The fight against Hindu nationalism in the United States is multifaith, says a newly formed coalition

(RNS) — When the Rev. Peter Cook led a dozen fellow church leaders on a trip to India in 2018, most of them were turned away at the airport.

“The goal of the trip was really to be a presence, listen, to learn, to share ideas, to meet with people of all faiths, not just Christians, and, you know, touch the country,” Cook told RNS. “It didn’t have a particular institutional or theological agenda. But apparently that got construed by the Indian government to mean something very different. The reason we were denied entry and sent home is because we are Christian.”

Cook, executive director of the 7,000-member New York State Council of Churches, had been acutely aware of the plight of Christians in India thanks to the council’s longstanding relationships with church communities in the Hindu-majority country. Many Christians traveling to teach or preach in the country, or who speak out against the government, have been “harassed, intimidated and even incarcerated,” he said.

Cook’s experience in India convinced him that Hindu nationalism was as important a topic as Christian nationalism had become at home. In September 2023, the council sent a letter to President Joe Biden, urging him to pay attention to violent clashes in Manipur, India, between Hindu Meiteis and Kuki-Zomi Christians.

“When you try to counter this, you have to speak up, you have to be loud,” Cook said. You need to do this knowing that you can put yourself or others at risk. But you have to push through the fear.”

The council was also one of more than 100 organizations to sign onto a declaration last week issued by the recently formed Savera: United Against Supremacy, a coalition of primarily Indian American activists protesting the “alarming rise of Hindu supremacy in the United States.” The coalition, whose name in Hindi means “new dawn,” hopes it will become an “interfaith, multiracial, and anti-caste” effort.

The declaration voiced particular concern about Hindu nationalism’s “deepening alliance with various facets of the American far-right,” a point seconded by Pranay Somayajula, director of research and advocacy for Hindus for Human Rights, a member of the Savera coalition. The “growing convergence” of Hindu and Christian nationalists was captured in the 2019 “Howdy, Modi!” rally in Houston, he said, where then-President Donald Trump celebrated India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Some in the Indian diaspora in the U.S., Savera maintains, also have ties to a network of charity, youth and cultural organizations directly affiliated with the RSS, the umbrella organization of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. They say some nationalist groups have parallel organizations in both countries.

One such group, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, was the subject of the Savera inaugural report, “The Global VHP’s Trail of Violence,” released in January. It accused VHPA of “spreading hate speech and conspiracy theories; … acts of violent mobilization, intimidation and harassment; as well as … acts of physical violence.”

Nitin Sawant of the VHPA project “StopHindudvesha.com” responded to a March 29 blog post, calling the accusations “lies that have been thoroughly debunked repeatedly over the last two decades,” adding that the intellectuals who co-signed the report were “a bunch of Hamas sympathizers, BLM washouts, and peddlers of unchecked immigration into the U.S.”

But Somayajula calls the Savera declaration necessary and even historic. “While the Hindu supremacist movement has been active in the U.S. since at least the 1970s,” he said, “this is the first time in all those decades that such a broad and diverse cross-section of American civil society has come together to raise alarms about it.”

Some of Savera’s work has been to educate those who are not familiar with Hindu nationalism. In that effort, “tying it to these other political and cultural signposts,” such as Christian nationalism, has been “really valuable in driving home its significance.”

Bridget Moix, general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which lobbies the federal government on peace and justice issues based on Quaker values, said making connections between different forms of religious nationalism is important. She cited Martin Luther King’s dictum: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Though Moix had heard of Hindu nationalism in the past, she said it was “somewhat scary to hear about the rise of yet another form of extremism here in our own country.” She felt compelled to sign Savera’s declaration, she said, after seeing how interconnected international networks are. “We need to have just as strong, if not stronger, networks globally.”

The faith-based groups leading the charge are being aided by secular organizations as well, such as the National Lawyer’s Guild, which is dedicated to combating human rights violations worldwide. Suad Abdel Aziz, its vice president and co-chair of its Palestine committee, said the Indian Parliament’s recently implemented Citizenship Amendment Act, which leaves Muslims out of fast-tracked citizenship program for Hindu minorities in neighboring Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, would “create the largest mass displacement in the world to deport Muslims out of India.”

The lawyer’s guild is pushing to defeat the law, arguing it is a form of genocide. “We believe that if we let fascism go unchecked, it can and will lead to things like genocide and harm against oppressed populations.”

Hindu nationalism and “other forms of oppression,” Abdel Aziz said, are “not based in religion,” but have “a basis in the taking of land and resources.” Instead, she says, ethno-nationalists use religious rhetoric as a way to “stoke violence and oppression.”

Somayajula agrees that a key to fighting religious extremism is to separate it from the religion it purports to represent. “What we are up against, the politics of Hindu supremacy, is actually far less about religion or faith, particularly given that Hinduism is such a diverse and broad umbrella term for various faith traditions,” he said. “The Hindu supremacist movement has sought to sort of homogenize Hindu identity and turn it into this monolith.”

Cook, of the New York State Council of Churches, said the confusion between Hinduism and Hindu nationalism prevents other Americans from speaking out. People get confused, he said, because they think, “Oh, well, I don’t want to discriminate against brown people.”

“You have to really work through that to say, you can be against Hindutva and not against Hindus.”