Why a float at Indian Independence Day celebration in New York City whipped up a whirlwind of protest

The skies were blue over the 42nd Annual India Day Parade in New York City on 18 August, yet the entire event was overshadowed by over a week of protest surrounding a single one of the over 40 floats that flooded the streets of Manhattan.

Controversy centered on the parade’s “centerpiece float,” which featured a replica of a new temple to the Hindu deity Rama. The temple, inaugurated in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya in January 2024 by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was built after a prolonged court battle over a site where a 16th-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, once stood. In 1992, a mob of 150,000 Hindu nationalists swarmed the mosque to destroy it.

Uproar over the float came to a head on the eve of the parade.

On 17 August, thirteen groups released a letter urging top U.S. law enforcement officials to investigate parade organisers and the hosts of the float for possibly violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by failing to disclose how their choice to promote the controversial temple advances the interests of the BJP, particularly considering New York’s Indian Consulate co-sponsored the parade. The same day, Indian Muslims of North America withdrew their float “since the integrity of the parade has been called into question.”

These final acts of protest accelerated a wave of international media attention which shifted coverage of the parade from the celebration of India’s 77th Independence Day to allegations of celebrating hate.

Controversy sparked on 9 August when three New York politicians signed a letter asking Mayor Eric Adams to use his authority over issuance of city permits to block the float. Calling the temple “representative of bigotry against the Muslim minority in India,” the letter notes the mosque’s demolition triggered riots that caused over 2,000 deaths across the country.

“It’s not just about one float,” New York Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, an Indian-American Muslim who signed the letter, told  Maktoob. “For the BJP and associated Hindu nationalist groups, India’s Muslim population isn’t only an obstacle to their political goals, it is anathema to their definition of the nation.”

Accusing the BJP of using violence against Muslims as well as Christians to mobilise its political base, Mamdani says, “This representation of this temple in a float is but the latest example of that long-term vision, movement, and record, and the destruction of Babri Masjid was one of the first examples of that tactic of using violence as a tool of mobilisation.”

Hindu nationalist credentials of Ram float

The Federation of Indian Associations (FIA) organised the parade, while the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA) was the primary host of the float. Contacted for comment, neither the FIA nor the VHPA responded by time of publication.

Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative describes the VHPA as the U.S. “offshoot” of India’s VHP. Dr. Arvind Rajagopal, a professor of communications at New York University who has studied the destruction of the Babri Masjid, told Maktoob that the VHP was initiated by the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in order to create a unified global movement promoting Hindutva (Hindu nationalism). “The VHP oversaw the faith-based mobilisation that destroyed the mosque,” says Rajagopal.

Rajagopal traces plans for the Ram temple that replaced the mosque to America, noting, “The model of the Ram temple built in Ayodhya was first constructed in Silicon Valley (specifically Livermore, CA). The experience of building Hindutva in the U.S. was a crucial stage in the experiment of building it in India.”

Savera, a U.S.-based research collective studying Hindutva in America, claims the VHPA “has provided material and political support to violent Hindu supremacist campaigns in India,” including the campaign for demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Dr. Samantha Agarwal, a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at American University, says that it was not just the VHP, but also the VHPA as well, which was established by the then head of the RSS. Agarwal argues the VHPA is “inseparable” from the VHP.

“The VHPA consistently describes itself as part of the same ‘family of organisations’ and ‘sharing the same values’ as the VHP,” Agarwal told Maktoob. “Moreover, the VHP and VHPA have always maintained close ties and advanced a common political program, including through shared personnel. Additionally, the VHPA has generously funded over $7 million to the VHP and its affiliates since 2000.”

Highlighting the relationship between the two groups, Agarwal notes that VHPA hosted a U.S. tour of Sadhvi Ritambhara in 2022. Ritambhara, who is the founder of Durga Vahini (the women’s wing of the VHP), has been called one of “the most aggressive” voices leading up to the destruction of the mosque and faced criminal charges for it.

Float conflates Hindutva with Indian national identity

While calls to block the float ultimately failed, the sustained opposition to it not only fundamentally altered the legacy of the 42nd Annual India Day Parade, but also united Indian-Americans and allies across many faiths.

On 14 August, for instance, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) hosted a multi-faith press conference on the steps of New York City Hall. The coalition of a dozen organisations opposing the float included Council on American-Islamic Relations-New York (CAIR-NY), Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR), Federation of Indian-American Christian Organisations of North America, Sikh Coalition, and others. Several of the same groups also joined the August 17 letter calling for a FARA investigation of the FIA and VHPA.

“The float of the Ram temple is a blatant celebration of anti-Muslim hate, glorifying the violence it was built upon,” Afaf Nasher, Executive Director of CAIR-NY, told  Maktoob about her group’s involvement in the campaign against the float. “This initiative, led by far-right groups, undermines the values of inclusivity and tolerance that New York City stands for.”

Nikhil Arur, who helped organise the press conference as the NYC Advocacy Organiser for HfHR, told Maktoob that his organisation opposed the float not because it represents a Hindu temple, but because it’s “a brazen attempt to conflate Hindutva ideology with national identity.”

“As a Hindu organisation, HfHR believes in the secular values that underpinned India’s independence movement,” says Arur. “To prop this float up at an Independence Day parade is directly at odds with these values. The Mandir, I think, represents so much of what Hindutva aspires to be: explicitly Islamophobic, supremacist, and militaristic.”

For people like Assembly member Mamdani, opposing the float was a struggle to prevent erasure of his identity, as he notes the Hindu nationalist movement that destroyed the mosque and built a temple in its place pursues a “vision of India purged of its Muslim heritage.”

“It is deeply personal to me as an Indian-American Muslim,” Mamdani told Maktoob. “My very existence is something that this movement would love to deny.”

Pieter Friedrich is an independent journalist and author of several books, most recently Saffron America: India’s Hindu Nationalist Project At Work in the United States.

This article is originally published on https://maktoobmedia.com/features/why-a-float-at-indian-independence-day-celebration-in-new-york-city-whipped-up-a-whirlwind-of-protest/