When images of mass protests against India’s amended citizenship law went viral on social media last week, thousands of miles away, Indian Hindus in the US were divided. The law, which fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslim migrants facing religious persecution in neighbouring Pakistan , Bangladesh and Afghanistan , has been hugely controversial, slammed as anti-Muslim and part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s increasingly hardline Hindu nationalist agenda. The protests it engendered swept across the country, with authorities scrambling to contain the situation as more than 20 people were killed – many in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 18.5 per cent of the population are Muslim. One US-based commenter, posting on Twitter under the handle @HinduAmericans to a following of more than 30,000 – including India ’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman – predicted that the “biggest winner politically” from the protests would be Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The biggest winner politically this weekend is BJP. Indian voters are terrified by the Islamist mobs destroying property and trains and buses, and innocent police. Indian voters will soon throw out all anti-BJP forces. — Hindu Americans (@HinduAmericans) December 15, 2019 “Indian voters are terrified by Islamist mobs destroying property and trains and buses, and innocent police. Indian voters will throw out all anti-BJP forces,” the post reads. Others, such as US-based advocacy group Hindus for Human Rights, saw the protests as a call to action – taking to Twitter to “call on everyone with a platform – Hindus especially – to stand” for truth and justice. Punya Upadhyaya, a US-based Indian Hindu who works as a strategy consultant in New Mexico, said he had received “memes and cartoons calling Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh or Pakistan butchers” in WhatsApp chat groups, sent by other Indian Hindus in the US after the new law was passed. “Another set of people sent WhatsApp forwards that criticised Modi and supported the protesters,” he said. This political divide among Indian Hindus living in the US has been visible for some time, and beyond social media too. In September, when Modi spoke to a crowd of some 50,000 Indian-Americans at an event called “Howdy Modi” in Texas , the venue reverberated with chants of “Jai Shri Ram [Hail, Lord Rama]”, while outside another group of Indian-American protesters stood with a placard reading “Real Hindus don’t lynch”, in reference to a recent spate of mob violence and extrajudicial killings targeting members of India’s ethnic minorities, Muslims especially. One of the protesters, 51-year-old human rights activist Sunita Viswanath, blamed the “bigoted policies” of Modi’s BJP for the “unabated lynchings” of Muslims and Dalits – the lowest of India’s castes, formerly known as “untouchables”. As a member of the Hindus for Human Rights advocacy group, Sunita said she believed she must condemn the attacks as they had been carried out in the name of all Hindus. Of the 3.9 million people in the US who were either born in India or reported Indian ancestry or race at the last census, around 80 per cent are Hindus – but they are far from united. As first and second generation immigrants, for years, they were busy establishing themselves in a new country. Political discussions were only a luxury in the context of building a new life from scratch. But now, thanks to social media, their awareness about political developments back home has increased, and so have political debates in social gatherings. The BJP’s strong engagement with America’s Indian diaspora in the Modi years has also created sharp divisions within the community between those who are in favour of, or oppose, the prime minister. And that gap is only widening: of the 10 or so Hindu groups that have been formed in the US over the past 40 years, the four newest – three pro-Modi and one against – were started since he first came to power in 2014. Many of these groups have volunteered to help with Modi’s election campaigns in India, and three – the Hindu American Foundation, Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh and Republican Hindu Coalition – have been vocal in their support of the prime minister’s abrogation in August of Article 370 that gave special status to the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir . For a section of Hindus in the US, religious identity reigns supreme. “For many Hindus, as for many people of all religions, religious identity is central, and affects all other areas of life,” said Jeffery D Long, Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. Nupur Sharma, an interfaith solidarity activist of the Washington-based Indian American Muslim Council, a non-profit organisation that promotes peace and pluralism, said that there had been a spike recently in “Hindutva” sentiment within the Hindu community, referring to an ideology that seeks to establish the hegemony of Hindus. “There is a rise in the tendency to celebrate many lesser known Hindu festivals. Also, it is easier for organisations to get donation for building a temple in India than for flood relief,” Sharma said. Ever since Hindus started migrating to the US from India after a law banning Asian immigration was lifted in 1965, they have made a conscious effort to build temples and integrate themselves within the country’s social fabric. This movement only intensified with the increases in migration of the 90s; and following the events of September 11, 2001, Hindu Americans sought to differentiate themselves from Muslims in the US – many of whom were also from India– as Islamophobia was on the rise. Hindu groups were established throughout this period to give people a way of relating to that part of their identity and to fight the “negative propaganda” faced by many minority communities living in the US. “Most Hindus in the US are immigrants or children of immigrants. They are conscious of being a minority here as they are subjected to racism and religious bigotry from the majority,” said Long, the professor. “The same Hindus see Hindus in India as being under threat and see the BJP as a protector. There are also those who see any criticism of the government of the ‘home’ country as a betrayal of the entire community.” More progressive groups, meanwhile, want to uphold the ideals of multi-religious pluralism and “resist Hindutva”, said Viswanath, the human rights activist. These anti-Modi groups are at a disadvantage, however, and struggle to achieve the reach or financial backing of their pro-Modi counterparts. Viswanath’s Hindus for Human Rights, for example, has received just US$5,000 in donations over the past six months, while the Hindu American Foundation – which was formed in 2003 as a non-profit advocacy organisation for the Hindu American community and lauded Modi’s recent Kashmir move as working “to ensure equal protection to all Indians” – works with an annual budget approaching US$1.5 million. “We don’t yet have enough traction in most Hindu spaces in the US – temple and community spaces and family networks,” Viswanath said. “Hindu nationalist organisations have been working diligently for a long time in the community to build a Hindu conservative and nationalist sentiment. Also, the spaces of resistance tend to be very secular, and we are working hard to add an explicitly Hindu voice of resistance.” Sharma, of the Indian American Muslim Council, agreed that it was a challenge countering “the strong pro-Modi voice that is emerging from the Hindu community in the US”. But for Upadhyaya, the New Mexico-based strategy consultant, there is at least one silver lining: those who used to sit on the fence politically are now asking questions about the conduct of Modi’s government following the recent attacks on unarmed students at a Muslim-majority university in New Delhi who were protesting against the citizenship law. “They are now asking, why is the Modi government using brutal force against students?” he said.