Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy to be the next mayor of New York City has had an unexpected side effect.
It’s been a crash course in South Asian Studies 101 for mainstream America.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata.
His mother Mira Nair has explored many aspects of South Asian culture in acclaimed films like Mississippi Masala, The Namesake. And Monsoon Wedding. Subjects that intrigued Westerners. Like arranged marriages.
MONSOON WEDDING: I just want to settle down. So marry someone mommy daddy chose for you whom you barely know.
But Mira Nair's son’s run for mayor shows how much work still remains to be done to close the culture gap.
South Asians call their parent’s distant cousins as uncles and aunts. I do. South Asians can eat with their hands. I can. Also with knife and fork. And chopsticks.None of this should be news in 2025. But all have generated reams of copy trying to paint Mamdani as dishonest and alien, not a Suitable Boy at all.
His politics, like any candidate’s politics, deserve scrutiny. But it’s the cultural stories that have raised much heat and dust. Like the aunt afraid to wear her hijab in public in post 9/11 America.
MAMDANI1: I want to speak to the memory of my aunt who stopped taking the subway after September 11 because she didn’t feel safe in her hijab.
He had to clarify he did not mean his father’s sister but rather a distant cousin. “Zohran Mamdani didn’t tell the whole truth about his hijab-wearing ‘aunt’” said the New York Post in a headline. Sky News Australia said “Zohran Mamdani caught out in ‘strange’ aunt story claims.”
When a video surfaced of Mamdani eating biryani with his fingers Texan Congressman Brandon Gill said “civilized people in America don’t eat like this. If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World.” His India-born wife Danielle D’Souza Gill insisted that even she never grew up eating rice with her hands. In response journalists on an Indian television channel ate with their fingers on TV.
NDTV1: And Mr. Gill needs some food for thought, and. This is our life, and there's nothing unhygienic about it. When you put a KFC ad which says finger lickin good, that's okay.
While desis might roll their eyes at these as curried controversies, the furore over Mamdani’s cultural credentials shows how wary America remains of what it considers the other. Mamdani is of Indian origin, born in Uganda to a Hindu mother and a Muslim father. Much of the opposition to him has stemmed from a feeling that he is not American enough to lead its most famous city.
An op-ed contributor to the political journal The Hill complained his father Mahmood Mamdani despite being exiled from Uganda and taken in by America, does not show sufficient gratitude to the USA instead claiming the American policy of herding Native Americans into reservations was an inspiration for Nazis to do the same with Jews. Zohran, the commentator said, also “leans very heavily into his Muslim identity” as if that’s necessarily incompatible with being American.
Some US-based Hindu groups like Americans4Hindus and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America have also joined the chorus, putting out an open letter accusing Mamdani of “blatant bigotry and Hinduphobia.” In effect Mamdani is being presented as a Not-so Reluctant Fundamentalist by his opponents.
Many of Mira Nair’s films explore the tensions of assimilation, often with wry humor. When a character refuses sugar in his tea in Monsoon Wedding, another retorts “You’ve been brainwashed by America.” In Mississippi Masala a South Asian African American romance runs into hot water
MM1: I love him. What about his family? You think I am not good enough for your daughter?
In The Namesake, Ashima Ganguli constantly fears her son Gogol is getting too Americanized.
NAMESAKE1: You know he is willing to go on vacation with someone else’s parents but not his own. Besides what kind of a girl is called Max? Maybe its a boy
While the characters in Nair’s film have to resist the charge of being too American, Zohran Mamdani is accused of not being American enough.
Nevertheless, the candidacy of Zohran Mamdani has been a cultural education for American politics beyond the dreams of many diasporan political groups pushing for empowerment and inclusivity.
Mira Nair won an Oscar nomination for her film Salaam Bombay!, but her son is writing his own script with Salaam New York!
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW