Writing for Scroll.in, Harsh Mander writes that India's opposition parties can learn 5 lessons from Mamdani's win.
1 Mamdani’s emphatic assertion of his Muslim identity
Jinnah emphatically asserted his Muslim identity. Mander's family had to run away from their ancestral homes in Pakistan.
Still, Mander is right. Rahul should emphatically assert his Muslim identity by wearing Burqa. That way, everybody will vote for him.
The first lesson that I point to is Mamdani’s proud and emphatic affirmation of his Muslim identity.
Modi is proud to be a Hindu. He is Prime Minister.
At no point did Mamdani soften, dilute, divert attention away from, or apologise for his religious identity.
Modi doesn't apologize for being Hindu.
In America after 9/11, anti-Muslim prejudice and hate have become widely entrenched. Social media is filled up with charges that he supports terror and even would bring in Sharia law!
His father praises Idi Amin as the 'maker of modern Uganda'. But Idi Amin attempt to make Uganda Islamic failed. Mamdani too will fail. He won't be able to make good on his promises.
Mamdani was undeterred. As he declared in his victory speech, “I am young” (adding ironically “despite my best efforts to grow older”. He added, “I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologise for any of this”.
He didn't even apologize for being cis-gender. Sad.
Born a Shia Muslim,
He is a Khoja. The Brits classified them as 'Hindoo Mussalman' because they followed some Hindu traditions and had Hindu type inheritance law. Some Sunnis consider Shias to be heretics.
he spoke to the Indian Eye of being raised in an interfaith family. “My mother’s side of the family is Hindu” he said, “and I grew up celebrating Diwali, Holi and Raksha Bandhan. Though I identify as Muslim, these Hindu traditions and practices have shaped my worldview…” His mother named him Zohran, which means the first star in the sky.
It means radiance or flower.
Peter Mandaville, a professor at George Mason University
i.e. a cretin
speaks also of what he sees as his “distinctively Muslim approach to democratic socialism.
Jinnah's Muslim approach caused Mander's family to run away from their ancestral home.
He has articulated an understanding of Muslimness that is tied to marginality, invisibility, not being seen.”
No he hasn't. That would be foolish. The Nation of Islam is highly visible. Everybody has heard of Muhammad Ali.
Mamdani also spoke often during his campaign, sometimes tearing up, about the discrimination faced personally by him and his family. “I get messages that say the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim” with death threats to him and those he loved, he said. Just days before the election, Mamdani stood outside a mosque and spoke with tears and declared, “To be Muslim in New York,” he said, “is to expect indignity…No more.” He rejected these attacks and used his campaign to call for solidarity, urging his community to vote and assert their place in public life and governance.
It is Jews who should be running scared.
In a commentary for The New York Times, Max Fisher explains how Mamdani’s open expression of his Muslim faith is central to his political identity, not a symbolic gesture or campaign branding. Mamdani frames his faith as a source of ethical commitment to justice, solidarity, and community care. In so doing, he challenges the assumption that American Muslim politicians must minimise or conceal religious identity to gain electoral legitimacy.
He must kill kaffirs otherwise his coreligionists will consider him a 'munafiq' or hypocrite.
I wish I could hear, for instance, Rahul Gandhi declare with the same pride as Mamdani his diverse minority identity. Could he say something like: “My mother was raised Catholic. My father was half Parsi, half Hindu. I therefore am proud to contain within my own family history the kind of religious diversity that is India’s finest civilisational legacy.”
He says he is a janeodhari Brahmin of the Dattatreya gotra. His grandmother fought a court case to establish that her sons were Hindu. Sonia conducted her daughter's marriage (to a Christian) under Hindu rites in the same manner that Indira's marriage was conducted. The Church refused to bless the union thus establishing that the Sonia's grandchildren would be Hindu.
This would be the assertion of the kind of universalist identity
He should say he is half Italian and one quarter ancient Iranian. He has only one quarter Indic ancestry. Also, he should give his speeches in Italian or Spanish to show he is universalist. Furthermore, he should wear a frock and a blonde wig and sing 'Happy Birthday President Murmu'.
that would include Indians of all faiths and castes, and would reassure those who are currently stigmatised and excluded.
Mander's family felt stigmatised and excluded in Pakistan. That's why they ran awayy.
Why instead does he lay claim to be a “jenuedhari Brahmin”, namely a Brahmin who wears a jenue or sacred thread? A jenue is worn after an initiation ceremony for which only “dwija” or “twice-born” Hindus, or in other words caste-Hindus, are eligible.
Obviously, he underwent the upanayanam ceremony. Incidentally, a Shankaracharya did the 'grha pravesh' ceremony for his mother. In 2002, when Rahul returned to India, Sonia announced that, if the courts gave permission, she would put this Shankaracharya in charge of building the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
This identity by contrast excludes not just people of non-Hindu faiths like Christians and Muslims, but also Dalits and Adivasis.
Not to mention Chinese Pakistanis.
2 Mamdani’s proud embrace of multi-culturalism
is cool in a City where 40 percent of the population is foreign born. That's because New York is rich. It attracts immigrants from every country in the world. India isn't rich. It isn't multi-cultural. Most constituencies are linguistically and culturally homogenous.
Still, it is true that if Rahul took to speaking in Chinese while dressed as a Zulu warrior, he would certainly win elections.
The second lesson that the Indian political Opposition could learn from Mamdani’s example is his emphatic embrace of “multi-culturalism”.
He is a Ugandan citizen as well as an American citizen. It is obvious he has more than one culture.
This is an idea akin to the Indian idea of “secularism”, which is not the denial of religious faith but equal acceptance of every faith including the absence of faith, an idea that also contains within it the guarantee of equal rights to people of every faith.
Jinnah said Pakistan would be secular. Sadly, secularism can't prevent kaffirs being killed.
3 Uncompromising support for the Palestinian people
who want to kill or chase away all the Jews in the region same as has happened in other Muslim countries. India has uncompromising support for Israel. Why? The same people who want to kill Jews also want to kill Hindus. Moreover, we need Israeli defence-tech.
In the course of his campaign trail, Mamdani often pledged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu if he entered New York, implementing the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court in November 2024. Netenyahu is charged with a range of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
If Mamdani tries to arrest Netanyahu, he will go to jail. Trump is watching him closely. Mamdani was only naturalized in 2018. His citizenship can be cancelled. He can be deported to Uganda where Museveni won't be very happy to see him.
4 Mamdani’s clear opposition to Modi and the politics of Hindutva
What the opposition has learnt is that Hindutva-lite is better than anti-Hindutva. Why? Hindus are the majority.
Again, whatever the risk to his election, his opposition to Modi’s politics is clearly a matter of personal conviction for Mamdani. He joined a protest in 2020 on Times Square against the Ram Temple built at the site of where the Babri Masjid was demolished by a Hindutva mob in Ayodhya.
A party which is against the Ram Temple will be wiped out at the polls. Even Owaisi says he has the highest respect for Lord Ram. Owaisi is smart. He has gained seats in Bihar. Mander is a cretin. We get that Muslims object to the building of Temples and Churches and so forth but there is no reason to mention this if you are running for office in a country with a kaffir majority.
During his campaign, in a town hall for mayoral candidates in May, when Mamdani was asked if he would meet with Modi if the prime minister were to visit the city again, he retorted he wouldn’t because Modi is a “war criminal”.
Pakistan and Uganda have produced lots of war criminals. India hasn't.
5 Mamdani’s rousing commitment to democratic socialism
India, according to its Constitution, is a Socialist country. Nobody cares.
India has plenty of dynastic 'samajwadi' parties. But Nitish, whose party is not dynastic, has won in Bihar. What is the lesson here? 'Sushasan'- good governance matters. Commit to that by all means. Can Zohran deliver good governance to New York? Maybe. But he needs the help of Governor Hochul (to raise taxes) and the cooperation of the labour unions. I suppose he will meet various legal challenges. Still, the devil is in the detail. Consider De Blasio's scheme for free pre-kindergarten care for four year olds inaugurated in 2014. Mayor Adams was lukewarm about it and there were signs it wasn't working as intended- richer families availed of it, some poorer families didn't. This was probably a mistake. If Zohran makes it his first priority to restore its efficacy and extend it to three year olds, then he may get the funding to do universal child care. This by itself creates a constituency for higher taxes because people can see that tax revenue is spent properly. .
Mamdani’s understanding of democratic socialism is remarkably similar to that of
Kwame Nkrumah, Milton Obote, Julius Nyerere etc. His degree is in African Studies. He is a Ugandan citizen.
the founding fathers and mothers of India’s Constitution,
Burma's Constitution was a bit Lefty. India's wasn't.
and of Jawaharlal Nehru who Mamdani quoted in his victory speech.
Why not Jinnah?
Unlike Marxian socialism, democratic socialism is not pivoted on the abolition of private property. It derives from an ethical commitment to egalitarianism.
i.e. is meaningless. Bernie Sanders introduced a bill in 2005 to revoke China's most favoured nation status (i.e. permit protectionist tariffs). Ten years later he could challenge Hilary who had to do a U turn on TPP (even though she helped negotiate it and Obama was still trying to push it through). But Trump offered protection not just from low wage countries but also immigrants who would work for less money. He won.
Will the Democratic party shift to the left by embracing a 'tax the rich' manifesto? Perhaps, if incumbents feel this is the only way to fend off insurgent candidates like Zohran. On the other hand, they may feel they already have 'big mo'. Trump won't be able to restore consumer sentiment and business confidence in time for the mid-terms.
It envisages workers’ rights at work,
If Mamdani raises the minimum wage to 30 dollars an hour, there will be precious little work for the less skilled.
reducing inequality and the concentration of wealth in a few hands,
the rich exit the jurisdiction
and a social welfare state that provisions or ensures affordable access of every citizen to basic social needs like food and nutrition, education, healthcare, work, social security and public transport.
The Government should run the grocery stores on the same pattern as the DMV.
During the first four decades of the Indian republic, these duties of the state were widely endorsed and partially realised.
Then Indira Gandhi got shot.
However, from the mid-1980s, neo-liberalism swept away all of these goals of socialism. India grew rapidly, and with this wealth also grew but only in very few hands.
Mander resigned from the IAS while a fuck-ton of wealth accumulated in the hands of many of his colleagues.
This remained a period of almost jobless growth and the stagnation of wages. Public health, education and transport all declined precipitously. India’s position slumped consecutively in every annual Global Hunger Report, far behind much poorer countries. There is an elite capture of public policy, which serves not the working poor but international capital.
Now Mamdani has taken New York, International Capital will move out of Wall Street. I'm kidding. Wall Street has power. Mamdani has bullshit.
Unlike Mamdani, very few sections of India’s political Opposition except the Left publicly commit themselves to a restoration of socialism and to pulling down neo-liberalism from the altar on which it was placed for four decades resulting in the comprehensive detriment of lives of the working poor.
Comrade Vijayan in Kerala wants to be the Deng Xiaoping of India. Incidentally, in the Bihar election, a Naxal splinter group allied with Congress. It lost a couple of seats to the Nitish wave. Owaisi, on the other hand, was excluded from the alliance and retained seats.
Reclaiming moral courage
Reclaim the ideals that were the glue that built this nation critically wounded by two centuries of colonial oppression.
They were paradise compared to life in Jinnah's Pakistan- at least in the opinion of Mander's family.
The ideal of building a country of equal belonging to people of every faith, caste, gender and language.
That is the ideal which causes people to try to emigrate to the US. India is poor which is why lots of White people aren't trying to move there.
The ideal, in Gandhi’s immortal words, of wiping every tear from every eye.
And wiping every shitty dynastic bum with your tongue. How else defeat Fascism, Neo-Liberalism and the Spanish Inquisition?
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