I can still vividly recall the fear and disgust that accompanied my first encounter with overt racism. I was not a detached witness scrolling through the opinion section of a news portal, but a target of hate myself.

For several months, my film crew and I had been traveling along the 3,000-mile US-Mexico border, filming my directorial debut, a feature documentary based on the US immigration crisis. It was finally edited into a theatrical feature that was screened in several film festivals and was eventually broadcast in over 20 countries.

One of my interview subjects was an anti-immigration activist stationed at a strategic point along the southern border of the US. He belonged to a group called the ‘Minutemen’, a motley crew of mercenary xenophobes funded by right-wing organizations across the country. Their stated mission was to stem the flow of brown-skinned Mexican immigrants into the country, allegedly responsible for ‘stealing American jobs’ and eroding ‘traditional American values’.

Upon seeing me approach, he pulled out a 12-gauge shotgun from the back of his pick-up truck and proceeded to fire a few rounds into the air. “I don’t do interviews with ragheads,” he loudly declared, spitting out a wad of chewing tobacco. He then climbed into his truck and drove off in a cloud of dust.

Clearly, I was too similar in looks and complexion to the folks he was trying to prevent from getting into the country.

A female member of the Minuteman organization, Shawna Forde, was later convicted on charges of murdering a Mexican immigrant and his two young children as they crossed over into the United States. Several such incidents have to come to light in recent years.

film has drawn praise for its graphic depiction of the plight of immigrant refugees and for casting a penetrating light on the forces that accompany the immigration discourse anywhere in the world: vigilantism, racism and right-wing hate politics.

The longing for cultural purity and ‘traditional values’ is a dog whistle for ethno-nationalists and supremacists anywhere in the world. And India is no exception.

The ascension of Trump and the Alt-Right has emboldened white supremacists across the US, leading to a spate of hate crimes against people of color and immigrants, including the killing of Indian techie Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who was gunned down in cold blood in a Kansas bar after the killer told him to ‘go back to your country’.

Recent years have also seen several unarmed black youth being gunned down by trigger-happy white cops, leading to massive riots and countrywide protests. Most perpetrators have gotten away scot-free, clearly demonstrating the institutional racism that plagues the body politic.

The impunity with which the killings were carried out and the lack of convictions are eerily similar to the ongoing spate of ‘beef lynchings’ setting the political discourse on fire in India.

Muslims are targeted simply for having the wrong name and belonging to a faith that is widely reviled among the Hindu neo-middle class. The embers of hatred have been stoked by none other than PM Narendra Modi himself, harking back to his days as chief minister of Gujarat, when he was widely seen as being complicit in a bloody pogrom leading to the brutal killing of over a thousand Muslims.

Senseless murders, maiming and lynching of innocents is often justified and condoned by state officials in the BJP government. After Mohammed Akhlaq was bludgeoned to death by a crazed Hindu mob for the ‘crime’ of storing beef in his refrigerator, various ministers came out in support of his killers. Shrichand Sharma, the vice-president of the BJP’s western Uttar Pradesh unit, wanted the victim’s family booked for cow slaughter right after Akhlaq had been bludgeoned to death. Modi’s minister of culture, Mahesh Sharma, excused the murderers altogether, saying it was only an “accident” and felt people ought to be grateful that the mob had only killed Akhlaq and not sexually assaulted the female members of his family.

Rajiv Malhotra is the NRI doppelganger of rabid nativists like Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage and Geert Wilders. They push for a ‘pure’ monoculture, in which ethnic and religious minorities, academics and seculars are scapegoated and pushed to the margins, supplanted by a chauvinistic majoritarian paradigm.

Malhotra has a sordid history of intimidating and threatening academics and intellectuals who do not conform to the Hindu supremacist narrative. In this he is identical to Islamist preachers or white supremacists, who frequently call for the purge of troublesome minorities and liberals.

Professor Anantanand Rambachan, an accomplished US academic, and one of Malhotra’s early targets, was terrorised to the extent law enforcement protection had to be called in for his safety:

In the words of Dr. Rambachan: “Tensions, ignited and fanned by Malhotra, reached such a boiling point that law-enforcement protection for my safety was required, a first in my 40 years of public speaking at Hindu temples…”

“I refuse to be silenced by fear … I will not cede to Malhotra the authority to be the arbiter of Hindu orthodoxy.”

“History is littered with the tragic consequences of religious authoritarianism and with individuals who claim the right to judge and condemn others”.

Paul Courtright, another American academic attacked viciously by Malhotra, had to call the Federal Bureau of Investigation after receiving of thousands of threatening emails. Courtright’s home and family were under guard for the duration of the investigation.

Not knowing any Sanskrit and being completely dependent on third party sources, Malhotra has been accused of plagiarising the work of other scholars, distorting it to fit his Hindutva narrative.

The pluralism and inclusiveness that once made India a truly unique example of civilisational harmony and co-existence are under threat from toxic nationalism and cultural chauvinism – instruments of polarisation deployed by demagogues the world over. They could potentially do much more harm to Hinduism and the ‘Idea of India’ than the pet peeves of the Hindu Right – Islam and Christianity.

Militant groups who have openly called for mass murder – like the Hindu Yuva Vahini under Adityanath, have gone mainstream and are the new face of India. And the campaign to form an authoritarian theocracy – the ‘Hindu Rashtra’ – is actively underway, supported by extremists East and West.

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