By Usha Kumar , Truthout
For nearly 90 minutes, the woman in a sari spoke uninterrupted, her voice echoing over the microphone into a cavernous room at the main temple hall of the Umiya Dham Mandir in Edison, New Jersey. “So long as the last enemy is on Earth, peace is impossible!” she shouted. “So long as the last demon is on Earth, peace cannot come!”
As she spoke, some attendees walked into the temple to offer their prayers, and left soon after, paying no attention to the woman on stage. Although a loud minority of those in attendance were rather riled up, some sat still and unmoved. The woman’s speech seemed to turn progressively more virulent. Life in the U.S., she chided the audience, had made them lazy and complacent. They were unaware that the danger was at their door. Its form? A “demon,” a “monster standing on the chests of Hindus” — Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani, the speaker falsely claimed, had been backed by George Soros and his son Alex to the tune of $34 million. And a further $500 million was on the way. “There are only two options: fight or get converted,” she told them. “The choice is yours.”
Soon after, the woman began to lay out how Muslims — whom she referred to alternatively as “braindead zombies,” “treacherous jihadis,” or “living monsters” — were conspiring, through halal-certified food, to make Hindus sexually impotent, and called for an economic boycott of Muslims. “If someone consumes halal food in front of us, and we know it, and remain silent, then we too are committing a sin,” she exclaimed. “Every moment, you must do your religious duty. So stop eating there, stop purchasing halal! Look, who is making the food, and what drugs they are adding to it.” Even fruit bought from Muslims, she baselessly claimed, had been injected with enzymes that make Hindus infertile. Some attendees open their phones, seeking to investigate if their favorite brands were halal-certified or not.
The woman on stage was Kajal Hindusthani. Recorded as the worst purveyor of hateful rhetoric in India in 2023 by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, Hindusthani has multiple cases registered against her in India for inciting violence. Ordinarily, this would make her persona non grata to U.S. authorities, but in the upside-down world we live in, she was instead invited, by a group of Hindu supremacist organizations, for a 38-day grand tour of the United States.
Far from condemnation, New York City Mayor Eric Adams had accepted an invitation to hear Hindusthani speak in Long Island at an event held a few days prior to the speech in Edison. Adams withdrew from the event at the last minute following an outcry by a multifaith coalition of over two dozen organizations, but this controversy was insufficient to prevent the same blunder (and the same strategy) from being repeated. Soon after she spoke in Edison, Hindusthani received a commendation from the Democratic Rhode Island Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos, that, astonishingly, praised Hindusthani’s “commitment to community empowerment, women’s safety, and social harmony.”
This story was originally published in truthout.org.com. Read the full story here.
