India, Modi and Mamdani:

Why Canada Needs to Pay Attention.

  • Hindu nationalist and paramilitary groups, some with ties to the government of Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, may be active in Canada.
  • Canadian Muslim and Sikh communities report being targeted by these groups.
  • CSIS intelligence and RCMP investigations point to the possibility of a link between the Indian government and the killing of Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar; as well as its extensive use of “transnational repression” in the South Asian diaspora.
  • India’s growing role as a counterbalance to Russia and China in emerging multilateral organizations like the BRICS may embolden its government to ramp up interference operations and targeting of “enemies” in the diaspora, especially Canada.    

The Next (Socialist, Muslim) Mayor of New York?

On June 22, a small aircraft towing a banner reading “Save NYC From Global Intifada. Reject Mamdani” flew over New York Harbor and the lower reaches of the Hudson River. A few weeks later, Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim and a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist currently serving as a New York state assemblyman, defeated better known and more experienced rivals – including former New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo – in the race to nominate the Democratic party’s candidate to run in New York City’s mayoral election in November. If he wins, he would be New York’s first Muslim mayor. 

For several weeks, nobody seemed to be quite sure who was behind the aerial banner. Speculation ranged from the Cuomo campaign to Jewish groups that had taken exception to Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” during the campaign. Mamdani claims never to have used this phrase himself. He has never made any secret of his support for the Palestinian cause, however, or of his critical stance on the war in Gaza.

While Mamdani won the primary with the support of a broad coalition of New Yorkers (including Jews, Jewish groups and prominent Jewish political figures), not everybody was happy with his victory. For the MAGA right, this was directly related to the fact that he is Muslim.  MAGA influencers took to social media to announce that “New York City has fallen” and that, if elected, Mamdani will encourage Muslims to “commit Jihad all over New York.” President Donald J. Trump, meanwhile, threatened to revoke the Ugandan-born Mamdani’s American citizenship.

Mamdani and the Hindu Nationalist Factor

There is more going on here than the usual fever pitch rhetoric of New York politics. It’s not just the MAGA right that opposes Mamdani. The aircraft towing the anti-Mamdani banner was hired by a Hindu group – Indian Americans for Cuomo (IAfC). The group actively campaigned against Mamdani throughout the primaries, accusing him of having “an extremist agenda and a history of hateful rhetoric.”  

While at least some of this appears to be related to what Mamdani may or may not have said about “global intifada,” IAfC’s real issue with Mamdani seems to have more to do with his attitude towards Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. Mamdani has gone on record calling Modi a “war criminal” and his Hindu-American supporters as “Hindu fascists.” Among other things, he accuses him of being directly responsible for, and complicit in, the so-called “Gujarat Massacres” of 2002, an anti-Muslim pogrom that erupted across the Indian state of Gujarat, killing at least 1,000 people, most of them Muslim. Modi, allegedly a member of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a far-right Hindu paramilitary organization, was Chief Minister for Gujarat at the time.

Who Gets to be Indian?

Mamdani has clearly struck a nerve. In India, Hindu violence against Muslims, who make up about 14 percent of India’s population, has been on the rise since at least 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has close ties to the RSS, and both have a long history of extreme hostility to non-Hindu minorities. Central to RSS and BJP ideology is the concept of Hindutva, or “Hinduness,” which posits that Indian and Hindu culture are indistinguishable and that this unity should be enshrined in all aspects of Indian life. In the last round of Indian elections, in 2024, Modi’s campaign was “fueled” by anti-Muslim hate speech, effectively “normalizing violent abuse of Muslims and other Indian minorities, including Christians. Throughout India, Muslims have been beaten and killed by groups of so-called “cow vigilantes,” who accuse them of slaughtering and eating cows, sacred to many Hindus. Indian Muslims are routinely blamed for everything from spreading coronavirus and other diseases by deliberately contaminating food in markets and restaurants, to preying on Hindu women so that they may be converted to Islam through marriage.

South Asian Sectarianism and Canada

Sectarian conflict is not new in India. During Partition, in 1947, when the former British Raj split into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, as many as 2 million people died in the ensuing strife, a de facto civil war. And inter-ethnic conflict originating in South Asia has a way of spilling over into diaspora communities, especially here in Canada. The Air India bombing of 1985 was a direct result of conflict between Sikh extremists and the Indian government. In the early 1990s, members of an Islamist terrorist group – the Jamaat ul-Fuqra – were arrested just before they carried out a planned series of bombings of Hindu targets in Toronto. Criminal gangs associated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were active in Canada from the early 1980s until 2009, extorting and intimidating expatriate Tamil communities. In 2009, during the last days of the LTTE insurgency in Sri Lanka, thousands of apparent LTTE supporters shut down the downtown cores of Toronto and Ottawa. The degree to which they were coerced remains unclear.

Hindu Nationalist Activity in Canada

Mamdani’s conflict with the BJP establishment should serve as a potent reminder of what could be at stake here. Indicators of unknown reliability suggest that both the BJP and the RSS have or have had an organizational presence in Canada. Media reports allege that Overseas Friends of BJP Canada donated large sums of money to the campaigns of Canadian political figures. And a lengthy report prepared jointly by the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the World Sikh Organization of Canada documents extensive RSS activity in Canada, including fundraising, ideological and influence operations and incitement against South Asian diasporas in Canada.

Why Do We Care?

In Canada, perception of the threat from India and South Asia tends to focus on either Sikh extremism or South Asia-based jihadist groups. But recent events, including the 2023 killing British Columbia killing of Canadian citizen and Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, demonstrate how homeland politics threaten the safety of Indian diaspora communities in Canada, and the lengths to which India may be prepared to go to promulgate its interests abroad. Indeed, the latest CSIS Public Report reiterates the possibility of a direct link between the Nijjar killing and the government of India, as well as India’s use of “transnational repression” in diaspora communities. 

Western countries, notably Canada and the United States, increasingly perceive India as an important counterbalance to the outsize influence of China and Russia in emerging alliances like the BRICS. This may serve to empower Modi and the BJP to ramp up both interference operations and to target perceived political “enemies” in the diaspora. Given India’s regularly articulated disdain for what it perceives as Canada’s failure to respond effectively to diaspora militancy, particularly on the part of Sikhs and Muslims, this could have far-reaching implications for Canadian sovereignty and security.