My Joy is Tempered With Trepidation: Reflections On Zohran Mamdani Perceived Through a South Asian Lens

These are interesting times to be an immigrant in the United States and a New Yorker. As someone living and working in the New York City metro area, I have followed Zohran Mamdani’s meteoric rise on the horizon of the NYC Mayoral primary elections with great interest. We South Asians have had to reflect on our place and on our future in the United States during the past few months, albeit to a greater or a lesser extent depending on our socio-economic class or religious background, like many immigrant communities of color since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. 

Mamdani’s stunning burst into the NYC political scene and the ensuing disruption he created on the national and international political stage has been unlike any I have seen in my time. It is in our nature as a community as South Asians to be intensely emotional, often cacophonous and contentious, about events in the public sphere be it cricket or politics. The hope, adulation, excitement, sense of validation that Mamdani has made us feel has also been intensely contested and imbued with suspicion, even hatred within the South Asian community itself, not just contested by Republicans or a section of the Democratic party. 

South Asian Americans are Not a Homogeneous Lot

South Asian Americans, especially in New York City, are not a homogeneous lot. We who are part of the community know this as our lived experience everyday whether we attend cultural or religious  events, attend national holidays from our home countries, visit places of worship or gossip about romantic partnerships. We are now more globally connected than ever, never separated from our old connections in our home countries via WhatsApp chat groups and Facebook and Instagram posts where everyone has an opinion and where fact and fiction merge in creative ways in echo chambers in this age of disinformation. 

So it is no surprise that Indian Americans are strongly divided about Zohran Mamdani not just along Hindu/ Muslim religious lines but along cultural, caste and class lines as well. As often happens in minority communities, events that bring a community into focus in the mainstream, even as successful stories, open up old fissures rather than create bridges within. 

Mamdani’s supporters are many in the South Asian community. I suspect he has more supporters than naysayers in the metro area amongst Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. He identifies as Muslim and has taken pains to reach out to Muslim Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities in the boroughs. By appearance he comes across as a modern, charismatic young secular South Asian who is equally comfortable in Eastern and Western cultural settings, as easy with various South Asian and South Asian inspired outfits as he is in a suit and tie, reflective of much of our daily, modern existence as we know it in both the U.S. and in urban India. He is as comfortable speaking American accented English as he is with an amazing array of other languages including Spanish, Hindi/ Urdu and even Bangla. Like many South Asians who grew up in the U.S., Mamdani is also able to code switch and modify accents, seemingly naturally, depending on context. 

Mamdani’s mother, renowned filmmaker Mira Nair, raised Hindu, is a well-known name in our community whose strong stance on Israel has reflected the views of many progressive South Asians. His academic father is Muslim. Mahmood Mamdani is a professor at Columbia who is a postcolonial scholar and also specializes in scholarship on human rights and genocide. Son Zohran Mamdani’s firm stance on Gaza and on the treatment of Muslims in India have endeared him not only to Muslim communities of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin but also to secular Indians for whom the position of other Democrats on the issue, such as Kamala Harris’ support of Israel, proved to be a sad disappointment in the recent past. At the same time, Mamdani has also spoken about his support of Jewish New Yorkers and his strong stance on preventing antisemitism and other hate crimes in the city.

The Class Divisions

A huge class divide separates South Asians in New York. Working class South Asians in the city, mainly in the boroughs, and upper middle class and wealthy South Asians in Manhattan and the suburbs often do not  have much in common in their political views. The well-off fiscally conservative voters have little use for democratic socialism and have little concern with affordable housing and free bus rides. Added to this divide, recent tensions between India and Pakistan and instability in Bangladesh have brought religious divides into further focus in subcontinental politics. 

On the Israel-Palestine issue too Indians do not have a unified stance divided between those who see it as colonial occupation following from a long shared history of colonialism and those who perceive the October 7th attacks as Islamic terrorism, an issue that has plagued India for a long time even before the Pahalgam attack in which 26 civilians were killed in Kashmir on April 22 this year. India’s relationships with Israel and Palestine have also evolved over the last decades shifting from the country’s traditional position reflecting its support for decolonization for Palestine to strategic relationships with Israel. Attitudes towards Muslim minorities within India by the right wing ruling party has also influenced views on Palestine while a large section of Indians are still critical of this attitude and root for a free Palestine. 

Mamdani has criticized both Prime ministers Benjamin Netyanahu and Narendra Modi as war criminals publicly and has generally spoken out against the treatment of Muslims in India. This has generated sharp criticism in many Indian circles. Indians have also had strong reactions on social media to information about Mamdani such as his alleged participation in separatist rallies which has circulated in WhatsApp groups and on YouTube videos discussing him. An old video of him from 2020 went viral where Mamdani protests India’s ruling party in Times Square condemning the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the building of the Ram Mandir in its place with alleged anti-Hindu chants going on in the background. Mamdani has also criticized other US lawmakers of Indian descent for associating with Modi.

Deewar: Mamdani on Social Media 

Mamdani is a social media native like few other candidates have been. It probably does not harm Mr. Mamdani’s case with young voters and older aunties alike that he is so photogenic. His team knows visual rhetoric too well perhaps with a little help from his famous filmmaker mother. Take this video, for example, meant to be circulated among Hindi-speaking New Yorkers where he presents a choice between Andrew Cuomo and himself. He starts with a clip from Amitabh Bachchan’s famous Bollywood lines from “Deewar” where the hero, Mr. Bachchan asks in Hindi, “Today I have buildings, property, bank balance, my bungalow and my car. What do you have?” Instead of the other hero of the movie, Shashi Kapoor answering in the next scene, the video immediately shifts to a smiling Mamdani’s with outstretched hands and a silly smile on a NYC street in a Shah Rukh Khan tongue-in-cheek pose. Though this Mamdani emphatically asserts that the answer is “you,” the viewer, also in Hindi, the choice is clearly him, the Mayoral candidate. 

A long post on X by a South Asian, Hindu, “liberal New Yorker” has become much alluded to on social media. This eloquent, angry post accuses Mamdani’s stance as being performative and disingenuous “with that charming twinkle in his eyes.”

This self-deprecating humor is there everywhere in the videos. There is humor when Mamdani uses glasses of mango lassi to explain the ranked system of NYC primaries for the mayoral race in Hindi, changing lassi to Bengali sweets in this Bangla video on TikTok for a Bengali audience. His campaign videos are skillfully made suited to social media in length, do not use too much text and move away from the old genre of TV political ads. Mamdani’s campaign reflects the transformation of the public sphere in the world of social media in fundamental ways. Mamdani has clearly come a long way from his youthful brief stint as a rapper during his Mr. Cardamom days. 

Mamdani uses multilingualism and food as inclusive cultural markers to win over his audience in the videos. Yet, this cannot be the only reason for their success. I think the important feeling that comes out of watching them is the way he connects with people, not as potential demographic blocs for electoral wins or as a group of people who are just statistics but as granular, individualized, nuanced communities. These communities show that they are capable of some indulgent, self-deprecating humor as they laugh at and with Mamdani at their obsession with dated, larger-than-life Bollywood clips using larger-than-life dialog, dance and music to communicate about politics. Mamdani’s strategies make people feel included in discussions of very serious issues in lighthearted tones in what is proving to be very dark times for these immigrant communities, a fact Mamdani’s did not forget in his victory speech: “And it’s where [in New York] the mayor will use their power to reject Donald Trump’s fascism, to stop mass ICE agents from deporting our neighbors and to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party.” 

Suspicion and Criticism From Within and Outside

Yet, these very strengths of Mamdani’s campaign have become the target of intense criticism and suspicion from mainstream U.S. political figures and Indians alike. Not surprisingly, attacks from far right Republicans have been Islamophobic. Many pro-Israel, Zionist, Jewish supporters have responded with alarm over the election of a Democratic Mayoral candidate in the primaries who has been so outspoken about Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians. While Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have endorsed him, too many Democrats have been slow to align themselves with Mamdani despite so many young Jewish voters having chosen him too. Much of mainstream media too revealed their unease after the win. On the very next day after Andrew Cuomo conceded, The Washington Post declared that a Mamdani win would be bad for New York and the Democratic party.

Subliminal Messaging

Some undermining has been attempted through subliminal messaging. Mamdani’s sense of dress has been in focus by mainstream media such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The NYT, for example, published an article called Zohran Mamdani’s Well-Dressed Balancing Act on the very day after his victory alleging that Mamdani understands “what it means to look the part. Many parts.” Is it a mere coincidence that the person being talked about is a handsome brown man in a formal suit who is also a good communicator a.k.a  a smooth talker playing a part? Is it just a fluke that he also happens to be a Muslim man? Would the coverage have been the same had he been a white man in a suit with a mainstream name? Mamdani’s code switching, his ease with social media, his comfort with different cultural dress codes and languages, his ability to recite Urdu poetry and popular Bollywood dialog alike has made it possible to present him as rather shape-shifting or slippery (a snake-oil salesman as as Eric Adams has called him) in a culture used to the fixities and definites of identity politics ascribed to marginalized entities. 

Indians too have wasted no time in being critical of Mamdani’s views. Indian media, in general, was slow to catch on to his story, an attitude that has been strikingly different from when the media went crazy over other global figures of Indian origin such as British ex-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s election or tech executives’ success stories at Google or Microsoft.  Why? “The short, depressing answer is that Mamdani is Muslim,” says one article. Mamdani’s outspoken comments about Prime Minister Modi as a “war criminal” or his remarks that few Muslims remain in Gujarat due to persecution have incited tremendous anger and rebuttal on social media, in the Indian press and by Indian, right wing politicians. Other actions by Mamdani, such as his readings from the prison notes of jailed activist Umar Khalid or his speech on “Pakistan Day” organized by an American Pakistani Advocacy Group or his perceived participation in rallies organized by separatists has been circulating on social media attracting a lot of attention.

Back in India

 “When Zohran Mamdani opens his mouth, Pakistan’s PR team takes the day off,” said Abhishek Singhvi, a member of the Indian Parliament on X. Kangana Ranaut, the controversial Bollywood actress and BJP Member of Parliament, who is well known for her right wing views in India, commented on Zohran Mamdani’s seeming effacement of Hindu identity (since his mother was raised a Hindu) in a post on X  accusing Mamdani of “sound[ing] more Pakistani than Indian,” asking “…whatever happened to his Hindu identity or bloodline and now he is ready to wipe out Hinduism.” 

A long post on X by a South Asian, Hindu, “liberal New Yorker” has become much alluded to on social media. This eloquent, angry post accuses Mamdani’s stance as being performative and disingenuous “with that charming twinkle in his eyes.” The post accuses Mamdani’s platform as “ [a] projection of an illiberal, anti-intellectual left-wing authoritarianism that has sunk its teeth into progressive politics.” The author accuses Mamdani of lying about facts. Other viral posts place him in a 2020 protest at Times Square opposing the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya at the site where Babri Masjid was demolished by a Hindu nationalist mob leading to widespread riots in India in 1992.  The posts accuse Mamdani of promoting anti-Hindu rhetoric. These hotly contested political and ideological debates also show that in many ways NYC has now replaced London in the cultural imaginary of the subcontinent so that people in the diaspora and in India have a strong visceral stake in these discussions. 

As the Mayoral race unfolds, it remains to be seen whether and how much space the Democratic party makes for Mamdani’s views or how much space he makes for himself in these ideological debates. Despite existing in the contact zone of so many cultures, Mamdani has refused to budge so far from his positions on risky, controversial issues. That has certainly been refreshing in a Democratic candidate. It has certainly brought new voters to the polls.

There is reason to be joyous at his victory. New Yorkers have voted for him in stunning numbers. Jewish New Yorkers have voted for him too. Mamdani’s victory means that one can be South Asian and Muslim and also not have to shy away from issues that are unpopular with the status quo and yet win. It also means that one can resist the fixities of  American multicultural tokenism as a Muslim man and yet not have to erase one’s identity or viewpoints to win against a well known name. It means that in New York, people are willing to build community with others who may not look or think exactly like them. 

However, my joy is also tempered with trepidation. A lot remains for Zohran Mamdani to prove. People likely voted for him in a large part not due to cultural or ideological reasons but for his platform on rent, housing, city-owned grocery stores, free buses, no-cost childcare, safety and the increase of minimum wage.Given that so many have been out to attack him on the far right and so many are so hesitant to embrace him within the Democratic party, should he fall short on his promises, all the cultural, political and economic issues that he stood for may also come into question and be attacked. Then there are the challenges of being able to govern a city like New York successfully, especially in these difficult times in a post-Covid Trumpian world. 

Fortunately Mamdani is young. He has a lot of room to grow.

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Madhura Bandyopadhyay is a Doctoral Lecturer in the English Department at John Jay College, City University of New York (CUNY) in Manhattan, New York.