Episode
The Diasporic Hindu Right with Savera
- Podcast
- New Books in Religion
- Published
- Jun 8, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4545
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK6997287967.mp3
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Summary
This episode features a conversation with Prachi and Ram, organizers with Savera, a multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of Indian Americans and partners standing together in the fight against the rise of the transnational far right. After laying out Hindu supremacy as an ideology, we considered the different phases of consolidation of the Hindu right in the United States from its late 20th century orientation around homeland politics to its 21st century effort to forge a Hindu American identity, first through an alignment with U.S. civil rights organizations and then through a realignment with white supremacist forces. We delved more deeply into the role of caste within this formation, in particular the longstanding efforts of the Hindu right in both India and the U.S. to forge Hindu unity by opposing anticaste politics. This took us to a discussion of the Hindu right’s embrace of the pro-Israel lobby’s tactics, especially its weaponization of Hinduphobia as an echo of the weaponization of antisemitism, to battle criticisms of the Modi government in India, and the need to distinguish this from the real rise in both anti-Hindu and antisemitic sentiment. We ended with Savera’s efforts to forge a broad-based antiracist, left majority as a counterweight to the multiracial far right. Read the transcript Guests Prachi Patankar is a writer and activist based in New York. Her speaking and organizing is grounded in feminist, anti-caste, and solidarity commitments. Her writing has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, Indian Express, Al Jazeera, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Jacobin. She has been interviewed in media including Democracy Now, Jewish Currents, and National Public Radio. Ram Vishwanathan is an organizer with the Savera coalition based in New York C…