During the Democratic Party’s election to choose the candidate for mayor of New York City in June, many of us New Yorkers began noticing a strange narrative taking shape – that all Hindus were against Zohran Mamdani.

The message seemed simple: Mamdani was “anti-Hindu” because he had called out the political motivations behind the Gujarat riots of 2002. For so many of us, that couldn’t have felt farther from the truth. We were focused on an election 12,000 km away from Gujarat.

At first, we wondered if we were missing something. Was this really how people felt? Were we in a bubble? We talked among ourselves, called friends, and quickly realised no one we actually knew believed this. We care about issues affecting New Yorkers and affordability. Personally, I care about childcare, and my two-year-old New Yorker cares deeply about buses.

Yet somehow, this narrative was spreading, pushed by Hindutva supporters who, with a few Google searches, I discovered might not even be New Yorkers. Someone from New Jersey flew an obscene banner that read, “Save NYC from global intifada. Reject Mamdani.” At one point, a speaker from India visited our community in Queens and called Zohran a “jihadist zombie”. It was absurd.

This anti-Muslim narrative really gained traction when The New York Times published a story connecting Mamdani to an “anti-Hindu” chant at a protest in noisy, crowded Times Square held in 2020. It was a stretch to imagine he even understood it, let alone participated; all of this misinformation was driving many of us crazy.

For those of us from South Asian backgrounds, this felt like a personal assault. Our communities are intertwined. We live near each other, share meals, watch the same Bollywood films, dance to soca and are shining examples of NRI Fashiongate – united by our undying obsession with Shah Rukh Khan.

We also know this truth: racists don’t care whether we are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, or Buddhist. To them, we’re all just brown. That collective identity, especially post-9/11, has only intensified.

The idea that all Hindus were against Mamdani also ignored who we really are. The Hindu community in New York is wildly diverse – we are Indo-Caribbean, Nepali, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Indian. We are white, Black and Jewish Americans married to Hindus. We are people who discovered Hinduism through yoga and ayurveda. I even have white friends who’ve taken on Hindu names. That’s the beauty of it.

And that’s the complexity the media, Mamdani’s rival Andrew Cuomo, the billionaire class opposition Mamdani and Hindutva supporters don’t understand.

We had already formed Hindus for Zohran in June, a volunteer effort to push back against hate. but a series of media headlines really helped us engage more Hindu New Yorkers.

In August, The New York Times ran a story titled “In Delhi and New York, Hindu Right Wing Lines Up Against Mamdani,” and the New York Post followed with “Hindu-Americans Call Out Zohran Mamdani’s ‘Hinduphobia’”. Every time a negative headline came out, we actually gained momentum. Within days, our group grew from a handful of people to 50 – and then more than 100 active volunteers.

We were fighting for two things: first, to elect Mamdani, a member of our own immigrant community; and second, to keep our community together long after the election.

We also had to acknowledge and take ownership of our own baggage – the tensions between Hindu and Muslim communities, and the persistence of caste discrimination, all of which could easily be exploited.

With the situation escalating quickly, we arrived at our approach: could we make ourselves so present, so undeniable, that the false narrative would collapse under its own weight?

Taking a page from Mamdani’s handbook, we launched an Instagram page, reached out to the press, and started organising in public spaces. We took notes from “Hot Girls for Zohran” and “Jews for Zohran”: if you’re visible, they can’t ignore you. Soon, Hindus for Zohran became the counterpoint to the false narrative. We were everywhere – organised, joyful, and loud.

We arranged for Mamdani to visit several temples. But those opposing him tried to stay one step ahead, spreading bizarre lies. One lie, Mamdani had not taken off his shoes at the Ganesh temple in Flushing, the most prominent Hindu temple in North America.

The rumor was so sloppy it didn’t even make sense: the head priest was standing next to Mamdani that day, and there were photos of him taking off his shoes.

Still, the story followed a predictable path; it jumped from X (formerly Twitter) to mainstream media, then spread through WhatsApp groups. We went to The Hindustan Times, got them to correct the piece, and pushed them to publish a new one. The headline they chose: “Did Zohran Mamdani Really Enter Temples in Shoes During NYC Campaign? Here’s the Truth.”

Our volunteers showed up to every Mamdani event with posters, banners, shirts, and buttons. Journalist Yashica Dutt noted this in a report in New Lines Magazine: “It stands out that, unlike groups supporting Cuomo or Adams, Hindu supporters of Mamdani have maintained easily accessible online profiles – the Hindus for Zohran account has over a thousand followers on Instagram – and organized events in high-traffic areas like Union Square. ‘Hindus for Cuomo’ and ‘Hindus for Adams’ (which has seemingly disbanded; calls from New Lines went straight to voicemail and emails bounced back).”

If Mamdani was there, we were there – loud, proud, visible. This wasn’t just a campaign; it was a visibility play. And we won.

When we started this group, I initially thought that showing solidarity with Zohran Mamdani and the Muslim community would be enough. But what we actually did went far beyond that. We didn’t just push back on hate – we neutralised the Hindutva influence in this election.

As Arundhati Roy says, “Our strategy should be not only to confront Empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness and our ability to tell our own stories – stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”

Our strategy wasn’t complicated: it was consistent and relentless. We had conviction on our side, and we showed up, over and over.

Lavanya DJ is the co-founder and co-lead of Hindus For Zohran. The organisation’s Instagram handle is @hindus4Zohran.

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