Last December, India’sHindu nationalist government, headed by Narendra Modi, passed theCitizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The bill provides a fast-track to citizenship forsix religious communities from neighboring Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, but excludesMuslims. Combined with the National Registry of Citizens (NRC), the CAAhas the potential to displace many thousands of people from marginalized communities. What part can the American diaspora ofover 5 million South Asians play?

The experience of being an immigrant or second- or third-generation South Asian involves a complicated relationship to the subcontinent. For many of us, coming of age involves a cultural awakening: something like obsessively streaming Punjabi rap or crying teenage tears into a Jhumpa Lahiri book.

It’s time to re-envision that coming of age to include a political awakening as well.

That’s why we foundedStudents Against Hindutva, an organization born out of a gnawing helplessness in the face of clear injustice.

At the moment,student- andwomen-led protests in India are ground zero for the battle between Hindutva and the nation’s secular soul. The largely peaceful resistance has been met with documented allegations of harrowing state violence,including torture, sexual violence, andextrajudicial killings. Still, the protestspersist despitea lack of direct majority support from the international community.

Hindutva is a right-wing political ideology attempting to transform the world’s largest democracy into a “Hindurashtra,” or Hindu nation. It is not Hinduism,nor is it a religion. Theproponents of Hindutva and the“ideological parent” of Modi’s party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is a Hindu extremist group that critics say has drawninspiration from fascism and German nazism since itsfounding in 1925. Most insidiously, this Hindu-nationalist agenda is a project of hate sustained by significantinternational funding.

Those risking their lives on the front lines against Hindutva continue to resist, even asmultiple civilian protesters have been killed in the nation’s capital. Meanwhile, Donald Trump made no mention of the violence during his recenttour of India, as if it is not under attack, insteadpraising Modi’s pursuit of “religious freedom.”

What excuse do we have to be scared into silence?

In 2019 a small team of South Asian students in the diaspora came together to compile anintercollegiate endorsement of Representative Pramila Jayapal’sresolution condemning the Modi government’s undemocratic treatment of minorities in Jammu and Kashmir.

Within just two months, the organization grew from an open letter into a national coalition with a presenceat over 18 American universities, including Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Northeastern University, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, University of Maryland, and UCLA. Thanks to the leadership of progressive giants in the South Asian diasporic community, such asSouth Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) andStand With Kashmir, along with the energy of a new generation of South Asian Americans, we are building a determined diasporic solidarity network.

Students Against Hindutva (SAH)’s national protests on March 5 will be calledA Holi Against Hindutva, intending to use a pillar of diasporic student communities — Holi, a festival that celebrates the arrival of spring — to signal our solidarity with those on the front lines of the resistance. Protesters will dress in black, as opposed to Holi’straditional white attire, and will celebrate the festival of colors with just one color:white. This stark contrast speaks to the increasingly black-and-white choice between complicity or resistance as thedeath toll of those opposed to Hindutva continues to rise.

However, we intend to remain a thorn in the side of Modi’s government long after #AHoliAgainstHindutva. Beyond facilitating resistance and solidarity against Hindu nationalism, we aim to establish a long-term source of educational and institutional knowledge that can be passed through generations within universities. Primarily, we aspire to be a solidarity network for those on the front lines.

Sahana, a Scripps College senior and executive board member of Students Against Hindutva, hopes that South Asians in the diaspora push beyond tropes like#reclaimthebindi and accept “a responsibility to act in solidarity with those fighting against the fascist CAA/NRC and continued occupation in Kashmir.” However, even solidarity has its complications.

I know I’m not alone when I say that my distance from South Asia has made me feel like my opinion on India’s national trajectory is less important.

However, looking to history shows us the outsize role the diaspora has always had on nation-shaping processes, for better or for worse. In the early 20th century, the South Asian diaspora in Canada and the United States, led by the likes ofLala Har Dayal, was the force that helpedsupport and fund the Indian National Congress’s struggle for independence from the British Raj. Later, some members of the diaspora launched the 2005 movement that helpedrevoke Modi’s visa for his failure to stopthe deadly 2002 Gujarat riots against Indian Muslims.

Just 14 years later, another side of the diaspora gathered 50,000 Indians to welcome Modi to America at Houston’s#HowdyModi rally. Mohit, an alumnus of Jamia Millia Islamia University and active participant in India’s anti-CAA protests, points out that “the diaspora has played a major role in funding and creating the evil mammoth of Indian right-wing institutions. If the new diasporic generation wants to rewrite their role, they should actively get out on the streets to remind the Indian government that they are an important stakeholder.”

Holding the Modi administration accountable will take more than just the outrage of the South Asian community. Modi government officials have repeatedly referred to Muslims migrants as“termites” and “infiltrators” while India, a country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, buildsmultiple detention camps the size of several football fields to house a newly manufactured class of people suddenly and undemocratically declared stateless.

The fight for human rights and dignity can only be successful when it is a shared fight. What would you have done if you knew that members of a religious group were being analogized to insects, and minorities were being sent to mass detention camps? Would your response change because it’s all happening in a predominantly Brown part of the world? Would you be able to forgive yourself for doing nothing at all?

Increasingly, it seems clear that silence is no longer an option, no matter where we are or who we are. The more of us that speak, the harder it is to call us out one by one and the easier it is to dismantle the Hindutva project.

The more of us that speak, the less likely history is to repeat itself.Join us.

Inquilab Zindabad. Long live the revolution.

Want more fromTeen Vogue? Check this out:Youth Activist Movements of the 2010s: A Timeline and Brief History of a Decade of Change

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