Shaanth Nanguneri, Cal Matters

On a morning just days before the New Year, Kiran Thakkar received a worrying phone call. A friend had found anti-India graffiti overnight on the Newark Hindu temple he co-founded. Someone sprayed phrases disparaging India’s prime minister and hailing a secessionist movement for the country’s Sikh minority.

Support rushed in from Indian American community leaders and politicians. But Thakkar and the rest of the quaint suburban temple’s board had little disagreement about how to move forward. They didn’t want to make a fuss. They painted over the vandalism within the day.

“We didn’t want to politicize,” said Thakkar, who’s called the Bay Area home for more than a decade. “So we were clear from day one that, yes, it was a hate crime or fringe incident, and let’s just move on from there.”

The Newark Shri Swaminarayan Temple was one of three California Hindu houses of worship desecrated in 2023, when a record eight anti-Hindu hate crimes were reported in California, according to data released by the Department of Justice in June.

Separately, California is collecting more anecdotal reports of hate incidents through a new civil rights hotline that’s intended to connect people with resources that could help them. A disproportionate number of incidents involving Hindus were reported in its first year, according to state data.

But Hindus aren’t the only ones in California’s Indian community who are seeing a rise in hate crimes and bias against them. Sikhs, members of the ethno religious minority whose separatist slogans appeared on the Newark temple, reported six hate crimes against them — the highest number since the state justice department began displaying that data in 2014.

Many Sikhs are on edge because of several recent high-profile attacks across the nation. The slaying of Canadian Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June 2023, a subsequent foiled plot in New York, and an August shooting outside Sacramento have revived fears among Sikh activists that they’re being targeted by India for their advocacy in North America.

“Nearly all documented anti-Hindu hate in California comes from pro-Khalistan activists who employ violence and harassment to advocate for an independent theocracy in India,” wrote the Hindu American Foundation in a letter opposing the political repression bill, citing the temple vandalizations as an example of such harassment.

National and local groups for Sikhs supported both measures and have roundly disputed that characterization of the modern separatist movement. They had hoped the Legislature would stand with them, given Sikhs’ over-a-century long presence in California, and some felt the hand of India’s government in the opposition.

“They’re using these broad terms, like Hindu Americans, to justify killing a bill against transnational repression,” said Karam Singh, advocacy director for the California Sikh Youth Alliance, which supported both bills. “I think most Americans of all stripes would be clearly in favor of having protections for Californians to not be intimidated, harassed and targeted by a foreign government.”

Is anti-Hindu animus on the rise in California?

California is especially equipped to track incidents of hate and bias because of the hotline that Gov. Gavin Newsom launched in 2023. The so-called “CA vs. Hate” hotline reported receiving over 2,000 calls in its first year, according to a May 2024 report from the California Department of Civil Rights.

During that period, hotline researchers said they documented 24 acts of verified anti-Hindu bias, around 23% of all acts of religious hate that investigators verified. Nearly 37% were anti-Jewish and 15% were anti-Muslim. No anti-Sikh figures were listed.

The numbers jolted California Hindus across the political spectrum. Extremist and hate-motivated acts are not new for Sikh and Muslim Americans, who have endured decades of hate crimes in the United States since 9/11. There have been isolated cases, but Hindu Americans have largely not been disproportionate targets of such crimes.

Pushpita Prasad, a spokeswoman for the Coalition of Hindus of North America, is no fan of the state’s civil rights department. The department holds anti-hate partnerships with major Sikh, Jewish and Muslim organizations, but no Hindu groups. Her organization opposed last year’s caste bill.

But she called the hotline data “one more validation” of the “experience of Hinduphobia.” Her group encouraged Hindus to use the hotline during debates over the caste discrimination bill, she said. They also told people to use it after temple vandalizations in Newark and Hayward.

“Anti-India issues are constantly conflated with Hinduism,” she told CalMatters. More non-Hindus are becoming aware of caste and Indian politics, and “there’s a double standard in play that we all subscribe to, and some of us push back but most of us don’t.”

Analysts with the state offered few details on the anti-Hindu incidents. They are not necessarily criminal acts; some of the incidents could allege workplace discrimination or other kids of bias.

“I’m not sure there is too much more I can add on the specific questions regarding anti-Hindu acts,” Arvind Krishnamurthy, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley, wrote in an email. “Any data on reports to CA vs Hate should not be used to make generalizations about the extent of any particular kind of hate across California.”

Five Indian American lawmakers, meanwhile, have cautiously attempted to address the fears of both communities. None are Sikh.

In March, they requested a briefing from the federal justice department concerning attacks on Hindu temples and anti-Hindu hate. They also in December called federal prosecutors’ allegations of the foiled plot against a Sikh activist in New York “deeply concerning” and welcomed an India-led investigation into the matter.

That was slammed as “insufficient to ensure accountability” by a major Sikh civil rights group, which wants an independent review.

“There needs to be other actors,” said Sangay Mishra, an associate professor of political science at Drew University who studies South Asian Americans. “Not necessarily government agencies, but other kinds of nonprofit or civil rights groups who are willing to invest in this and make sense of what’s happening so that it doesn’t become such a deeply partisan, polarizing issue.”

A spokesperson for Rep. Ro Khanna, who signed onto both letters and represents Newark in Congress, declined an interview request and did not respond to written questions. He condemned the vandalism at the time on social media.

Anti-Hindu incidents are ‘taken very seriously,’ authorities say

Thakkar said elected officials did everything right at the Newark temple. He never had to call a hotline from the state to get help from the local community.

The State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs and three California state lawmakers denounced the incident. Local authorities said they moved swiftly to provide the house of worship with the resources necessary.

“The temple vandalisms were taken very seriously,” wrote Newark Police Capt. Jolice Macias, in a statement. A similar vandalism took place at a Hindu temple in Hayward a few weeks later, and investigators combed through security footage from nearby businesses for leads. Officials from the FBI and Department of Justice were in attendance. “Every possible investigative lead was followed up on.”

One of the bills that some Hindu groups opposed would have given law enforcement agencies more training on how to combat and respond to incidents of foreign governments harassing American citizens, a trend that is known as transnational repression. Some Hindu leaders opposed it because it listed India alongside Russia, Iran and China as states of particular concern for law enforcement. It died in the Senate Appropriations Committee in August amid the opposition and a price tag of over $600,000.

In opposition letters to Assembly Bill 3027, the transnational repression bill, the Hindu American Foundation and Coalition of Hindus of North America argued that the legislation would usurp federal law and give police officers further leeway to ignore acts of violence from the separatist movement.

The bill’s author, Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a Democrat from Bakersfield, is the Legislature’s only Sikh. She has said that California is a safe haven for immigrants that should take more steps to make good on that promise. She has also reported threats and intimidation at her office, similar to Sen. Aisha Wahab, the Democrat from Hayward who sponsored the caste discrimination bill last year.

But it hasn’t always been clear from where the threats and violence are coming. In fact, the graffiti on the Newark temple misspelled the name of an infamous Sikh leader from India.

One Sikh media group suggested in October that a man who stormed a Fremont gurdwara and tore down a poster devoted to Nijjar was an “Indian nationalist extremist” and Hindu. In fact, his family told the house of worship he was experiencing mental health issues. And in June, federal authorities charged a Hindu man from Dallas for sending threats to a Sikh nonprofit group about separatist activism while often using anti-Muslim language.

“The citizens themselves are in some sense all victims of this phenomenon, whether Sikh, Muslim or Hindu or any other religious tradition,” said Nirvikar Singh, co-author of “The Other One Percent: Indians in America,” and a professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz. “Democracy allows us to work through differences in nonviolent and equalizing ways, but we’re seeing a lot of disruption.”

Tensions in politics or online, though, are far less palpable on the ground in California. The Bay Area defacings did not spark direct or immediate protest. Rallies led by Sikh separatists in California have by and large avoided counter protests and violent clashes. That’s a contrast from demonstrations over the war in Gaza after Oct. 7, which saw a subsequent spike in Islamophobic and antisemitic hate crimes.

Thakkar, nowadays, is less concerned with the temple vandalism, and can often be seen preparing the temple for dozens of attendees to come pray and eat on weekends. Just a quick drive away from Newark, local Sikh leaders came from a Fremont house of worship and helped paint over the graffiti, he said.

This year, he’s planning on applying for the state’s next round of security funding for vulnerable houses of worship. The only other remnants of the attack are the new security cameras all around the perimeter, and splotches of off-white paint covering the front sign.

“We informed the regular devotees that we have taken some measures. We are careful,” he recalls. “We are working with the police department to get immediate attention if anything were to happen again. So we are safe, secure, and you shouldn’t be worried.”

This story first appeared at Cal Matters.

A seemingly noncontroversial proposal to help California police identify and address instances of violence motivated by international politics is hƒitting a nerve among South Asian communities who believe they could be targeted by the bill.

The new opposition to a law enforcement training bill by California’s only Sikh state lawmaker is reviving the battle lines from a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed last year that would have banned caste discrimination in the state.

Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains wrote the new bill after the June 2023 killing of a prominent Sikh activist in Canada that set off a political rift between Canada and India. Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s slaying and a subsequent foiled plot in New York galvanized an estimated 127,000-plus Sikhs to cast a symbolic vote in San Francisco in favor of creating a separate Sikh state from India named Khalistan.

That movement and its tense history with India triggered backlash in the Golden State. Two Hindu temples in the Bay Area were defaced with anti-India and pro-Khalistan graffiti on the cusp of the new year, and the FBI has reportedly begun to visit and call some Sikhs in the state to warn their lives could be under threat.

Bains’ legislation, Assembly Bill 3027, would create a training program for law enforcement to combat and prevent transnational repression, which the FBI defines as foreign governments reaching into the United States to intimidate or harm members of their diaspora. The measure sailed through the Assembly unanimously in May and is coming up for a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing as soon as today.

“U.S. ally or not, India and other foreign governments violating our national sovereignty must be held accountable,” Bains, a Democrat from Bakersfield, said in May on the Assembly floor.

Much like last year’s caste legislation, though, the devil is in the details. The bill lists India alongside Russia, China and Iran as governments that “increasingly rely on transnational repression as their consolidation of control at home pushes dissidents abroad.”

Two of those states, Iran and Russia, have long been adversaries to the U.S., while the U.S. and China are economic rivals who often compete for geopolitical influence. India, by contrast, does not have as strong of a history of direct conflict with the United States. It is regarded as the world’s largest democracy, and has a thriving diaspora in the U.S.

South Asia experts and activists often challenge that view, pointing to the country’s Hindu nationalist government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and division on the lines of caste, religion and class. Last year, those inequalities were on full display when California’s caste-diverse and often working class Sikh community largely backed last year’s anti-discrimination bill, while more-wealthy and caste-privileged Hindu Americans sought to derail it.

This year, some leading conservative Hindu activists oppose Bains’ law enforcement training bill. They want her to remove India from its language and believe the legislation risks teaching officers to overlook violence from the Sikh separatist movement.

They cite examples such as a report that separatists attempted to set fire to the Indian consulate in San Francisco the month after the Canada shooting, an accusation reported by India-aligned media but that the U.S. State Department has not publicly affirmed.

“If you are of Indian origin and if you are countering these radical groups — Islamists, Maoists or Khalistanis, this provision… can be used to silence you,” said Utsav Chakrabarti, executive director of the Hindu advocacy groups HinduPACT USA and HinduACTion during a livestream in July announcing opposition to the bill. “That’s a pretty dangerous situation to be in.”

Chakrabarti did not respond to requests for comment. The organizations have been linked to the Indian government. The Washington Post in a December investigation said both groups were a key spreader of an online campaign by Indian intelligence to discredit critics abroad. A member of HinduPACT told the Post at the time they were not aware of the campaign’s origins and denied any wrongdoing.

Transnational repression in California

Law enforcement agencies, including the California State Sheriff’s Association, support Bains’ bill. They’re looking for training and guidance on crimes that appear motivated by international events.

California, home to more immigrants than any other state, is particularly susceptible.

One prominent California case goes back to 2020, when a Russian asylum seeker was detained in an ICE facility after the Russian government used international alerts to U.S. authorities to accuse him of criminal activity.

He endorsed Bains’ bill.

“My story underscores the pressing need for legislative action to safeguard California residents from international oppression,” wrote Gregory Duralev, now an Orange County resident, in an April statement.

In Kern County, on the southern end of the Central Valley home to over 30,000 Sikhs and several Sikh temples, a lack of training among officers has made it difficult to track the prevalence of transnational repression, Sheriff Donny Youngblood told CalMatters.

Currently, officers would probably log such concerns “as a threat” but “in fact, it could go much deeper than that,” he said, such as retribution toward a person’s family by a government back home. “This is a huge issue that really is relatively new to law enforcement.”

The Legislature is well aware of the plight of Sikhs in India. Last July, lawmakers swiftly approved Bains’ resolution that recognized anti-Sikh mobs in 1984 India as a genocide.

Many Sikhs in California who fled that violence “are very concerned about the safety and risk of their loved ones, their children, their folks who are engaged in local politics or who do vocalize their political opinions about India,” said Puneet Kaur, senior state policy manager for the Sikh Coalition, a national civil rights advocacy group. “A huge part of the reason that communities, including Sikhs, migrated here (was) for the purpose of freedom and escaping violence.”

The Indian government has denied allegations by the Canadian government regarding the killing of Nijjar. Indian authorities have previously accused him of terrorism. Bains’ legislation says the training should teach officers that accusations like that can be used by repressive governments to target dissidents abroad, and it’s not just for immigrants from India.

Around the world, 854 direct incidents of transnational repression occurred between 2014 and 2022, according to a 2023 report from Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that tracks such cases.

What will Newsom do?

It’s not yet clear whether Newsom is ready to send a strong rebuke to the governments called out in Bains’ bill. Newsom visited China in October to promote a climate partnership with California.

He also visited India in 2009 when he was mayor of San Francisco.

Recently, South Asian news outlets reported that the governor met with a prominent opponent to last year’s caste legislation.

In early July, Newsom met with Ramesh Kapur, an Indian American political donor who told the San Francisco Chronicle in October 2023 that he helped persuade Newsom to veto the caste bill. Kapur later walked back that statement to the Chronicle and other media, telling the Post that he let the governor know he couldn’t take his support for granted.

Kapur donated $27,000 for the governor’s Campaign for Democracy initiative from April to May, campaign finance records show. He also held a Bay Area fundraiser for Newsom in June, according to the publication Indica News.

Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

His office previously told CalMatters that the governor met with individuals on all sides of the issue, denying that any one meeting influenced his decision. The governor wrote in his veto message last October that the caste bill was legally “unnecessary.”

At Kapur’s Massachusetts home on July 7, Kapur reportedly thanked the governor for last year’s veto and the two affirmed the role of Indian Americans in the state, according to New India Abroad.

Kapur’s pro-India advocacy organization did not respond to requests for comment.

Last year, the caste bill’s author, Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democrat from Hayward, faced death threats and xenophobic attacks upon introducing the legislation. Bains, one of California’s two South Asian lawmakers and a co-sponsor of that legislation, did not speak out publicly about her support.

This time, she has yet to receive any public opposition from lawmakers.

“In California, where we embrace our diaspora and exile communities, Republicans and Democrats have unanimously supported my legislation,” she wrote in a statement to CalMatters. “My bill simply makes it the policy of the state to protect Americans from foreign governments and gives law enforcement the training and tools to recognize the signs of transnational repression.”

Different views on transnational repression bill

Not all Hindus in California oppose Bains’ bill, and some say they have seen the effects of India’s politics on their ability to express themselves. The liberal group Hindus for Human Rights is blocked on X, formerly known as Twitter, in India.

Raju Rajagopal, a Berkeley-based Hindu activist and a key founder of that group, has long battled with Hindu groups on the right. Bains’ legislation hasn’t sparked the crowds that held rallies over last year’s caste bill, but he said he is hopeful that will happen if opposition from the right grows.

The SMVS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu Temple in Newark on July 31, 2024. Photo by Florence Middleton, CalMatters

As wounds from last year linger, though, some who oppose Bains’ effort are less confident about their ability to stop the bill.

Jeevan Zutshi, a real estate broker and activist known in many Hindu American circles, said he believes those who accuse other Indians Americans of domestic terrorism could be labeled as foreign agents if the bill is passed. But he noted that last year’s caste bill sailed through the Legislature even though Hindu groups fiercely pushed back.

He’s well aware of the concern about the graffiti on Bay Area Hindu temples. At the same time, he cautioned, authorities there have yet to make an arrest or publicly identify a suspect. Local and national Sikh groups condemned the vandalism at the time.

“We have to be very careful in our life before you start some kind of accusation without evidence, or you make comments which are not healthy for relationships and bringing people together,” he said from his Fremont home. “Sometimes hate begets hate.”