The Diasporic Hindu Right with Savera

About this episode

The episode discusses the rise of the diasporic Hindu right and its implications for anti-caste politics and broader social movements in the U.S.

This episode features a conversation with Prachi and Ram, organizers with Savera, a multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of Indian Americans and partners standing together in the fight against the rise of the transnational far right. After laying out Hindu supremacy as an ideology, we considered the different phases of consolidation of the Hindu right in the United States from its late 20th century orientation around homeland politics to its 21st century effort to forge a Hindu American identity, first through an alignment with U.S. civil rights organizations and then through a realignment with white supremacist forces. We delved more deeply into the role of caste within this formation, in particular the longstanding efforts of the Hindu right in both India and the U.S. to forge Hindu unity by opposing anticaste politics. This took us to a discussion of the Hindu right’s embrace of the pro-Israel lobby’s tactics, especially its weaponization of Hinduphobia as an echo of the weaponization of antisemitism, to battle criticisms of the Modi government in India, and the need to distinguish this from the real rise in both anti-Hindu and antisemitic sentiment. We ended with…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guests: Prachi Patankar, Ram

Topics covered

• Hindu supremacy
• Hindu right
• anti-caste politics
• transnational far right
• Hindu American identity
• antisemitism
• antiracist movements

Keywords

• Hindu right
• anti-caste
• far right
• Hinduphobia
• antisemitism
• Hindu unity
• Savera

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Savera, U.S. civil rights organizations, Modi government

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