“If you see something, say something.” the public awareness campaign tells us. A Taco Bell employee recently did just that — he called the police about a co-worker’s disturbing, hate-filled behavior. Police moved swiftly and thwarted an unprecedented attack on the largest Hindu temple in Aurora, potentially saving hundreds of Hindu Americans.
For those of us who warned that unchecked anti-Indian and anti-Hindu rhetoric would turn deadly, one of our worst nightmares nearly came true.
Aurora, Illinois’ second-largest city, is home to about a half dozen Hindu temples, including one of the nation’s oldest. Weekends always bring thousands of devotees to worship, pass our traditions to our children and serve the community. But that Sunday was busier still: It was the first day of Navaratri, a nine-day festival honoring the Divine Feminine and her qualities of love, strength, courage and wisdom.
Authorities said a 19-year-old man from Palatine, a self-described “sociopathic white supremacist neo-Nazi,” had amassed an AR-style rifle, tactical equipment, nine loaded magazines, 300 rounds of ammunition and Nazi paraphernalia. His eight-page manifesto dripped with slurs against Black and Jewish people and people of Indian ancestry. He planned the attack for years, using YouTube and Google Street View, authorities said.
Where does hatred like this come from, the kind that sees a small community of Americans as subhuman and worth killing? For close observers, the answer is obvious: online and on high.
Research shows
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online slurs against Indians rose 75% between November 2024 and January 2025, and it’s only gotten worse. Messages telling us to go back to India, or calling our religion demonic, roll out regularly. The hate started with random trolls, then racist influencers with huge followings, amplified by foreign bots, testing which ideas about Indians and Hindus would stick.And it worked. Last year, President Donald Trump called India a “dead” economy and hit it with 50% tariffs. His trade adviser Peter Navarro blamed “Brahmins” for profiteering, putting a racist trope about Hindus into U.S. trade policy. Then came the $100,000 H-1B fee, aimed at an overwhelmingly Indian workforce. Now Vice President JD Vance has called H-1B workers, 70% of them Indian, “indentured servants.”
H-1B reform is a legitimate debate. But the message delivered to racists is that Indians and Hindus are the problem, and fresh vitriol keeps coming. Not even Indian American students cheering at a college football game are immune.
White Christian nationalist groups and content creators have warned city councils of an “Indian menace” and stood outside Hindu temples with guns slung across their chests, telling us to take our “demon gods” and leave. They’ve secretly filmed Indian American families shopping at Costco or in their driveways during festivals and criticized Boy Scout troops for having Indian American kids.
To top it off, the vice president told thousands of college students that he hopes his Hindu wife, Usha, will convert to Christianity. As a Christian, that’s his right. But as vice president, he serves all Americans, however we pray, under a Constitution that favors no religion over another. When the second-highest officeholder treats even his wife’s faith as something to leave behind, what does that tell Indian and Hindu Americans? Worse, what signal does it send to those consumed by rage or vulnerable to radicalization?
This isn’t a partisan issue, and it shouldn’t take violence to make us take it seriously.
To Indian and Hindu Americans: Don’t retreat or stay silent. Document and report every incident. Show up at school boards, city councils and statehouses, and hold every official to the same standard of equal treatment, regardless of party.
And to every American: You don’t have to be Indian or Hindu to see what’s happening. When anyone treats an entire people as the problem, call it out. From Chinese exclusion to Japanese American internment to the backlash after 9/11, scapegoating is part of our history. But so is the courage of Americans who refused to look away.
Suhag Shukla, Esq., is a co-founder and executive director of the Hindu American Foundation.
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