By Pranav Baskar
Two days before New York City Democrats went to the polls to select their mayoral nominee in June, a plane flew over the Statue of Liberty trailing a banner attacking the race’s front-runner, Zohran Mamdani.
“Save NYC from global intifada,” it read in letters five feet high. “Reject Mamdani.”
The banner, seemingly aimed at the city’s Jewish voters, touched on the campaign’s most charged foreign policy issue: Mr. Mamdani’s criticism of Israel. But the group behind it wasn’t Jewish or Israeli. Its members are Indian-American Hindus, who accuse Mr. Mamdani of pushing an anti-Hindu and anti-Indian agenda.
For years, Mr. Mamdani has assailed the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, a populist whose political ideology inextricably links nationalism with Hinduism at the expense of the country’s Muslim minority.
This story was originally published in nytimes.com. Read the full story here.
