Vivek Ramaswamy’s candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination might seem idiosyncratic and incoherent, but it marks the most recent manifestation of a process long underway: the convergence of Hindu supremacy and White supremacy in the United States. With this convergence comes the looming possibility that large segments of the wealthiest, fastest-growing immigrant community could move squarely into the far-right.
Open alliances between Hindu supremacy and White supremacy have not been new. During their tenures in office, President Trump and Indian PM Narendra Modi based their close personal relationship around the deep overlaps between their respective political projects—and, one could add, their cults of personality. These were epitomized by two massive showpiece events within the space of a year: the Howdy Modi rally in September 2019, and the Namaste Trump event that followed in February 2020, where each leader in turn offered a hearty public endorsement of his counterpart.
But the Trump-Modi bonhomie, as splashy a media spectacle as it was, ultimately remained understood as an alliance between two leaders in two distinct locations, pursuing their own similar but ultimately separate political projects. For US audiences, one remained frighteningly proximate, the other illegibly distant, and downplayed by a geopolitical paradigm that has sought to uphold India as a counterweight to China. (This summer, Modi was given just as warm a welcome by President Biden, whose Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo went out of her way to praise as “unbelievable, visionary.”)
But, while Modi represents the high-water mark of Hindu supremacist power in India, the political convergence between the two movements—epitomized by Ramaswamy, but extending well beyond him—signals something quite different: that Hindu supremacy, as it manifests in the US, is becoming a key ally of White supremacy.
This story was originally published in religiondispatches.org. Read the full story here .
