Indu Viswanathan

Eleven five-star reviews on launch day. I am deeply moved and grateful. Hindu at Heart: Education, Faith, and What it Means to Belong in America is now on Amazon — available globally and on Kindle for the first time. For everyone who has been asking from India, Canada, Australia, the UK, and across Europe — here it is. "She never writes from a place of bitterness. Her emphasis on viewpoint diversity, empathy, and listening with sincerity makes the book deeply humane." ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Instructive for anyone whose identity is shaped by religion, country of origin, or cultural background." ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Let's dig in. induviswanathan.com/books

📚 I'm really looking forward to my conversation with @MakrandParanspe ji about Hindutva and Hind Swaraj, a fascinating exploration of Gandhi and Savarkar, two thinkers whose very different visions of India continue to shape debates today. There's so much to explore about their ideas, assumptions about their ideas, and the questions they leave us with as Indian Americans. I'm also looking forward to the rest of the IAAC Literary Festival, which has a terrific lineup of writers and thinkers. If you're in the NYC area, or can make it into the city that weekend, I highly recommend checking it out! Autumn in NYC is a dream and the festival is free to attend, but registration is required: iaac.us Hope to see some of you there!

IT DIDN’T HAVE TO GET TO THIS POINT. On October 14, we learned that on October 11, 19-year-old Alexandros Paporakis attempted a mass shooting at Sri Venkateswara Swami Temple in Aurora, Illinois. According to prosecutors, he tried to fire his assault rifle at someone, but the weapon jammed. He told a coworker about his plan, who then reported it to the police. I keep thinking about how close this came to becoming an unimaginable tragedy. Hindu Americans had gathered at their temple for Navaratri celebrations, and their lives could have been taken in an instant. According to prosecutors, the suspect had spent approximately two months targeting this Hindu temple. His manifesto reportedly expressed hatred toward Indians, Jews, and Black people, and he identified with white supremacist ideology. He told a coworker he “couldn't wait to kill Indian people.” It’s important to be precise about what we know. His expressed hatred was racial and religious, and the institution he chose to attack was a Hindu place of worship. Both facts matter. We don't need to establish that he hated Hindu theology specifically to recognize the significance of his target. What almost happened in Illinois is particularly horrifying because of the scale of violence that was intended. I'm glad the attempted shooting is receiving serious media coverage, but I wish the broader pattern of hostility toward Hindu institutions received the same attention. Over the past several years, Hindu temples across the United States have been repeatedly vandalized and the hostility has not come exclusively from white supremacists. These are very different acts from an attempted mass shooting, and I don't want to conflate them. But we should be able to recognize and take seriously hostility toward Hindu places of worship, regardless of where it comes from. For years, many of us have been trying to have thoughtful conversations about Hinduphobia. We've raised concerns about the portrayal of Hinduism, the stereotypes that circulate about Hindus, and the assumptions people make about our traditions and communities. What's been particularly troubling is that some of the most persistent and categorical dismissal of these concerns has come from academics, activists, and organizations on the political left, including those who claim to champion Hindu human rights, religious freedom, and inclusion. I don't expect everyone to agree with every concern we raise. But intellectually rigorous disagreement requires engaging with evidence, not dismissing it. Instead, we've been told that Hinduphobia doesn't exist, that it's a political invention, or that raising concerns about anti-Hindu prejudice is simply an attempt to silence criticism of Hindu nationalism. Consider the 2021 Dismantling Global Hindutva conference, supported by departments and centers at more than 50 universities and defended by over 1,100 progressive scholars. One speaker described Hinduism as an enemy of democracy; another singled out Hindu surnames and associated them with violence. When Hindu Americans raised concerns, we were accused of threatening academic freedom, even as the discourse about Hinduism and Hindus in these spaces remains overwhelmingly critical, with remarkably little viewpoint diversity. Rather than engaging with the substance of what we're saying, our critics question our motives and use those presumed motives to justify dismissing our concerns. We are dismissed as unreliable narrators of our own experiences, and our concerns are treated as evidence of a political agenda. Words shape how we see one another. When false assumptions are repeated often enough, they can begin to seem like ordinary descriptions rather than expressions of prejudice. When people who challenge those stereotypes are routinely dismissed, the underlying assumptions remain unexamined. Paporakis reportedly identified as a white supremacist, and that matters. I'm not suggesting that rhetoric from the political left caused this attempted shooting. But prejudice against Hindus isn't confined to one political ideology, and neither is the willingness to dismiss it. We shouldn't have to wait until prejudice manifests as the threat of violence before we're willing to take seriously the ways it operates in everyday language, institutions, and public discourse. This is part of the reason I wrote *Hindu at Heart*. I wanted to examine the centuries-old narratives that continue to shape how Hinduism and Hindus are understood, and to create space for a more informed, honest, and generous conversation. These narratives didn't begin with Donald Trump or contemporary debates about Hindu nationalism. They are much older, and they transcend our current political divisions and landscapes. Even in the responses to this attempted mass shooting, I've been struck by how quickly some folks on the political left have redirected the conversation. I've seen it described as rising hatred against “South Asians”, without acknowledging that a Hindu temple was deliberately targeted and that the shooter specifically named Indians, not South Asians. I've also seen responses suggesting that perhaps this will “finally” prompt Hindus to show solidarity with Muslims who have experienced hatred and violence (which presumes we haven’t already done so). There is nothing wrong with recognizing shared experiences of prejudice or standing in solidarity with other communities. But Hindu Americans should not have to demonstrate their solidarity with others before the hostility directed toward them can be acknowledged on its own terms. We should not have to accept the erasure of our Hindu faith or endure reprimands for perceived political failings in order to be considered worthy of empathy. We should be able to recognize what is happening to the Hindu American community, and allow everyone to understand and process it, without immediately turning it into a referendum on something else—and especially not a referendum on us. It would have been far better if we had been willing to take Hinduphobia seriously before a young man attempted to murder hundreds of people at a Hindu temple. But here we are. The temple was deliberately targeted, reportedly over months. The significance of that choice is impossible to ignore. To my fellow Americans: use your discernment. When commentators cannot bring themselves to name what is right in front of us, we should be willing to question their analysis rather than defer to their claims of moral authority. There are millions of Americans, across faiths, races, and political affiliations, who recognize prejudice without first demanding that its targets pass a political test. Let us move together with love, compassion, and courage. #Hinduphobia #HinduAmerican #ReligiousFreedom #Navaratri #StopHate

Mamdani: There is a Hindu festival called Navaratri. It is this week*. There are Hindus in NYC and they will do some activities now. *(Not nine nights, which is the literal translation of nava ratri. Apparently we only get one calendar week in Mamdani’s NY. )

We’ve just published our latest #Topics episode, Episode 9, on sexual violence. Clinical psychologist Kavita Sekhsaria joins me and @SnehaRao994 to discuss how the Hindu community can respond to sexual violence, support survivors, and prevent harm. In this clip, we talk about the global failure to support victims of sexual violence, and how this manifests in the Hindu diaspora. This is part of a much larger, nuanced discussion. We invite you to watch the whole episode and leave us a comment here or on our Substack. 🔗 theturtlemagazine.substack.c… #HinduDiaspora #SexualViolencePrevention #SupportSurvivors

We recorded this episode before the story of the Cornell 7 broke, not realizing how painfully timely this conversation would become. It is probably the most important public conversation I have ever had and I am so grateful to @SnehaRao994 and Kavita for taking this up with me. In this episode of Topics, we have a difficult but necessary conversation about sexual violence, shame, agency, and what families, communities, and institutions do when someone says, “This happened to me.” theturtlemagazine.substack.c…

Why Bo French’s comments about Indian Americans matter Despite its name, the Texas Railroad Commission doesn’t regulate railroads. It is the state agency with primary regulatory authority over Texas’s oil and gas industry. And this is Texas oil and gas: the state produces roughly 42% of all U.S. crude oil and 27% of marketed natural gas. In fiscal year 2026, oil and natural-gas production taxes alone brought more than $8 billion into the state. The Commission is governed by three commissioners, elected statewide to six-year terms. Its jurisdiction includes oil and gas production, drilling, pipelines and pipeline safety, natural-gas utilities, critical natural-gas infrastructure, LP gas, and coal and uranium surface mining. The agency issues permits, conducts inspections and investigations, enforces regulations, and imposes penalties on operators. Contested cases and enforcement matters can ultimately come before the three commissioners for a vote. In May 2026 alone, the agency issued 753 original drilling permits. At one meeting in August, the commissioners assessed more than $3.1 million in penalties against operators and businesses. Indian Americans are not incidental to the Texas economy or to the industries the Commission regulates. There are now more than half a million Indian Americans in Texas. Houston’s Indian community grew substantially during the 1970s oil boom, when energy companies recruited Indian engineers and researchers, and Indian Americans have been part of the state’s energy and engineering sectors ever since. We don’t have good data separating Indian Americans from other Asian Americans within the oil and gas workforce, so I don’t want to manufacture a percentage that doesn’t exist. But we do know that immigrants overall make up about a third of Texas’s petroleum, mining and geological engineers, and Houston remains one of the country’s major centers for petroleum engineering. There are significant checks on the power of an individual commissioner. There are three commissioners, and much of the agency’s day-to-day work is carried out by professional staff. The Commission operates under state and federal law and administrative procedures, holds public meetings, and its decisions can be subject to judicial review. The agency is also subject to federal nondiscrimination requirements and states explicitly that its programs and services operate without regard to race, color or national origin. At the same time, the commissioners have real discretion. Republican Texas Rep. Drew Darby, chair of the House Energy Resources Committee, addressed this directly after French’s comments. He said the Legislature has given the Railroad Commission broad discretion because it has trusted the “competence and fairness” of its commissioners, and raised the possibility of reconsidering how much discretion the Legislature gives the Commission. That matters in considering what French actually did. He looked at a photograph of Indian American students wearing orange and celebrating a University of Texas football victory and characterized them as “foreigners” displacing Americans. He did not know their citizenship, where they were born, or how long their families had lived in the United States. Their appearance was enough for him to classify them as unwanted. The issue, then, isn’t simply whether the post was offensive. It is what it means for someone who makes assumptions about who is and isn’t America based on appearance to occupy one of three elected seats overseeing an agency with substantial regulatory authority over one of the largest and most economically important industries in the country, including an industry in which Indian and immigrant engineers, professionals and businesspeople have participated for decades. The checks on an individual commissioner’s power are real. But so is the authority of the Commission, and so is the judgment and discretion entrusted to the three people who run it.

Happy Ganesha Chaturthi! I think it’s absolutely hilarious that some people think Indian American kids are scamming their way into college. Meanwhile, even when I was applying to college in 1992, we all knew that if you were Indian (back when we called ourselves Indian, not South Asian), you had to have a higher SAT score and GPA than everyone else to get into a good school. So we worked hard. We made it a priority. Our parents made it a priority. And we got in. Evidence shows we weren’t imagining that higher bar. A Harvard Kennedy School study of nearly 300,000 applicants to highly selective colleges estimated that among kids with a 34 ACT/1500 SAT—a 99th-percentile score—16% of white applicants were accepted, compared with just 9% of South Asian applicants. That’s a 43% gap. There is essentially a penalty in college admissions for being South Asian. (For context, roughly 70% of South Asians in the United States are Indian.) And our kids continue to work hard and get in. (Some folks would argue, to a fault.) So where is the scam? How would a scam even work for college admissions? The closest thing to a scam in college applications is legacy admissions, and most Indian American applicants are the children of immigrants. There is no legacy, unless you count hard work and a focus on education. Academics are our thing in large part because immigration patterns and practices made it so. We came to this country through immigration policies that disproportionately selected highly educated Indians that they wanted to their research labs and hospitals, and those priorities carried into the next generation. And if you raise the bar on us, we do what we do best—we nerd the heck up. If folks think the result of that hard work (i.e. high rates of college acceptance and attendance) is a problem, the solution isn’t to make broad, unsubstantiated claims about scamming. The solution is to work harder and get in. Be a nerd.