Last month, the legislative assembly in the US state of Georgia enacted a resolution condemning “Hinduphobia”, discrimination and bigotry targeting Hindus, becoming the first US state to pass such a measure.
Supporters of the measure within the Hindu community welcomed the gesture by the Republican lawmakers who control the state government as an important show of support in the context of a high profile attacks against Hindus that occurred in New York last year.
While it is difficult to quantify the prevalence of discrimination against Hindus, data on hate crimes suggest these attacks are not isolated.
According to statistics by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, a federal law enforcement agency that tracks hate crimes, in 2021 (the most recent year for which data is available) there were 12 incidents of hate crimes against Hindus in the United States. This number is consistent with the number of anti-Hindu hate crimes in previous years.
In the US, violence against Hindus is part of a broader trend of rising xenophobia in following the 9/11 terror attacks. Much of this is driven by a rise in islamophobia in which Muslims or Arab-Americans are targeted for hate crimes.
The rise of anti-Arab sentiment has had the effect of making other minority groups vulnerable. For example, in 2012, a gunman in Wisconsin murdered five members of the Sikh community. While the motives were unclear, the perpetrator was connected to white supremacy organisations.
However, comparatively speaking, anti-Hindu hate crimes tend to make up a relatively small portion of all hate crimes committed in the US. For context, hate crimes most frequently target African-Americans. In 2021, there were over 3200 such incidents directed at Black Americans. Similarly, there were over 185 occurrences of anti-Sikh hate crimes, and more than 150 of anti-Islamic hate crimes.
Of 12 hate crimes targeting Hindus in 2021, none appear to have occurred in Georgia. And while there are a few document cases of anti-Hindu bigotry, such reports appear to be infrequent considering the large Hindu community in the state.
Although Georgia’s anti-Hinduphobia resolution cites a 2022 report by Rutgers University that documents a rise anti-Hindu tropes social media, the report itself blames Iranian state sponsored trolls—not white supremacists in the US—for most of this activity.
While there is no acceptable level of anti-Hindu discrimination, much of the racial and religiously motivated violence in the US appears to be targeting other groups. Why, then, did the Georgia legislature pass the resolution specifically condemning Hinduphobia?
One Likely Explanation is Politics.
For many years, the US state of Georgia has been dominated by the Republican Party, whose supporters are overwhelmingly white and Christian.
While the party has traditionally focused on conservative economic principles, such as cutting taxes and deregulating business, in recent years the party has drifted away from fiscal conservativism as it has embrace Christian nationalism and “America First” philosophy promoted by former President Trump.
While this strategy has been successful in increasing support for the party in the rural parts of the country, which skews white and evangelical Christian, it has been problematic in urban and suburban areas, which are more diverse and more affluent.
Georgia is an example of a state where Republicans have been hurt by the rise of Trumpism. A decade ago, Republicans dominated state politics, controlling the governorship and state assembly and electing Republicans to most of its seats in the US Congress.
However, in 2020 Democrats won two US senate elections, marking the first time in over 20 years that Georgia voters sent a Democrat to the US Senate. The Democrats won again in the 2022 Senate elections, proving that their performance in the state was no fluke and that the political lines in the state are shifting
But Why?
Part of the story is the shifting demographics. Since the 1990s, the state’s population growth has outpaced the growth of the national population. Much of this surge is driven by population growth in and around Atlanta, the state’s the largest city. In contrast to the Republican voter base, these residents in the Atlanta metropolitan area tend to be more diverse and well educated—groups which tend to support Democrats.
The rise of Trumpism has placed Georgia Republicans in a dilemma: in order to maintain power, they must broaden their coalition to include non-white and non-Christian voters. Courting Hindus is one strategy for the party to expand its coalition.
The Indian-American population in Georgia has increased substantially in recent decades and it comprises the largest share of the more than 500,000 Asian-Americans living in the state. What’s more, many Indian-Americans living in Georgia are well educated and live and work in the Atlanta metropolitan area. From a political perspective, these numbers are impossible to ignore.
In this context, the condemning of anti-Hindu discrimination by the Georgia assembly can be interpreted as a gesture of goodwill to Hindus living in the state, and perhaps an attempt to welcome this growing voting bloc into the party.
Moreover, former President Trump’s well-publicised “bromance” with Modi and his popularity in India suggest a potential alliance between the White Christian voters who make up the majority of the Republican Party coalition and Hindus living in the US.
However, one potential drawback from this strategy is the age distribution of most Hindus living in the US. Relative to other demographic groups, the Hindu population in the US skews younger, with a large majority under the age of 50. Young voters, in general, have been turning away from the Republican Party, in part due to trationalist stances on social policies, such as gay marriage and reproductive rights.
Will the Republicans succeed in getting Hindus to vote for them? This question may boil down to whether the Republicans can return to a focus on economic policies, which formed the basis of the party’s identity during the latter half of the 20th century.
The popularity of Trump and his focus on cultural wedge issues, such as immigration, may alienated young Indian-Americans, many of whom have been educated in US universities and share relatively liberal social values.
In this context, Republicans in Georgia may see enactment of an anti-Hinduphobia resolution as one way to create an inclusive space for Hindus within the party, without distancing themselves from Trump and Trumpism.
(Alex Keena is an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in the United States. A PhD from the University of California, Irvine, he has co-authored two books on gerrymandering in the United States. The views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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