Last December, India’s Hindu nationalist government, headed by Narendra Modi, passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The bill provides a fast-track to citizenship for six religious communities from neighboring Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, but excludes Muslims. Combined with the National Registry of Citizens (NRC), the CAA has the potential to displace many thousands of people from marginalized communities. What part can the American diaspora of over 5 million South Asians play?

The experience of being an immigrant or second- or third-generation South Asian involves a complicated relationship to the subcontinent. For many of us, coming of age involves a cultural awakening: something like obsessively streaming Punjabi rap or crying teenage tears into a Jhumpa Lahiri book.

It’s time to re-envision that coming of age to include a political awakening as well.

That’s why we founded Students Against Hindutva, an organization born out of a gnawing helplessness in the face of clear injustice.

At the moment, student- and women-led protests in India are ground zero for the battle between Hindutva and the nation’s secular soul. The largely peaceful resistance has been met with documented allegations of harrowing state violence, including torture, sexual violence, and extrajudicial killings. Still, the protests persist despite a lack of direct majority support from the international community.

Hindutva is a right-wing political ideology attempting to transform the world’s largest democracy into a “Hindu rashtra,” or Hindu nation. It is not Hinduism, nor is it a religion. The proponents of Hindutva and the “ideological parent” of Modi’s party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is a Hindu extremist group that critics say has drawn inspiration from fascism and German nazism since its founding in 1925. Most insidiously, this Hindu-nationalist agenda is a project of hate sustained by significant international funding.

Those risking their lives on the front lines against Hindutva continue to resist, even as multiple civilian protesters have been killed in the nation’s capital. Meanwhile, Donald Trump made no mention of the violence during his recent tour of India, as if it is not under attack, instead praising Modi’s pursuit of “religious freedom.”

What excuse do we have to be scared into silence?

In 2019 a small team of South Asian students in the diaspora came together to compile an intercollegiate endorsement of Representative Pramila Jayapal’s resolution condemning the Modi government’s undemocratic treatment of minorities in Jammu and Kashmir.

Within just two months, the organization grew from an open letter into a national coalition with a presence at over 18 American universities, including Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Northeastern University, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, University of Maryland, and UCLA. Thanks to the leadership of progressive giants in the South Asian diasporic community, such as South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) and Stand With Kashmir, along with the energy of a new generation of South Asian Americans, we are building a determined diasporic solidarity network.

Students Against Hindutva (SAH)’s national protests on March 5 will be called A Holi Against Hindutva, intending to use a pillar of diasporic student communities — Holi, a festival that celebrates the arrival of spring — to signal our solidarity with those on the front lines of the resistance. Protesters will dress in black, as opposed to Holi’s traditional white attire, and will celebrate the festival of colors with just one color: white. This stark contrast speaks to the increasingly black-and-white choice between complicity or resistance as the death toll of those opposed to Hindutva continues to rise.