How Trump's concern about Bangladeshi Hindus shows the Hindu community is gaining a political voice

In the final days of the campaign, heated arguments between US presidential election candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump accelerated at an expected pace. But one comment from Trump last week in particular caught my attention when he spoke about the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh.

At a time when India’s own opposition parties have abandoned them to be slaughtered by the now emboldened Islamist forces, this gesture was exceptional.

While posting a message on the Hindu festival of Diwali on social media platform X, Trump condemned the “barbaric violence” taking place against Hindus, Christians and other minorities in Bangladesh. He also accused Kamala and Joe Biden of ignoring Hindus around the world and in America.

Interestingly, Trump also advanced the anti-Hindu agenda of the radical left and promised to protect Hindu Americans after coming to power. In the same message, he also promised to strengthen the country’s great partnership with India, where he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi his close friend.

These comments from Donald Trump came on the eve of the US elections, and there is no doubt that in addition to a legitimate concern for the fate of Bengali Hindus, there is also a degree of politics in them.

After all, a whopping 80 percent of the Indian-American population is Hindu, and in a close election battle with Kamala Harris putting up a tough fight against Trump, every constituency of support matters. In fact, Trump has also on previous occasions courted the Hindu diaspora community settled in the United States for political reasons. During the 2016 presidential election, he attended a massive rally in New Jersey to woo the Hindu-American community. He had also continued the precedent set by President George W. Bush in 2003 by celebrating Diwali at the White House by lighting the ceremonial lamp every year during his presidency.

However, despite Republican candidate Donald Trump’s efforts to woo the Hindu electorate in the US, the Indian-American community has long been supportive of Democratic Party candidates. This is due to her stance on immigration, health care and other issues, which resonates more with Indian-Americans.

With a population of about 5.2 million, they are the second-largest immigrant community in the U.S. and have historically shown a deep bias toward the Democratic Party. But this trend is also changing rapidly. According to a survey published this year by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the number of Indian-American respondents who identified themselves as Democrats fell from 56 percent in the past four years to 47 percent. While those who identify as Republicans have increased from just 15 percent to 21 percent since 2020. If these figures are correct, they will also have a significant impact on their voting patterns in the current elections. This means that support for the Grand Old Party is increasing among Indian-Americans, the majority of whom are people from the Hindu community.

Interestingly, Trump’s support for the Hindu Americans has come at a time when one of the biggest grudges they hold against the Republicans is their perceived intolerance towards minorities, especially under the influence of the Christian evangelical lobby. In such a scenario, some past statements by Republican leaders calling on countrymen to embrace Christian nationalism have not gone down well with its political base among the Indian-American community.

But now the Republican Party is rapidly transforming its past image, where many pro-Hindu leaders have risen to the top and carry their credentials with aplomb. This includes Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance. Unlike Kamala Harris, who, despite her Indian heritage, has played up her identity as a black woman, these leaders from Hindu backgrounds have always expressed immense pride in their roots.

The trend of politicians more openly embracing their Hindu identity is not just limited to American politics. We’ve seen Rishi Sunak do the same in Britain. In fact, in recent years there have been many examples of various international leaders raising the issue of Hindu rights on global platforms. Last year, Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, pledged to support the cause of persecuted Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh after a surprise election victory in December 2023. In fact, Wilders has long been a champion of Hindu rights; he has even raised the issue of attacks on Hindus in Islamic countries in the Dutch parliament.

Similarly, Tulsi Gabbard, who is herself a practicing Hindu, has played a key role in raising the status of the community in American politics. Way back in 2013, she sent a loud message to the entire world when, after winning her election to Congress as the first and only practicing Hindu, she took oath on the Srimad Bhagvad Gita.

Trump’s reference to Bengali Hindus is an extension of the same trend. This shows that Hindu identity and Hindu rights are gaining prominence around the world, and in a very welcome step, this community is finally looking to increase its stake in the global political discourse.

In India, Hindus are often accused of majoritarianism and demonized for their search for a political identity. This is despite the fact that other communities are quite encouraged to mobilize politically due to the compulsion of vote bank politics by certain mainstream political parties in the country. This name-calling and suppression of the political free will of Hindus also has an effect on their global identity. In Canada, for example, a large portion of the immigrant population is Hindu and often faces attacks on places of worship, among other forms of intimidation, and yet it is the Khalistanis who dominate the narrative, forcing politicians to appease them by using their resources. collective power.

Hindus may be a comfortable majority in India, but if we look at the global level, Hindus are not a majority community but only a small minority compared to Abrahamic religions such as Islam and Christianity. If Christians make up 31.6 percent of the world’s population and Muslims about 25.8 percent, only a small portion of 15 percent identify themselves as Hindus worldwide.

Except for India and Nepal and, to some extent, Mauritius, Hindus are considered a minority community in every other country in the world. In such a scenario, their rights are often ignored, with grim stories of their persecution going completely under the radar in many countries. But in recent years, thanks to India’s economic performance and the increasing purchasing power of the country’s Hindu community, there has been a willingness to support campaigns for Hindu rights around the world.

This does not mean that Hindus have so far been able to exert an influence comparable to that of the Jewish or Islamic lobby. But at least there is a start. Donald Trump’s statement condemning the persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh is important. The Hindus are finally finding a political voice worldwide.

The author is a New Delhi-based commentator on geopolitics and foreign policy. She holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She tweets @TrulyMonica. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.

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