Temples, Tilaks and Trolls: How Hinduphobia threatens the American dream for Indian-Americans

In his 1931 book The Epic of America, James Truslow Adams coined a term that went on to define the classic life the United States promised to the rest of the world. The “American Dream”, as Adams described it, was a vision of a society where life should be better, richer and fuller for everyone, offering opportunity based on ability and achievement rather than social class or birth.

Inspired by this promise, Indians began migrating to America in the 19th century, with the numbers increasing significantly in the 20th century. America ticked all the boxes for them: life in the city, better income, improved opportunities and a slightly elevated social standing back home, where otherwise life could be spent working to the bone and still only managing to become a family man rather than a billionaire.

Bhicaji Balsara, a Parsi businessman, became the first Indian to gain US citizenship through naturalisation in 1910. But the peak of proud Indian-American symbolism arrived much later, with Satya Nadella becoming Microsoft CEO in 2014 and Sundar Pichai becoming Google CEO in 2015. What began with Punjabi farmers moving to the American West Coast eventually evolved into families taking loans worth lakhs to send their children to the United States so they could chase the American Dream, no matter the cost.

The dark era for Indian-Americans

Fast forward to Barack Obama’s presidency from 2009 to 2017. Those years saw the maximum number of Indian-Americans appointed to senior positions in the administration for a community that was roughly three million strong at the time, leading some to jokingly describe Obama as the first “Indian-American president”.

This was followed by Donald Trump’s rise to power between 2017 and 2021. Despite courting Indian-American voters, Trump garnered only about 16% of the Indian-American vote in 2016. A 2020 Asian American Voter Survey later found that roughly 28% of Indian-Americans supported him.

Joe Biden’s presidency further strengthened Indian-American representation when he selected Kamala Harris as his running mate in 2020. Harris went on to serve as vice president from 2021 to 2025, becoming the first person of Indian-origin to hold the office.

Trump’s re-election in 2025 marked what he described as the beginning of America’s “Golden Age”. Yet for many Indian-Americans, the political and cultural climate since then has felt far less golden.

The Indian-American burn out

The word 'anti' has seen a remarkable rise when it comes to anything Indian-Americans in America since 2025. A survey conducted by the European Council of Foreign Relations in the same year revealed that 75% of India's population were "Trump Welcomers". Yet within America, Indian-Americans increasingly report feeling vulnerable in the very country that once symbolised opportunity.

A recent survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace examined the attitudes of the roughly 5.2 million Indian-Americans living in the United States. The Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS) in partnership with research firm YouGov, surveyed 1000 Indian-American adults.

The findings revealed a troubling reality. Many respondents reported experiencing bias, online racism, personal harassment and discrimination, forcing some to change how they speak, dress or participate in public life in order to avoid confrontation.

An anti-Hindu zoom in

Hindus constitute at least 55% of the Indian-American community and are heavily represented in sectors such as technology, medicine and academia.

A direct conclusion drawn by many observers from the survey is that the hostility experienced by Indian-Americans often overlaps with hostility towards Hindu identity, raising concerns about the rise of Hinduphobia or anti-Hindu prejudice.

However, researchers and institutions rarely use the term explicitly, reflecting an ongoing debate within academia and policy circles over how best to categorise anti-Hindu bias.

As per the survey, since the start of 2025, one in four Indian Americans have been called a slur. The report described US as the "epicentre of anti-Indian digital racism". What it also noted was that much of the online hate directed at Indian communities frequently invokes Hindu symbols, traditions or religious references.

Tracing Hinduphobia online

It was in October 2025 that anti-H1B hate exploded online and the slurs were only aimed at Hindu deities, traditions and names. A post that went viral on X in February had Carlos Turcios, a Republican activist based in Dallas-Fort Worth region, calling out the 90-foot tall "Statue of Union" of Lord Hanuman in Texas, claiming that "third world aliens" were slowly taking over Texas and America. Numerous other posts have ranted about "demon gods" and the "monkey god" with one bestselling author arguing against immigration that leads to temples.

Around the same time, American YouTuber Tyler Oliveira's video mocking the Gorehabba festival in Karnataka's village gained 5 million views on X. Without making an effort to find out the significance of the festival or talk to locals, he criticised it with the title 'Inside India's Poop-Throwing Festival', baiting the Americans waiting to troll any and everything over the country and it's culture. Critics argued that the video failed to explain the cultural or ritual context of the festival and instead encouraged ridicule of Indian traditions.

In another video that went viral on X, comedian Alex Stein attended a Plano City Council meeting where he mocked Hindu customs, while dressed in a yellow kurta with shorts, slippers and a red tilak. The conservative media personality mocked the culture's cow worship and use of cow dung and urine in a sarcastic way, causing many Indian-Americans to walk out.

Whether because of this incident or broader cultural tensions, the Carnegie survey noted that almost one in five respondents shied away from wearing their bindis and tilaks with 23 per cent of Indian Americans believing that Hindus face significant in-person discrimination. Moreover, in 2022, research by the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University documented this pattern where social media was systematically weaponised to target Hindu communities often by bots and geopolitical players. It also warned Hindu communities to be cautious since hate online often tends to slip into the physical world.

Attacks beyond social media

Ways in which Hinduism manifests itself, including temples and idols have also been targeted. In 2025, gunshots were fired at an ISKCON temple in Utah while worshippers were inside. Multiple Hindu temples were vandalised in Indiana and southern California while a temple statue was attacked in North Carolina.

California has also documented a rise in hate crimes involving Hindus, though antisemitism remains the most reported religious hate crime category in the state.

Institutions have also faced accusations of insensitivity. In February 2026, Harvard was accused of 'blatant Hinduphobia' by The Coalition of Hindus of North America who called out the university for the artwork featured for Sanskrit course on its Department of South Asian Studies website. Taking to X, the coalition accused the university of bigotry for adding an image that feels "straight out of a horror movie" starring a dark Hindu figure with a tilak, dangling "some sort of ghostly figurine in his hands." While the university issued an apology on its website on the behalf of the department, saying it "deeply regrets" sharing an "insensitive" image, it echoed the ignorance with which the depths of Hinduism are dealt with by even an acclaimed academic institution in the US.

The Madhu Raja controversy

The most recent example of anti-Hindu hate was represented by a video of Indian-origin techie Madhu Raja filming a "Don't Rush Challenge" with a woman at the memorial located on the National Mall in honour of Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II and those who died as a result of the war.

Following the video’s circulation online, Raja was reportedly doxed and forced to delete his social media accounts. Calls for his firing from Palo Alto Networks, where he was believed to be employed, also went viral.

Some posts also demanded that Raja be deported, claiming he was in the country on a non-immigrant H-1B visa.

This is after videos of American cheerleaders doing flips by the Lincoln Memorial, a white bride voguing at the Reflecting Pool and a guy in Spider-Man suit cartwheeling past the WWII fountains with many other similar videos 'disrespecting' the American history flood the internet, daily.

What lies ahead for Indian-Americans?

A study by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), claimed that in 2025, 24,000 posts on X were viewed by over 300 million times. Anti-Indian content on the platform tripled in the year alone.

Anti-Indian hate and Hinduphobia have rendered Indians orphan of the second-best thing that differentiated them in a world ruled by capitalism and influencer by evangelism- their religion, with the first, of course, being their sheer audacity of being talented.

For many observers, the trend raises difficult questions about assimilation and identity.

Consider Indian-American golfer Akshay Bhatia, who secured a dramatic playoff victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March 2026. Some online commentators noted how thoroughly he appeared assimilated into American culture, arguing that apart from his name, there were few obvious markers of Indian identity.

"Another thing about akshay bhatia that you missed is - assimilating" said a post on X, like many other.

In the Carnegie survey, while Indian-Americans were ready to fold themselves in on their culture, giving up tilak, bindis and whatnot, they still did not plan to leave the country and a majority recommended the US for employment.

Indians as civilians of the country have had to barter for existence since time immemorial. With British colonisers, they became sepoys and babus, for the Mughals, the subedars and mansabdars, all to be able to live on theirr own land, in their society and culture while practising their religions.

For generations, immigrant communities in America have navigated the delicate balance between assimilation and cultural preservation. Indian-Americans today face a similar dilemma: how to maintain a visible cultural identity in a political environment increasingly shaped by debates over immigration, nationalism and global competition.

The American Dream promised opportunity without erasure. For many Indian-Americans, the coming years may determine whether that promise still holds.