#Nikhil Mandalaparthy

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Anti-Hindutva groups like HfHR, Sadhana, and Students Against Hindutva Ideology are experimenting with reclaiming Hinduism itself from the Hindu right. HfHR hosts events that reinterpret Hindu tradition through a liberationist lens, such as “Holi against Hindutva,��� a gathering that transformed the Hindu “festival of colors” into a day of political education. The group has also retrieved an expansive pantheon of Hindu deities traditionally patronized by queer communities, Dalits, women, and others excluded by the Hindutva project. HfHR has even reinterpreted the idea of Ram rajya, or Ram’s kingdom—a mythological time of divine justice, which the Hindu right has long used to denote the coming of a purely Hindu India—to symbolize something similar to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “beloved community,” a vision of a just, anti-racist society. Hindutva organizations may have positioned themselves as the representatives of the US Hindu diaspora, but Mandalaparthy said that groups like HfHR are contesting for space: “We have intentionally tried to go wherever the Hindu right groups are, so that there’s not just one Hindu voice.”

Aparna Gopalan, ‘The Hindu nationalists using the pro-Israel playbook’, Jewish Currents