Are there tensions among different groups of oversea Indians, like Hindu/Muslim/Sikh?

[David Hume]

I am very interested in the history and culture of India, but my knowledge is limited. I see the recent news about tensions around the Sikh national movement in Canada. I know that a large portion of oversea Indians are Sikh or Muslim in religion, and/or Dravidian speaking like Tamil. Are there tensions between them and the Aryan(race) Hindi(language) Hindu(religion) majorities?

[CumbrianLefty]

Short answer is of course yes.

Though most of the time they seem to get along reasonably OK.

[Torie]

The NYT has an article about the matter, with the center of the storm being Leicester for the moment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/02/world/europe/leicester-violence-uk.html


Just why it would be salient for Indian Muslims and Hindus bringing with them the disputes to a foreign land where neither have much power to oppress the other, is not well explained in the article. An incident in NJ is mentioned. Hoboken's mayor is a Sikh. Parts of Jersey City have a substantial Indian population. I have never read and seen personally any of such tensions. But then I came across this article.

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/2022/10/01/hindu-nationalism-new-jersey-rising-sparks-tensions/69528906007/

I don't understand it really. What is the point?

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I don't understand it really. What is the point?

While I can't speak for people of the Indian diaspora, I do know that Indian politics is extremely polarized. If you hold your political views very deeply, like to the point that it forms a part of your personal identity, simply moving countries won't make your feelings go away.

[Pulaski]

I don't understand it really. What is the point?

[MATTROSE94]

Don’t know. I know that Indian Americans are divided in terms of politics. Most Hindu Indian Americans and most Sunni Indian Americans vote Republican, whereas most Shi’a Indian Americans and Sikh Indian Americans vote Democratic.

[Blue3]

I was reading an article a few months ago on how there's actually growing Caste discrimination in the US, among American Hindus, with the higher-caste Hindus often holding positions of power in tech companies and not doing right for lower-caste Hindu workers at their companies.

[Meclazine for Israel]

The most famous is Tamil vs Sinhalese in Ceylon.

Tamils are darker in skin tone and make up 26% of the population.

The imbeciles running the country cannot manage very well the conflict between the two groups, so you get a lot of Tamil refugees.

[Хahar 🤔]

Don’t know. I know that Indian Americans are divided in terms of politics. Most Hindu Indian Americans and most Sunni Indian Americans vote Republican, whereas most Shi’a Indian Americans and Sikh Indian Americans vote Democratic.

It's pretty rare to see something this false stated this confidently on this forum.

[Sestak]

Don’t know. I know that Indian Americans are divided in terms of politics. Most Hindu Indian Americans and most Sunni Indian Americans vote Republican, whereas most Shi’a Indian Americans and Sikh Indian Americans vote Democratic.

It's pretty rare to see something this false stated this confidently on this forum.

I don't know if that's true when it comes to this particular poster.

[MATTROSE94]

Don’t know. I know that Indian Americans are divided in terms of politics. Most Hindu Indian Americans and most Sunni Indian Americans vote Republican, whereas most Shi’a Indian Americans and Sikh Indian Americans vote Democratic.

It's pretty rare to see something this false stated this confidently on this forum.

Most Hindu Indian Americans and most Sunni Muslim Indian Americans I know voted Republican in 2020. Opposite is true for Shi’a Indian Americans and Sikh Indian Americans that I know.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Don’t know. I know that Indian Americans are divided in terms of politics. Most Hindu Indian Americans and most Sunni Indian Americans vote Republican, whereas most Shi’a Indian Americans and Sikh Indian Americans vote Democratic.

It's pretty rare to see something this false stated this confidently on this forum.

Most Hindu Indian Americans and most Sunni Muslim Indian Americans I know voted Republican in 2020. Opposite is true for Shi’a Indian Americans and Sikh Indian Americans that I know.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Don’t know. I know that Indian Americans are divided in terms of politics. Most Hindu Indian Americans and most Sunni Indian Americans vote Republican, whereas most Shi’a Indian Americans and Sikh Indian Americans vote Democratic.

Hard doubt. Indian Americans regularly poll as among the more D-voting Asian-Americans, who already vote Democrat by a 2-1 margin. The majority of Indian Americans are Hindu, so it mathematically cannot be true that "most" Hindu Indians vote Republican when the Indian American group is so heavily Democrat.

For whatever reason though, successful Indian American politicians tend to be Republicans. But that's not reflected in the voting patterns of Indian Americans.

[TDAS04]

Maybe a few, but for the most part, even overseas Indians and Pakistanis tend to get along fairly well.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

The most famous is Tamil vs Sinhalese in Ceylon.

Tamils are darker in skin tone and make up 26% of the population.

The imbeciles running the country cannot manage very well the conflict between the two groups, so you get a lot of Tamil refugees.

Skin tone wasn't/isn't the relevant point of distinction. The Sinhalese are (mostly) Buddhist and speak an Indo-European language, and the Tamils are (mostly) Hindu and speak a Dravidian language. The Sinhalese majority wanted a post-independence Sri Lankan republic to promote the Sinhalese language and enshrine Buddhist principles in law, and the Tamil minority were very resistant to that, which led to civil unrest and eventually civil war.

[Хahar 🤔]

For whatever reason though, successful Indian American politicians tend to be Republicans. But that's not reflected in the voting patterns of Indian Americans.

This is not really accurate. Of the four Indians in Congress (Bera, Jayapal, Khanna, Krishnamoorthi), all are Democrats.

[Coldstream]

For whatever reason though, successful Indian American politicians tend to be Republicans. But that's not reflected in the voting patterns of Indian Americans.

This is not really accurate. Of the four Indians in Congress (Bera, Jayapal, Khanna, Krishnamoorthi), all are Democrats.

Yeah, Haley & Jindal were more successful (arguably) but I also can’t think of a third Indian Republican.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

For whatever reason though, successful Indian American politicians tend to be Republicans. But that's not reflected in the voting patterns of Indian Americans.

This is not really accurate. Of the four Indians in Congress (Bera, Jayapal, Khanna, Krishnamoorthi), all are Democrats.

Yeah never mind, you're right. Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal seem to be the exception for Indian Americans, although they did reach a higher level of political power than, say, Jayapal. So that probably skewed my perspective.

The UK seems to be the most fertile ground for diaspora Indian conservatives. Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Alok Sharma, Suella Braverman, Sajid Javid (who is Pakistani, but still part of the broader South Asian diaspora). Although this is probably skewed by the fact that the Tories have been in power for the last 12 years. I'm sure a future Labour government will have plenty of representation from the subcontinental diaspora too.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

To my point about the UK (and maybe Brits can let me know if my understanding is right):

I'm not sure if there are conflicts in the UK between different Indian/South Asian communities, but there certainly seems to be a political divide. It's well-documented that British Indians have been relatively favourable to the Tories in recent years compared to most other "BME" groups, but British Pakistanis (and Muslims more broadly) are some of Labour's most reliable voters.

Apart from the Tories often having anti-Islam sentiments, it also reflects a socio-economic divide. British Pakistanis mostly came in as cheap labour to work in the traditionally Labour north, while British Indians tend to hail from a more middle-class, "white-collar professional" or "business-oriented" background and are more numerous in the traditionally Tory south. These are broad generalizations obviously, but in a country where class still largely shapes politics, I can imagine how British Pakistanis became such staunch Labour supporters, while British Indians went on to be one of the more "Tory-accessible" minorities.

If the US had a more "UK-like" political culture where class interests often take dominance over cultural liberalism/conservatism, I could imagine Indian Americans being a much more Republican-voting or at least "swing" constituency. Asian Americans tend to be pretty economically successful, and Indian Americans even more so. Again, generalizing a bit here, but the statistics do back it up. But US politics is much more split on the lines of cultural liberalism and conservatism, and Indian Americans are largely urban/suburban, most numerous in the tri-state area and the west coast, have high levels of college education, and mostly not Christian, so in today's climate they're a shoo-in for the Democratic Party.

Canada, like in many things, is somewhere between the UK and the US in terms of how our partisan divides shape up. Class does play a role here, but not as much as the UK, and the culture war isn't as fierce as in the US. The South Asian community in Canada isn't quite as "upscale" as their American counterparts though. Most prominently, Canada's massive Sikh community skews quite blue-collar. There's not as much data as in the UK and the US to make detailed conclusions about the political leanings of Canadian South Asians, other than that the Liberals seem to be the "default" party for the largest number of South Asian voters, and that Conservatives generally have to put in extra effort to win over this cohort.

[Хahar 🤔]

It's obviously true that the Republican Party is uniquely abhorrent to people who are not white, compared to right-wing parties elsewhere in the English-speaking world. The Conservative Party in Britain has also made a particularly cynical attempt to pick up Hindu votes by exploiting anti-Muslim and Hindu nationalist sentiment (see Bob Blackman and Imran Khan's former brother-in-law Zac Goldsmith in London), but it's worth thinking about why this wouldn't work if the Republican Party tried this.

Politics from the old country are carried over when immigrants to the new country are organized along ethnic lines. I would suggest that this is most common when those immigrants are poor and need (or feel that they need) an intercessor in order to access public services. My parents, for instance, being highly skilled professionals in an expensive neighborhood, would not need to rely on an ethnic network because they receive high-quality public services by virtue of where they live. This is not generally true of Gujaratis in Leicester whether they are Hindu or Muslim, and this in turn leads to their political thinking reflecting the old country rather than the new.

This is also why in some places in England you will see Asian Muslims regularly delivering strong Conservative votes despite their compatriots voting uniformly Labour not too far away. In those places, the circumstances of political organization have led to the local Pakistani community being with the local Conservative organization. You don't see this in suburban America, where people of Indian descent are not organized in this way.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Politics from the old country are carried over when immigrants to the new country are organized along ethnic lines. I would suggest that this is most common when those immigrants are poor and need (or feel that they need) an intercessor in order to access public services. My parents, for instance, being highly skilled professionals in an expensive neighborhood, would not need to rely on an ethnic network because they receive high-quality public services by virtue of where they live. This is not generally true of Gujaratis in Leicester whether they are Hindu or Muslim, and this in turn leads to their political thinking reflecting the old country rather than the new.

100%, and I feel that the distinction between immigrants of different economic backgrounds and levels of integration are largely ignored when discussing the "immigrant vote". My dad's side are vanilla middle-class southern Ontario WASPs with predictably vanilla middle-class WASP politics (although a large part of that side are Albertans, descended from a great-uncle who moved there in the 60s, and their views tend to be, shall we say, less vanilla). But my mom's side are working-class Greeks, and it's brokerage politics that does it for them. My mom is university-educated, married outside her culture and is generally pretty assimilated, so she's not in that camp. But I can think of an uncle, for example, who's not very assimilated and has very right-wing takes on most things but religiously votes Liberal in most elections, because they're historically the ones who did the strongest outreach and brand-building among Toronto Greeks.

[If my soul was made of stone]

But my mom's side are working-class Greeks, and it's brokerage politics that does it for them.

who among us

also obligatory

This is a Bronz threaf

[OSR stands with Israel]

It's obviously true that the Republican Party is uniquely abhorrent to people who are not white, compared to right-wing parties elsewhere in the English-speaking world. The Conservative Party in Britain has also made a particularly cynical attempt to pick up Hindu votes by exploiting anti-Muslim and Hindu nationalist sentiment (see Bob Blackman and Imran Khan's former brother-in-law Zac Goldsmith in London), but it's worth thinking about why this wouldn't work if the Republican Party tried this.

Politics from the old country are carried over when immigrants to the new country are organized along ethnic lines. I would suggest that this is most common when those immigrants are poor and need (or feel that they need) an intercessor in order to access public services. My parents, for instance, being highly skilled professionals in an expensive neighborhood, would not need to rely on an ethnic network because they receive high-quality public services by virtue of where they live. This is not generally true of Gujaratis in Leicester whether they are Hindu or Muslim, and this in turn leads to their political thinking reflecting the old country rather than the new.

This is also why in some places in England you will see Asian Muslims regularly delivering strong Conservative votes despite their compatriots voting uniformly Labour not too far away. In those places, the circumstances of political organization have led to the local Pakistani community being with the local Conservative organization. You don't see this in suburban America, where people of Indian descent are not organized in this way.

Btw things did change a bit in 2020 with the Hindu and Muslim vote :

Second, Indians of all religious faiths prefer Biden to Trump, but with important caveats.25 Muslim support for Biden (82 percent) is considerably higher than Hindu support (67 percent), which in turn is considerably higher than Christian support (49 percent). The latter community is also the most supportive of Trump (45 percent).

https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/10/14/how-will-indian-americans-vote-results-from-2020-indian-american-attitudes-survey-pub-82929

[David Hume]

I don't understand it really. What is the point?

While I can't speak for people of the Indian diaspora, I do know that Indian politics is extremely polarized. If you hold your political views very deeply, like to the point that it forms a part of your personal identity, simply moving countries won't make your feelings go away.

Polarized around what?

[David Hume]

Don’t know. I know that Indian Americans are divided in terms of politics. Most Hindu Indian Americans and most Sunni Indian Americans vote Republican, whereas most Shi’a Indian Americans and Sikh Indian Americans vote Democratic.

Really? IIRC the majority of Indian Americans vote D. I assume Hindu Americans should be the majority, considering their overwhelming large portion in India.