoed to a finish met by
thunderous applause from the crowd. 

Sitting there, I felt the reverberations of hate in my body—the
performance was moving me, and I was horrified by it. It no longer
felt like a mystery to me that her speeches could incite a mob of
Hindus to demolish a mosque as they did in 1992. As extreme as it may
sound, the scene felt eerily similar to that of a Nazi speech, or of
white Americans cheering on lynchings. 

I had many questions for the people around me. I wanted to know if
they recognized the parallels Ritambhara’s worldview and that of
Donald Trump, and whether they, like me, found the presence of BJP
imagery and members of the Indian Consulate at what was supposedly a
spiritual event to be significant. But I couldn’t bring myself to
ask. I didn’t want to identify myself as a reporter in that room.
Perhaps it was an abdication of my journalistic responsibility not to
do so. But the memory of a crowd attacking
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of the 2018 World Hindu Congress in Chicago was still lingering in my
mind.

But while ethnonationalists have grown their coalitions across
borders, those organizing for inclusivity and peace have begun to do
the same. Before arriving at the Hanuman Temple, I had spent the day
at a church in the western suburb of Bellwood, where hundreds of
people from across the Midwest had gathered for Dalit History Month.
The event was a celebration of heritage for those descended from the
lowest stratum of the Indian caste system, as well as the political
vision of B.R. Ambedkar, an independence movement-era political leader
of Dalit heritage who drafted the Constitution of India in 1949.

Ambedkar is revered by many lower-caste Hindus and other marginalized
communities to this day for advocating for a casteless society, and
his birthday is celebrated every year across India and its diaspora.
The grim irony of Rithambara’s visit to Chicago coinciding with this
event was not lost on its organizers: A few days before her talk, an
interfaith activist coalition called on
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Hanuman Temple to cancel the event, claiming that a place of worship
shouldn’t be platforming violent ethnonationalism. “As someone who
has helped care for a Hanuman temple for over twenty-five years,”
Punya Upadhyaya, a co-founder of Hindus For Human Rights, said in a
press release, “giving a platform to someone so antithetical to
Hanumanji’s blessings”—referring to the Hindu god Hanuman’s
teachings of selflessness—“is a shameful act.” 

“We should be celebrating Dalit History Month,” said Pushkar
Sharma, executive director of South Asian Coalition to Renew Democracy
(SACRED) at a press conference ahead of the back-to-back events.
“Unfortunately, we’re here to call for a Hindu temple in Glenview
not to platform hate speech . . . that calls for mass violence against
marginalized groups.”

The Dalit History Month event, which was organized by the Ambedkar
Association of North America, and had a remarkably different tone than
that of the Hanuman Temple event later that day. Chandrashekar Azad,
an Indian politician and lawyer of Dalit background who attended the
event, noted the parallels between the struggles of Dalits in India
and those of Black Americans—two communities pushed to the margins
of society by state sanctioned disinvestment.

“Struggle brings change—and even in America, the African American
community has witnessed that transformation,” Azad said in remarks
to the audience. “If there’s any place where dream world is being
realized, it is here—where every human is equal to another.”

After being surrounded by people celebrating a vision of equality and
justice earlier in the day, it was difficult to sit at the Hanuman
temple and listen to an audience applaud what amounted to hate speech
just a few hours later. As I sat there, I thought about the constant
tug of war between those who want an ethnonationalist state and those
who want peace between people of all backgrounds. Because as
Rithambara tours the United States, so does Azad. In her book _Caste:
The Origins of Our Discontents, _journalist Isabel Wilkerson
characterizes caste as “an artificial construction, a fixed and
embedded ranking of human value” that legitimizes and reinforces
social hierarchy. But so long as those at the bottom continue to
exist, there will always be people engaged in the struggle for
equality and self-determination. 

“Ambedkar said wherever Indians migrate, they import their caste,”
said Obed Manwatkar, one of the organizers of the Dalit History Month
celebration. “That’s why it’s necessary to teach the values of
Ambedkar to the next generation to build a casteless society
everywhere.”

_Ankur Singh is a Cicero-based, Chicago-adjacent freelance journalist
and organizer._

_Since 1909, The Progressive has aimed to amplify voices of dissent
and those under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal of
championing grassroots progressive politics. Our bedrock values are
nonviolence and freedom of speech._

_Based in Madison, Wisconsin, we publish on national politics,
culture, and events including U.S. foreign policy; we also focus on
issues of particular importance to the heartland. Two flagship
projects of The Progressive include Public School Shakedown
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to resist the privatization of public education, and The Progressive
Media Project [[link removed]], aiming to diversify our
nation’s op-ed pages. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. _

* India
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* ethno-nationalism
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* Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
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* Dalits
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