In what can be seen as a major victory for the Hindu community in the US, five Bharatiya American members of the US Congress have sought an urgent Congressional briefing from the US Department of Justice over the alarming increase in attacks on Hindu temples in the US.
US Congress members Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Shri Thanedar, and Amy Bera sent a letter to the US Department of Justice demanding an urgent Congressional hearing on the issue, no later than April 18th, to get a clear understanding of the department’s strategy in countering hate crimes against Hindus in the US.
Five prominent Bharatiya American legislators in the US Congress coming together to raise their voices against anti-Hindu hate crimes in the US could well be a game changer on issues concerning Hindus in America. Unlike Islamophobia and antisemitism, Hinduphobia in the US hasn’t got the kind of attention it deserves. Hindu right groups in the US routinely raise the issue of the alarming rise in hate crimes against Hindus but these are mostly casually dismissed as rantings inspired by the “ultra-right-wing Hindu majoritarian Modi Government “of Bharat. That’s why most Hindu advocacy organizations in the US are dubbed as affiliates of the RSS and the BJP without any evidence whatsoever, thus shaming these groups and brushing off their legitimate concerns regarding the condition of Hindus in the US.
In the US Congress, it’s usual to see legislation targeting the Hindu community often in the name of caste being introduced and even passed, but it’s rare to see any proactive and concrete action to recognize the threat posed by the alarming increase in anti-Hindu hate crimes in the country. That’s why the imitative by these five Bharatiya American legislators to raise the issue of temple attacks in the US Congress is being hailed by various Hindu American organizations.
“‘Attacks at mandirs from New York to California have contributed to increased collective anxiety among Hindu Americans’, writes all Indian American Members of Congress, in a letter requesting an urgent civil rights Congressional briefing.
Many of these mandir attacks featured Khalistani slogans & themes meant to cause “fear and intimidation” in the Hindu American community. The lack of arrests is raising concerns & increasing the urgency of this briefing “(Hindu American Foundation on X ).
“We are glad to see some much overdue attention to the issue of repeated and frightening frequent attacks on Hindu temples. We’ve been calling attention to the slew of 6 or more attacks in just the Bay Area California between Nov 2023 – Jan 2024, but the problem is older and deeper. 2022 saw its own set of attacks on Hindu temples in New York and elsewhere.
As we said in Dec 2023, when the Bay Area attacks began, freedom of religion means little when sacred spaces that are meant to be an oasis of peace and calm, are vandalized. Worse, the community does not see any action against the perpetrators while our local and national media in the US ignore or downplay the issue”. (Coalition of Hindus of North America) on X.
Temple attacks in the US have seen a sharp rise in the past couple of years. Many such acts of temple vandalism have featured Khalistani slogans and violent anti-Bharat and anti-PM Modi graffiti. Thus, the larger agenda of these attacks seems to be to take up cudgels against the Bharatiya government and intimidate Hindu Americans. Curiously enough, the spate of temple attacks and the anti-Hindu hate crimes in the US are a part of the larger strategy of spreading propaganda against the PM Modi government of Bharat, calling it right-wing and Hindu majoritarian.
The Modi government, ever since he first came to power in 2014, has been taking many steps to connect with the Bharatiya diaspora abroad, thus giving increased visibility to the rights and issues of Hindus in the US. This has upset the delicate equilibrium of the anti-Hindu woke lobby of the west that has been spreading all sorts of propaganda against Hindu Dharma and has been catering to an Abrahamic ecosystem. The wokes see the Modi government as being essentially responsible for the increased visibility of Hindu issues the world over. Thus, they harbor resentment against Bharat and try to intimidate the Hindu diaspora in the west into submission by orchestrating anti-Hindu hate crimes.
It’s been barely 3 months into 2024, and one has already witnessed a fresh round of temple attacks in the US. In January, the Vijay’s Sherawati Temple in Hayward, California, was reportedly attacked with anti-Bharat graffiti. The incident came close on the heels of the Swaminarayan temple attack and a week after a theft occurred at the Shiv Durga Temple in the vicinity. The temple board was reportedly defaced with slogans supporting Khalistan and abusing PM Modi.
The Swaminarayan temple was defaced in December 2023 with pro-Khalistan and anti-Bharat slogans. Bharat’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had expressed concern over the attack saying separatist forces and extremists outside Bharat should not get such space. In January 2024, the Democratic candidate running for election to the US House to represent California’s 17th Congressional District, raised the issue of temple attacks saying that six Hindu temples had been vandalized in California itself barely within a period of two weeks.
Despite the fact that Bharat has raised the issue of temple attacks in the US diplomatically, no serious investigation seems to have been conducted so far. At least, there is none of the findings of which are available in public domain. There are so many pointers suggesting the involvement of Khalistani terrorists in these temple attacks, yet the US government seems keener on protecting the rights of Khalistani terrorists like Gurpatwant Singh Pannun than protecting the safety of Hindu Americans and acting against anti-Hindu elements behind the spate of temple attacks.
The issue of temple attacks in the US is rarely discussed in the US Congress as well. On the contrary, Hindus in the US are routinely targeted through measures such as the Anti-Caste Discrimination Bill that was introduced in California to single out Hindus and racially profile them accusing them of caste discrimination, but the Bill was eventually vetoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom on the ground that ample provisions banning discrimination of all kinds including caste discrimination already existed in the US Constitution. Therefore, passing a separate law for this purpose would invariably result in negative stereotyping of Hindu Americans.
The US politics is a battleground of woke forces wherein various Hindu American organizations voicing the issues of Hindus are being branded as fundamentalists, Islamophobes, and Hindu supremacists. Academic Hinduphobia is at its peak where new fancy theories are being propagated suggesting that it’s the “caste-system” of Hindus that is at the root of all forms of global discrimination including racism and slavery. A Hollywood movie “Origin” that came out recently also indulges in soft propaganda against Hindus by portraying the so-called caste system of Hindus to be the “origin” of all kinds of global inequalities.
Thus, Hindu American legislators of the US Congress have taken the right step by demanding an urgent congressional briefing on the actions taken by the Department of Justice regarding the issue of rising temple attacks in the US. This will hopefully create space for wider discussion on Hinduphobia, something that the west still closes its eyes on.
