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A recent opinion piece in New India Abroad asks readers to believe that the controversy over a Montgomery County Public Libraries event was about hostility to Hindi, Hinduism, or Hindu Americans. That framing is false. It also reveals the weakness of the argument. 

The concern raised by Hindus for Human Rights and our coalition partners was never about Hindi-language books. It was never about whether Hindu Americans belong in public life. Of course we do. It was never about whether public libraries should serve Hindi-speaking families. Of course they should. 

The concern was much simpler: should a public library partner with, platform, or lend civic legitimacy to organizations tied to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America ecosystem? 

Also Read: VHPA alleges smear campaign after library event cancellation

Montgomery County’s own announcement said the Hindi-language collection was supported in part by Balvihar Hindi School, “part of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America,” and that representatives from Balvihar were invited to speak at the public event. New India Abroad’s own reporting later described the books as funded in part by Balvihar Hindi School, affiliated with VHPA, and identified VHPA as linked to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in India. That was the issue. Not Hindi. Not Hinduism. Not culture. Institutional judgment. 

Once that basic fact is restored, the argument becomes much clearer. Public libraries can and should celebrate Hindi. They can and should expand world-language collections. They can and should welcome Indian American, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, Dalit, and secular South Asian families. But public institutions also have a responsibility to choose community partners with care. A library does not become more inclusive by allowing a narrow ideological formation to present itself as the face of an entire language or community. 

Hindus for Human Rights speaks from a Hindu perspective for pluralism, civil rights, and human rights. Our work is rooted in shanti, nyaya, and satya: peace, justice, and truth. We provide a Hindu voice of resistance to caste, Hindutva, racism, and all forms of bigotry and oppression. That is not anti-Hindu. It is one of the oldest and most necessary Hindu acts: moral discernment. 

The opinion piece does not answer the public question. Instead, it changes the subject. It turns a concrete concern about VHPA-linked participation in a county library program into a sprawling accusation against HfHR, IAMC, scholars, foundations, and other civil-society actors. It calls pluralist Hindus “Hindus in Name Only.” It suggests that those of us who oppose Hindutva are somehow disqualified from Hindu identity. It presents dissenting Hindus as suspect, foreign, or fraudulent. 

No self-appointed political faction gets to decide who is Hindu enough. 

Hinduism is not the property of the VHP, VHPA, CoHNA, or any other organization that claims to speak for all Hindus. Hindu traditions have always included argument, reform, dissent, devotion, philosophy, anti-caste struggle, and ethical self-critique. A Hinduism that cannot tolerate Hindus who oppose majoritarianism is not protecting Hinduism. It is shrinking it. 

The author’s repeated use of “we” also deserves scrutiny. Who is this “we”? It is not the whole Hindu community. It is not the whole Indian diaspora. It is not the South Asian public that actually lives, works, studies, worships, organizes, and raises families together across lines of religion, caste, region, language, and politics. 

New India Abroad identifies Vijendra Agarwal as a retired Ph.D. physicist from IIT Roorkee and a writer on policy, politics, and Dharmic traditions. Public materials from CoHNA also identify him as a CoHNA Minnesota chapter executive member in connection with the Hinduphobia resolution he defends. He is entitled to his view. But readers should understand that this is advocacy from a particular ideological location. It is not neutral stewardship of the diaspora, and it is not community consensus. 

There is something especially tired about this style of argument. Many of us in the diaspora recognize it immediately: the inherited suspicion, the reflexive communal grievance, the insistence that every Muslim organization is suspect, every pluralist Hindu is a traitor, every civil-rights group is a front, and every foundation grant is proof of conspiracy. This is not the language of a confident community. It is the language of a politics that has never learned how to live comfortably in a plural society. 

But South Asians in America already live the pluralism this article fears. We share schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, businesses, friendships, marriages, temples, mosques, gurdwaras, churches, and civic institutions. We know one another not as abstractions on a conspiracy chart, but as classmates, colleagues, neighbors, patients, teachers, parents, and friends. The lived reality of the diaspora is far more humane, interdependent, and mature than the politics of suspicion being offered in this piece. 

Some people carry old prejudices and mistake them for cultural memory. But the next generation is not obligated to inherit that narrowness. Most increasingly understand that pride in who we are does not require contempt for anyone else. They know that Hindu identity does not belong to the VHP, VHPA, CoHNA, or any faction that tries to turn faith and language into outdated political posturing. 

That generational shift helps explain the vitriol. A politics built on grievance often becomes loudest when it senses that it is losing the future. And it is losing the future. Not because

Hinduism is weak, but because Hinduism is stronger than Hindutva. Not because Hindi is unwelcome, but because Hindi does not need extremist sponsorship. Not because the diaspora lacks pride, but because younger South Asians and progressive community voices are done confusing pride with grievance, culture with exclusion, and belonging with silence in the face of cringe bigotry. 

This is why the article reaches not for a serious civic argument, but for a DisinfoLab flowchart — the now-familiar yarn-wall genre in which public-record fragments, foundation grants, Muslim civic groups, academics, and Hindu human-rights advocates are connected by arrows until ordinary civil society is made to look sinister. Readers should know that The Washington Post investigated DisinfoLab in 2023 and reported that the group had targeted U.S.-based critics of Prime Minister Modi by combining fact-based research with unsubstantiated claims, often casting those critics as part of Soros- or Islamist-linked conspiracies. The Post also reported that people familiar with DisinfoLab described it as a covert influence operation tied to an Indian intelligence officer, an allegation DisinfoLab denies. In other words, the article does not rebut the concerns raised by HfHR and our coalition partners; it illustrates the problem clearly: a politics so unable to answer the question of VHPA-linked involvement on the merits that it turns instead to arrows, insinuations, and guilt-by-association. 

That context matters. A flowchart is not an argument. A donor insinuation is not evidence. A conspiracy map is not a substitute for public accountability. 

And this is precisely why the Montgomery County case matters. The question before a public library is not whether a writer can draw lines between civil-rights groups and foundations. The question is whether a public institution should allow an organization tied to exclusionary politics to appear as a neutral representative of Hindi-speaking communities. 

The answer should be obvious to any fair-minded person. Celebrate Hindi. Keep and expand the books. Invite poets, teachers, librarians, parents, translators, secular educators, Hindu and non-Hindu Hindi speakers, and community members from across the county. But do not hand a public platform to organizations whose ideological baggage makes many residents feel erased, unwelcome, or unsafe. 

That is not censorship. That is civic responsibility. 

The article also tries to weaponize anti-Hindu bigotry as a shield against criticism. HfHR has always said clearly that anti-Hindu hate is real and must be opposed. Hindu temples should be safe. Hindu children should not face bullying. Hindu Americans should not be mocked, stereotyped, or targeted. But opposing anti-Hindu bigotry does not require us to accept Hindutva. It certainly does not require public institutions to partner with VHP/VHPA-linked entities. 

In fact, the opposite is true. If we care about the dignity of Hindus, we should refuse to let Hindu identity be fused with organizations that many South Asians associate with majoritarianism, exclusion, and violence. If we care about Hindi, we should refuse to let Hindi be captured by any

one religious-nationalist formation. Hindi belongs to Hindus and Muslims, to Sikhs and Christians, to poets and film lovers, to migrants and children, to believers and nonbelievers. A language is not a partisan flag. 

The deeper issue is what kind of diaspora we want to be. 

We are living in a moment when Indian Americans are more visible than ever: in local government, education, technology, media, medicine, law, and national politics. That visibility brings responsibility. Pew Research Center has found that Indian American registered voters identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party by a 68 percent to 29 percent margin, a reminder that the loudest right-wing voices should not be mistaken for the community mainstream. But this is not only about partisan identity. It is about moral identity. 

We cannot ask our neighbors to trust us while excusing sectarian politics within our own institutions. We cannot demand inclusion for ourselves while ignoring the exclusion of others. We cannot celebrate pluralism in public and quietly normalize majoritarianism when it arrives in familiar cultural packaging. 

Our shared civic spaces do not owe legitimacy to poisonous politics simply because those politics arrive wrapped in heritage, language, or religion. We should not allow old suspicions to define a new generation’s identity. We should not let our children inherit a Hindu or Indian American public presence narrowed by grievance, suspicion, and hostility toward minorities. 

Communities are not judged only by what they preserve. They are judged by what they normalize. Our children and grandchildren will not ask whether we had enough cultural pride. They will ask what kind of pride we practiced. Did we use our traditions to build bridges, or to excuse prejudice? Did we make room for neighbors, or did we teach suspicion? Did we protect Hindu identity, or did we allow it to be captured by organizations whose politics made our community smaller? 

That answer matters because diaspora identity is inheritance. We are not only deciding what books enter a library. We are deciding what kind of Hindu and Indian American public presence we leave behind. The next generation should not have to explain why their elders allowed sectarian organizations to pose as cultural ambassadors. They should not have to clean up the moral debris of prejudices we were too timid to confront. 

Hindus for Human Rights believes the diaspora can choose better. We believe in a Hindu public voice that is confident without being supremacist, rooted without being exclusionary, proud without being paranoid, and honest enough to reject authoritarian politics even when it speaks in the language of heritage. 

The Montgomery County library can celebrate Hindi in a way that is inclusive, community-centered, transparent, and free from the shadow of extremist networks. That would be a victory for everyone who wants our public institutions to belong to the whole public. 

The future of the diaspora is not a conspiracy map. It is a shared civic life.

We are not dismantling the Hindu voice. We are refusing to let it be narrowed into fear. Hindi belongs in our libraries. Hindu Americans belong fully in public life. Hindutva-aligned gatekeepers do not. 

 

 

David Dasharath Kalal is the Director of Communications at Hindus for Human Rights. 

 

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of New India Abroad.) 

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