Rising Hinduphobia

The Hindu community in America as well as in India. The temple, operated by the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), was defaced with anti-India graffiti, a clear act of intimidation that coincides suspiciously with an upcoming ‘Khalistan referendum’ in Los Angeles. This is not the first time such an attack has taken place. The last year alone has seen at least ten Hindu temples across the United States being vandalized reflecting a clear pattern of Hinduphobia being on the rise.

For years, radical Sikh separatist groups operating in North America, with support from elements in Pakistan, have sought to stoke communal tensions among the Indian diaspora. Yet their growing brazenness would not have been possible without an enabling ideological ecosystem in the West, where the BJP-led Indian government is routinely vilified as ‘fascist’ while violent separatists are treated as freedom fighters. The irony is glaring: Western liberals who excoriate India’s elected leadership as ‘authoritarian’ are often the first to rationalize radical extremism when it is cloaked in the language of victimhood.

Despite repeated incidents of temple desecration, the so-called ‘progressive’ narrative continues in the U.S. continues to dismiss Hinduphobia as a ‘manufactured’ issue, insisting that it pales in comparison to other forms of discrimination. Hindu advocacy groups like the Hindu American Foundation and the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) have repeatedly raised alarms about this rising intolerance, but their concerns have largely been ignored or even mocked.

Anti-India rhetoric in American universities has surged, with academics openly pushing the idea that Hinduphobia is a myth even as they cheerlead narratives of ‘Hindu supremacy.’ Think tanks with questionable funding links churn out reports portraying the Indian government as an authoritarian menace while downplaying the rising violence against Hindus globally. In contrast, the same voices that shout ‘Islamophobia’ or ‘white supremacy’ at the slightest provocation are conspicuously silent when Hindu places of worship are attacked.

This hostility stems from an ideological disdain for the Narendra Modi-led BJP government, which, to Western progressives, embodies everything they loathe: unapologetic nationalism, economic self-reliance and a refusal to be lectured by the West. Modi’s electoral dominance has led leftist intellectuals to conflate the Hindu majority with an imagined, monolithic ‘Hindu supremacist’ movement - an absurd notion in a country as religiously and culturally diverse as India.

Much of the Western left has constructed a simplistic moral binary: groups that claim oppression must always be defended, even when their actions undermine democratic values. This warped logic has led to the legitimization of not just Khalistani separatists but also extremist elements in the Palestinian movement, who are excused even when they target civilians.

Thus, if a mosque or synagogue in the U.S. is defaced, it would trigger an outpouring of condemnation with the FBI swiftly deployed and politicians scrambling to reaffirm their commitment to religious tolerance. But when Hindu temples are targeted, the response from American political elites has regrettably been muted. This must swiftly change under the new Trump administration.