South Asia Investor Review

"We are not proxies for India in the US", wrote Suhag Shukla, co-founder and executive director of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) in a recent article for  The Print , an Indian media outlet.  This was written in response to Indian diplomat-politician Shashi Tharoor's criticism that the Indian-American diaspora was largely silent on the Trump administration policies hurting India.  After a meeting with a US congressional delegation in September 2025, Tharoor had questioned why the Indian diaspora appeared apathetic to US policies affecting India, including H-1B visa fees and tariffs. Suhag Shukla (L) and Shashi Tharoor The HAF is seen by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's critics and human rights advocates as an American proxy for the Hindutva movement and its Hindu Supremacist ideology. HAF spun off in 2003 from the American branch of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an organization with ties to anti-Muslim violence in India. HAF co-founder Mihir Meghani published a...

"We are all with you Modiji and Yogiji", says an Indian American man who tweeted a video clip of a a recent car rally in Silicon Valley, California. Rally participants can be seen carrying pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Some also carried BJP's lotus flags. Hindu Americans enjoy the freedom to practice their faith and culture in the United States while at the same time they support Hindutva fascist rule in their country of origin.  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Left) with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath Silicon Valley Hindu Americans: The Silicon Valley Hindu American car rally has come just ahead of the state elections in 5 Indian States, including India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh whose chief minister Yogi Adityanath is a virulently anti-Muslim Hindu priest with a criminal record. Other states going to the polls in India include Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Punjab.   Silicon V...

Dr Saiba Varma, Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of California in San Diego (UCSD), has recently been under fire for hiding her familial ties to to a top RAW official while working on her book "The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir".  “As an upper-caste and upper-class Indian citizen and subject, I have actively and passively internalized  anti-Muslim  racism my entire life. I am complicit in the colonization of Kashmir and other regions  forcibly incorporated  into the Indian nation-state", she acknowledges in her book released last year.   Dr. Saiba Verma “Borrowing and extending techniques from British colonial rule, the Indian state enacted the world’s most established, sophisticated, and pervasive systems of emergency rule and legislation and repeatedly criminalized pro-independence demands as ‘conspiracies’ and ‘anti-national.’ The Indian state’s global image as ‘the world’s largest democracy,’ a generous aid donor,...

The 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS) results confirm the anecdotal evidence of India's Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's massive popularity among Hindu Americans. The findings of a survey sponsored by Washington-based think tank Carnegie Endowment For International Peace reveal that 69% of Hindu Americans approve of Mr. Modi's performance. 70% of Hindu Americans agree or strongly agree that white supremacy is a threat to minorities in the United States, compared to 79% of non-Hindu Indian American. Regarding Hindu majoritarianism in India, however, the data point to a much sharper divide: only 40% of Hindus agree that Hindu majoritarianism is a threat to minorities, compared to 67% of non-Hindus, according to the 2020 IAAS Survey.  69% of Hindu Americans Support Modi. Source: Indian American Attitudes Survey 2020 The 7 in 10 approval rating of Mr. Modi by Hindu Indian Americans stands in sharp contrast to that of barely one in five Muslim Indian...