Roving Periscope: Has America discovered its own Jinnah/Kejriwal?
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: “Get behind Zohran Mamdani,” Bernie Sanders asked Democrats as anti-Muslim hate surged online this week in the USA, the media reported on Saturday.
Sanders, the influential US Senator from Vermont, said the New York City mayoral candidate is just what the Democratic Party needs.
“He is 100 percent Communist, lunatic; looks terrible,” an angry US President Donald Trump denounced Mamdani, 33, after his shock victory in a Democratic primary in a city boasting of the largest Jewish population anywhere outside Israel, and days after a Trump-brokered ‘ceasefire’ between Israel and Shia-dominated Iran.
Like Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Mamdani is also a Gujarati Shia Muslim. Viewed as anti-Hindu and anti-Semitic, he was born on October 18, 1991, in Kampala, Uganda. His father is Mahmood Mamdani, an Indian expatriate in Uganda and a Professor of Post-Colonial Studies at Columbia University, which was forced to toe the line by the Trump administration recently. His mother is filmmaker Mira Nair, of Hindu Punjabi descent.
If he wins the November elections, Mamdani will be the first Muslim and the first Indian-American mayor of New York.
His victory sparked protests in India as well. Congress lawmaker Abhishek Manu Singhvi and BJP MP Kangana Ranaut criticized him. On Thursday, Singhvi wrote on X: “Pakistan’s PR takes the day off” when New York’s mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks.” Ranaut said the Indian origin lawmaker sounded more Pakistani than Indian.
On Tuesday, Mamdani won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary with 43.5 percent of votes counted, prompting Trump to criticize his ‘progressive’ supporters who believe in his Arvind Kejriwal-type populist promises like rent freeze, free bus service, free child care, new apartments, a higher minimum wage and more, paid for by new taxes on rich people. Immigrants of all hues also view Mamdani as their saviour against deportation from the USA.
After his victory over former governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary, Tennessee Republican Congressman Andy Ogles requested the federal government to revoke Mamdani of his US citizenship and begin deportation proceedings. He also posted images of a letter he sent to US Attorney General Pam Bondi, urging the Department of Justice to investigate whether Mamdani’s citizenship was obtained through “wilful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism.”
“He needs to be DEPORTED. Which is why I am calling for him to be subject to denaturalisation proceedings,” Ogles said as he called Zohran “an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York.”
Ogles sought probe into his citizenship status over his “fascist” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stance.
As Zohran promised to expel US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials from New York, Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan responded, stating, “Good luck with that. It’s game on.”
Describing himself as Trump’s “worst nightmare”, Zohran’s platform vowed to “kick the fascist ICE out” and bolster New York’s sanctuary city safeguards with different ways from slashing coordination with federal officers to increasing legal assistance to shielding immigrants’ information.
A statement on his campaign website reads, “Zohran Mamdani will fight Trump’s attempts to gouge the working class and deliver a city where everyone can afford a dignified life.”
But the Democrats are delighted at their ‘discovery’ of a new leader!
“Democratic Party Leaders: You have talked for six months about the need to create political excitement to get working class and young people involved in the political process. That’s exactly what Zohran did. Get behind him,” Sanders posted on his X (formerly Twitter) on Friday.
Anti-Muslim online posts targeting Mamdani have surged since his Democratic primary upset on Tuesday, including death threats and comments comparing his candidacy to the September 11, 2001 attacks, advocates said on Friday.
There were at least 127 violent hate-related reports mentioning Mamdani or his campaign in the day after polls closed, said CAIR Action, an arm of the Council on American Islamic Relations advocacy group, which logs such incidents.
About 62 percent of the anti-Muslim posts against Mamdani originated on X, CAIR Action said.
Even the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr, wrote on X on Wednesday that “New York City has fallen” while sharing a post that said New Yorkers had “voted for 9/11.” Also on Wednesday, Republican US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted an AI-generated picture of the Statue of Liberty draped in a burqa.
The New York City Police Department said earlier this month its hate crime unit was probing anti-Muslim threats against Mamdani.
He also has support from Muslim-American members of the US Congress. Rashida Tlaib, Andre Carson, and Lateefah Simon released a joint statement on Friday calling “vile, anti-Muslim, racist attacks,” on Mamdani.
“The vile, anti-Muslim, and racist smears from our colleagues on both sides of the aisle attacking Zohran Mamdani cannot be met with silence,” they said.
Republicans have called Mamdani antisemitic, citing his pro-Palestinian advocacy and his criticism of Israel’s military assault on Gaza after an attack by Hamas militants in October 2023.
Mamdani has condemned antisemitism and has the backing of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is Jewish. Lander also ran in the Democratic primary.
Rights advocates have noted rising antisemitism and Islamophobia since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, with fatal US incidents including the shooting of two Israeli embassy staff in Washington and the stabbing of a Muslim child in Illinois.
