A controversial float – 18 feet long, 9 feet wide, 8 feet high and steeped in symbolism – is set to debut at Sunday’s India Day Parade, but interfaith activists are vowing to block it, with help from Mayor Eric Adams.
The parade, which organizers said typically draws 100,000 members of the Indian diaspora to Midtown, is set to include a float representing a Hindu temple inaugurated earlier this year in India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, roiling religious tensions.
The temple was built on the site where a 16th century mosque previously stood, until its destruction by a Hindu mob in 1992. Despite the violence occurring thousands of miles away and years ago, local Muslim leaders said its inclusion opens unhealed wounds.
“The proposed float for the parade is a blatant attempt to glorify the illegal demolition of the historical Babri Mosque and celebrate ongoing violence and terror against 200 million Indian Muslims,” said a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Adams signed by a number of interfaith groups, including the Indian American Muslim Council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Hindus for Human Rights. “This is not merely a cultural display but a vulgar celebration of anti-Muslim hate, bigotry, and religious supremacy.”
Aides to Hochul did not respond to questions about the parade, which begins at noon and marks India’s independence from Great Britain in 1947. During a Tuesday press conference, Adams addressed the growing controversy.
“The city’s open to everyone and there’s no room for hate. And if there is a float or a person in the parade that is promoting hate, they should not,” said Adams, who noted he hadn’t been invited to the parade.
In a statement, Ivette Davila-Richards, a spokesperson for Adams added, “From day one, Mayor Adams has been clear that celebrations in our city should be welcoming and inclusive. New York City is home to the largest Indian American population with approximately over 247,000 residents.”
Although the grievances stem from events that have taken place thousands of miles away, Muslim and Hindu leaders in New York and New Jersey said those tensions have regularly spilled over into local affairs. The parade controversy is just the latest to unfold among local India groups in the tri-state area in recent years.
In 2022, a bulldozer inexplicably appeared in the India Day Parade in Edison, New Jersey, prompting outrage from South Asian community members who said it was a pointed reminder of the bulldozers used to demolish the homes of Muslims in India. The episode prompted condemnation from Sens. Cory Booker and Bob Menendez.
“The bulldozer has come to be a symbol of intimidation against Muslims and other religious minorities in India, and its inclusion in this event was wrong,” the senators wrote in a joint statement.
New York’s parade has been organized for the past 41 years by the Federation of Indian Associations, an organization founded in 1970.
Dr. Avinash Gupta, a New Jersey cardiologist who serves as the organization’s president, said the float was approved because it represents “Indian culture and heritage” and denied that anti-Muslim sentiment was at play. He noted that the groups participating in this year’s parade included Muslim, Christian and Sikh organizations.
“We are all-inclusive and we celebrate our unity and diversity,” said Gupta in an interview. He added that the matter of the destroyed mosque and eventual temple had been put to rest by India’s Supreme Court. In 2019, the court ordered that the land be handed over to Hindus – with the added provision that Muslims would get land elsewhere on which to build a mosque – but noted that the original demolition had been against the law.
The float was organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, an offshoot of a Hindu group in India, and previewed at the Indian Consulate in New York on July 8.
Shyam Tiwari, a spokesperson for the VHPA, said the float was an “exact replica” of the newly constructed temple in India, which he said was built after “the due process of law.” And he argued that critics were spreading “vitriolic hatred against Hindus.”
Consular officials did not respond to questions about the float. On its website, the VHPA includes a rendering of the float surrounded by devotees. The organization “welcomes interested Ram Bhaktas to walk with the float,” referring to devotees of the Hindu god Ram.
According to Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, which studies Islamophobia, the CIA classifies the VHP in India as a “militant religious organization.” According to the Bridge Initiative, the organization had played a “central role” in the destruction of the mosque.
On its website, the VHPA notes that it is “an independent organization in the U.S.” but Sangay Mishra, a political scientist at Drew University in New Jersey, said the organization “has deep connections to the Hindu nationalist organizations in India.”
This year, the democracy monitor Freedom House rated India “partly free,” noting that “the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has presided over discriminatory policies and a rise in persecution affecting Muslims.”
The Rev. Chloe Breyer, the executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, said the Adams administration was actively involved in the discussions concerning the parade.
“The administration is very concerned about this issue, given how really volatile the situation has been in India,” Breyer said in an interview.
In a separate letter, three South Asian elected officials, all Democrats, called on Adams to “take action to prevent this float’s inclusion” in the parade.
“We welcome the celebration of Indian culture and heritage on the streets of our great city,” Councilmembers Shekar Krishnan, from Queens, and Shahana Hanif, of Brooklyn, and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, of Queens, said in the letter. “However, such public celebrations should not include symbols of division or bigotry. A float celebrating the construction of the Ram Temple would be divisive, and runs counter to the values of New York City.”
Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar, a Democrat from Queens who is Hindu and frequently advocates on matters related to the faith, did not respond to questions concerning the parade.
Sunita Viswanath, the executive director of Hindus for Human Rights, said, “The India Day Parade is meant to celebrate the richness and diversity of our community, not to be hijacked by a religious nationalist message that excludes and marginalizes.”
She added that the mayor’s office had also been in touch with her organization.
The campaign to remove the float has extended beyond members of the diaspora. The Rev. Peter Cook, the executive director of the New York State Council of Churches, which represents 7,500 congregations across the state, said his organization had signed on to the protest letter because the float “effectively celebrates the destruction of a Muslim mosque to build a Hindu Temple.”
“This float is an icon for the ways in which the Indian government uses its operatives in the U.S. to twist the Hindu faith to provoke and antagonize those that do not embrace Hindutva and are victimized by it,” said Cook in an email.
An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people were killed during riots after the destruction of the mosque in 1992, according to the BBC.
Minhaj Khan, a Muslim community leader in New Jersey, said he was a college student in India at the time and that people were killed not far from his home. Following the Indian Supreme Court’s ultimatum, “We said, ‘let’s move on,’” Khan said in an interview. But with the bulldozer in one parade and a temple float proposed in another, he said it felt as if some in the Indian community were gloating.
“You’re trying to thumb [your] nose and say, ‘You know what? Look, now I’m going to do it right here in New York City.’”