Thread by @gauravsabnis

A recent phenomenon as a result of this continuous stanning of Zionism is that many new Desi arrivals who are sanghis start talking politics with American Jewish colleagues or classmates assuming they also hate Muslims. And are shocked if they get liberal pushback in both senses

https://twitter.com/AshrafFem/status/1556911501809631232

For decades, well before WhatsApp, this sanghi worship of militaristic Zionism has been spread as propaganda. More Indians probably gush over the Entebbe raid than Israelis themselves.

The worst thing is, they think THIS is Jewish-Hindu solidarity. Hating Muslims together.

A big thing causing seismic waves in the Indian American community since Modism is that today, cities and universities are the biggest power centers of fascism in India. But cities and universities in the US, where Modi stans typically land, are deep blue. Even in red states.

California is often the leading indicator of any significant changes in the American socio-political landscape. And we have seen the early signs there already. Sanghis opposing the recognition of casteist discrimination in terms that simply can't work in deep blue California.

The widespread trolling of American academics for criticizing the Modi government, including lawsuits, and especially the overblown screeching against the #DismantlingGlobalHindutva academic conference is another indicator that Hindutva already is very much an American problem.

Remember that Hindutva is a primarily upper middle class and elite movement. So its adherents, when they land in India, tend to end up, not in Trump country, but in Biden country.

This was not a problem in Vajpayee days when Hindutva was constrained by coalition pressures.

But Modi's propaganda machine has taken clear sides in a lot of US politics scenarios. India's ruling party was endorsing Trump in 2020 in all but name. Modi even slipped in a narovakunjarova-ish "ab ki baar Trump sarkar" soundbyte. They hate VP Harris a bit extra.

So what we have is this pretty significant Indian Hindu population in primarily blue states and cities, that until now used to be primarily Democratic voters. But have suddenly started finding strong ideological common cause with Republicans once GOP went full Muslimphobe.

The sanghi Indian American is highly educated and generally affluent and tuned into social media and knows how the system generally works. That demographic often has money as well as influence disproportionately higher than the population. It turning right wing is pretty big.

The ruckus sanghis have created in California and in Rutgers is just a preview of things to come.

As India sinks deeper into sanghism, American cities & universities are going to be the avenue of speaking out against it. Sanghis living here will get pugnacious & riled up.

The American media in particular and the American public in general have been mostly ignoring what's unfolding in India these days in ways that is eerily reminiscent of how they mostly ignored 1930s Germany. With the assumption that this is some distant thing unrelated to us.

American media & social media is more het up about Ukraine, an issue unlikely to directly affect American politics, than about India, where, bookmark this tweet, the events will have repercussions in US politics. A sanghi trumpy woman who insulted Chinese folks is a GOP candidate

Indian-American community is less than 1% of the population, wasn't even legally allowed to immigrate until 50 years ago, but already has produced two governors, a US ambassador, and the person a heartbeat away from the presidency even as I type this tweet. That's a meteoric rise

But that count doesn't include the 5-8 million or so Indians waiting in line for citizenship. The actual Indian-American population is under counted because of the green card backlogs.

I estimate we are about 3% of the country. Ten million easily. Who will eventually vote.

As Indian polity tilts decisively and in an unprecedented way towards outright ethno-fascism, it is bound to have direct repercussions in America, a country that is primarily Democratic. And GOP has the power it has only cos constitutional design flaws.

The Indian American diaspora today is disproportionately savarna and the savarna diaspora today is disproportionately right wing. Why they are more excited about the theoretical PM Sunak but always criticizing sitting VP Harris.