Damage, Daring, and Curbs

Hit brutally by Hurricane Melissa, the island of Jamaica, though smaller than Cuba (to its north) and Haiti (to its east), has had an extraordinary impact on the North American landmass. Because of its cricket players, it is also known to distant Indians. Having visited the island twenty or so years ago and met some unforgettable human beings there, I have been shaken by what Melissa has done to it. 

Not many in the world realize that people of Jamaican ancestry form two percent of the population of the city which is on the world’s mind as I type these lines on the morning of 2025’s “Election Tuesday.” Whether or not Zohran Mamdani wins and becomes New York’s mayor, he has already destroyed a few political myths. 

One myth was that a little-known young person cannot capture massive attention in a short period of time. A second was that a focus on humdrum matters like rent, bus fares, grocery prices and day-care for the children of working parents could not create an electoral storm. A third was that honest criticism of Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing would blow you out of American politics before you got started. A fourth was that someone not a Christian or a Jew should be realistic and never seek a seat of power in the US. 

Myths these were, but to explode them you needed the gifts and energy of a Mamdani, which do not come for the asking. Zohran seems to have worked harder than anyone can imagine, and he enlisted a team that was incredibly large, evidently well-organized, and willing to work beyond capacity. To have mobilized and retained a team of this size (and quality) suggests an uncommon talent, insufficiently understood hitherto, in the young leader. In addition, he may have been helped by scandals tagged to his leading opponent and, indirectly, by the unmissable horrors in Gaza. 

If he wins, Mamdani will need all the qualities he has shown plus some more, plus a ton of luck. A mega-sized ton. Making groceries, bus fares, rents, and child-care affordable in NEW YORK (!) is a more-than-ambitious undertaking that will require, among other things, the participation of elements who’ve thus far remained outside his circle, if not opposed to it. 

Apart from New York, this “Election Tuesday” included other important contests. If California approves the congressional redistricting plan under the “Proposition 50” put up by Governor Gavin Newsom and the California legislature, that state’s Democrats will find additional US House seats as a response to the redistricting in Texas that gives more seats to Republicans. But we should expect any redistricting in California to intensify the bitter, polarizing “war” that has replaced America’s political contests. 

P.S.: I see, after writing the above, that Mamdani’s victory has been announced, although all the votes have not been counted. 

TRUMP WARNS NIGERIA 

In addition to asking his supporters in New York City to vote not for the Republican nominee for mayor but for the independent Andrew Cuomo, who had a better chance against Mamdani, President Donald Trump used the weekend to threaten that the US might enter far-off Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” to protect, so he claimed, the Christian population of Africa’s most populous country. 

According to CNN, Trump, who was on a flight on Air Force One on Friday Oct 31, saw on Fox News a story “on how Christians were being targeted by Islamic groups in Nigeria.” Apparently, the “immediately” angered president asked for more information. “Shortly after Air Force One touched down in West Palm Beach, he began posting on Truth Social: ‘Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.’”

Trump evidently added that he was making Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act. The secretary of defense was asked to “prepare for possible action” and warn that the US could enter Nigeria with its unchallengeable arms. A source told CNN that this was an “Art of the Deal” type strategy. 

CNN quoted a security analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank who explained that extremist groups have wreaked havoc against both Christians and Muslims in the northeast of Nigeria. According to this analyst, “in most parts of the country, Christians and Muslims live peacefully with each other.” The analyst added: “Reports of widespread persecution and mass slaughter of Christians are seriously misread and exaggerate the challenges of interfaith relations in the country.” 

It seems that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has so far remained silent on Trump’s mention of potential military intervention but has pushed back against the designation of Nigeria as “a country of particular concern.” Tinubu has evidently stated in a social media post that “the characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians.”

Should the conduct of US foreign policy towards Nigeria depend on gut reactions, on Art of the Deal formulae, or on a careful study of the implications of different approaches? As Africa’s most populous country possessing an abundance of material and human resources, and containing roughly equal numbers of Christians and Muslims as well as other major complexities, Nigeria can do with the world’s goodwill and understanding.

Actually, Nigeria’s multi-ethnic polity reminds one of India’s situation. I wish that during the decent spell of teaching I had at a prominent US university, I had promoted a solid comparative study of India and Nigeria.

CURBS IN INDIA

When last month Professor Francesca Orsini of London’s famed School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), someone very highly regarded for her scholarship in Hindi literature, was denied entry into India despite holding a valid five-year visa and sent back to the UK from Delhi’s international airport, I was saddened but not shocked. When last week Swapan Dasgupta, for six years (until 2022) a BJP MP in the Rajya Sabha and for much longer a defender of Hindu nationalism, criticized the Indian government for its offensive treatment of Prof. Orsini, I was surprised and pleased. I hope others in the BJP will also be willing to question actions of this kind. 

When, last week, Jemimah Rodrigues, a brilliant member of India’s cricket team that had just won the sport’s most coveted international trophy, said she was crediting her success to Jesus Christ, Hindu nationalists trolled her. It was a sad and painful reminder that publicly acknowledging one’s faith is a right increasingly restricted in India to those who belong to its Hindu majority. 

Sadder still, deeply hurtful, and sharply injurious to India’s standing as a democracy is the seemingly endless detention, without bail or trial and at times with mounting harshness, of an unknown number of India’s Muslims who’ve been arrested under a variety of stringent provisions since the BJP’s entry into power in 2014. 

A major provocation for these arrests was the participation in 2019 and 2020 of hundreds of thousands of humble Muslim women and men across India in nonviolent protests against new citizenship laws. These laws allowed the state to arrest people as suspected illegal migrants if they were unable to provide “required” documents from much earlier times -- documents virtually impossible for poor Indians to procure or preserve. 

“Prove that you are not an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh!” Again and again this is the demand the Indian police now makes of a Muslim it arrests. Instead of the police producing evidence that the detainee crossed the border, the detainee must prove that he did not. In most cases it’s an unfulfillable demand. 

Below are links to two articles that expose some bitter realities of law enforcement in India. One is by Aditya Nigam in the courageous portal The Wire. 

The other, written by India’s most celebrated historian, Ramachandra Guha, was published on Nov. 1 in Kolkata’s brave daily, The Telegraph. 

Both articles speak of a highly talented young academic, Umar Khalid, who has been behind bars from September 2020. More than three years ago, in July 2022, I had the honor of joining Noam Chomsky, who is now 96, in publicly demanding, from a platform in New York of Hindus for Human Rights, Umar’s release. He remains incarcerated. He has not been tried, he has not been allowed out on bail, and he is no longer the young man he was. 

I began this column with Zohran Mamdani, an American whose mother, a famous film-maker, is a Hindu of Indian origin, and whose father, a reputed academic, is a Muslim of Indian origin. Other talented and hardworking Americans of Indian origin have advanced in a variety of professions. Some are well-known federal legislators. 

Umar Khalid and hundreds like him have been knocking year after year on the thick, deaf doors of India’s “justice” system. Will US Congressmen of Indian origin hear those knocks and say something publicly about the inalienable pursuit of liberty?