When Chief Justice of India BR Gavai made a dismissive remark about petitioners seeking judicial intervention on a Vishnu idol dispute in September 2025—telling them to ask the deity themselves—he committed an offence that, in the calculus of Hindu nationalism, was unforgivable.
Not because the remark was constitutionally problematic, but because it came from a Dalit judge who refused to genuflect before Brahminical religious supremacy. What followed was no ordinary turbulence of public criticism. It was the exposure of a transnational infrastructure of caste violence, a coordinated campaign of dehumanisation that would eventually manifest in Times Square, revealing the deep architecture of diaspora-led Hindu nationalist mobilisation against Dalit power in India.
The trajectory from the remark to Times Square billboard is instructive. It shows that in contemporary India and among diaspora elites, the presence of a Dalit in institutional power—particularly one exercising that power with constitutional independence—functions as a provocation to those committed to maintaining Brahminical supremacy.
Justice Gavai is only the nation's second Dalit Chief Justice, and his judicial philosophy represents a fundamental threat to Hindu nationalist ambitions. His November 2024 bulldozer ruling—restraining municipalities from using demolitions as collective punishment—directly challenged the state's preferred instrument of domination against marginalised communities. It was constitutional reasoning applied to protect Dalit and Muslim communities from state-sanctioned harassment.
As Sumit Samos has written: "If a Dalit Chief Justice can be publicly humiliated, a shoe thrown at him by a lawyer who later deifies this act on social media as defence of Sanatana Dharma, and then attacked by right-wing media with casteist undertones, the signal it sends is chilling." This is not aberration. This is architecture. This is Hindu nationalism's foundational commitment to maintaining caste hierarchy, now operating across borders.
The Digital Ecosystem of Caste Incitement
The attack on Justice Gavai did not emerge spontaneously. It was preceded by weeks of orchestrated digital violence—a carefully cultivated ecosystem where right-wing influencers, "Sanatani" ideologues, and casteist clergy synchronised a campaign of dehumanisation.
YouTuber Ajeet Bharti's livestreams, which must have been amplified across diaspora networks, featured explicit incitement to violence. Participants openly fantasised about murdering the Chief Justice: "If Gavai ji bumps into someone somewhere… one Hindu lawyer should grab Gavai ji's head and smash it against the wall with such force that it breaks into two pieces."
Another speaker asked with contemptuous bile: "What is the punishment in the IPC for spitting on Gavai's face? Hindus can't even do that."
The reference to spitting is not metaphorical. It invokes the historical vocabulary of untouchability—the deliberate degradation used for centuries to mark Dalits as polluted, unworthy of human dignity.
Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) documented this as systematic incitement: a "coordinated campaign of caste-based vilification, violent provocation, and criminal intimidation." The complaint revealed that "a stark and undeniable correlation between specific incitement broadcast on YouTube platform and the subsequent act of violence" existed, establishing what scholars recognise as the pipeline from digital hate to physical assault.
When 71-year-old lawyer Rakesh Kishore threw a shoe at Justice Gavai in the Supreme Court on 6 October, 2025, CJP's analysis proved prophetic. After the assault, Bharti's livestreams pivoted to justification: "If judges continue to make such anti-Hindu statements, then what happened in court today can happen on the streets tomorrow." This was not commentary. This was an endorsement. This was signalling to a digital mob that caste violence against a Dalit judge is not just permissible, but necessary.
When the US Diaspora Becomes a Weapon
Hindu Americans, backed by Hindu diaspora groups worldwide, launched a high-profile digital billboard campaign in New York's Times Square (Duffy Square) on 8 November, 2025—the same month Chief Justice BR Gavai is set to retire.
The campaign, organised by the group "Stop Hindu Genocide," featured billboards displaying a shoe hurled at the CJI's face, demanding an apology for remarks he made during a Supreme Court hearing on the restoration of a Vishnu idol at Khajuraho. This act marks a crucial escalation as it transforms a domestic caste conflict into a diaspora organising principle, exporting Brahminical rage to the global stage and framing judicial independence as an affront to Hindu religious sentiment.
The campaign accomplishes what YouTube videos alone could not: it legitimises caste violence within diaspora spaces while repackaging it as "cultural advocacy" and "Hindu rights" defence. Seen by over 300,000 people daily, the billboards convert a judge's refusal to blur sacred and secular law into diaspora grievance. They frame judicial independence as "anti-Hindu bias."
The open letter on StopHinduGenocide.org accuses Justice Gavai of anti-Hindu bias and frames diaspora mobilisation as necessary, claiming: "Hindus abroad face erasure, don't let it start at home."
This is the vocabulary of Brahminical victimhood—a claim that dominance is erasure, that judicial independence is persecution, that constitutional secularism is genocide. It is a lie constructed with precision, functioning only when caste remains invisible within diaspora discourse.
The Hidden Architecture of Upper-Caste Dominance
The presence of caste discrimination in the US diaspora is not a secret. Organisations like Equality Labs documented the reality that 67 percent of Dalit respondents experience workplace discrimination due to caste, 41percent face discrimination in education, and 25 percent experience physical assault.
In Silicon Valley, in tech companies, in corporate America, caste operates through surname-based hiring discrimination, religious practice hierarchies, and exclusion from leadership. Yet this reality remains largely invisible in mainstream diaspora spaces because upper-caste professionals who have consolidated control of diaspora institutions profit from caste remaining unnamed.
The consolidation of Brahminical power in diaspora spaces operates through institutions that appear culturally neutral but function as caste-enforcement mechanisms. In tech—where upper-caste professionals dominate leadership—investigations into caste discrimination reveal systematic exclusion.
The 2020 Cisco case involving a Dalit engineer discriminated against by upper-caste managers exemplifies this pattern. A Carnegie Endowment survey in 2024 found that 46 percent of Indian American respondents identify as General/Upper caste, while only 32 percent reject caste identification entirely—evidence of upper-caste overrepresentation in professional networks.
This demographic skew traces directly to the 1965 Hart-Celler Ac, which created employment preferences (20 percent of visas) for highly-educated workers. Early Indian immigration (1965-1990) was disproportionately upper-caste professionals who arrived with educational and social capital. These immigrants established civic and professional organisations that they controlled, reproducing caste hierarchy even in diaspora spaces. Brahmin, Bania, and other privileged-caste professionals dominated temple hierarchies, professional associations, and media institutions despite constitutional equality.
For Dalit immigrants, the diaspora offers no refuge from caste—it reproduces and sometimes intensifies it. Upper-caste social networks exclude Dalits from marriage markets, professional advancement, and community leadership. Professional organisations reflect caste-based hiring and promotion practices. Yet organisations like Equality Labs documenting this reality remain marginalised in mainstream Indian American discourse, while Hindu nationalist organisations command political resources and media platforms.
This structural invisibility is not accidental. It is an outcome of upper-caste institutional control that depends on caste remaining unnamed and unexamined within diaspora spaces.
The Indian American Establishment's Strategic Erasure of Caste
The Indian American establishment—dominated by upper-caste professionals who have benefited enormously from the selective immigration created by Hart-Celler—has engaged in systematic erasure. Upper-caste organisations like the Hindu American Foundation have actively worked to suppress caste vocabulary. Since 2005, the HAF has repeatedly petitioned to remove or minimise the word 'Dalit' from California's educational curriculum, arguing that caste was a colonial construct rather than a feature of Hindu society.
This is not ignorance. This is strategy. What the US diaspora has constructed is a space where caste operates invisibly, while its violence is exported globally. Upper-caste professionals dominate professional associations, media, and cultural institutions. They have successfully presented themselves as the face of "Indian America" thereby rendering Dalit, lower-caste, and Bahujan voices invisible.
Then, when Brahminical dominance faces any challenge—whether a Dalit Chief Justice or political figures advocating for caste protection—the networks mobilise.
The Mamdani Erasure
The parallel with the 2025 New York mayoral race reveals how this erasure operates strategically and how the suppression of caste discourse in electoral politics operates in tandem with mobilisation of caste violence against Dalit advancement.
Zohran Mamdani, a South Asian politician vocal about anti-caste activism and co-sponsor of New York's caste protection bill, represented the possibility of centreing caste justice in mainstream US-based South Asian diaspora politics. Instead, he faced a coordinated campaign from Hindu nationalist organisations accusing him of "Hinduphobia."
In 2024, Kamala Harris's Brahmin caste background received significant media attention during the presidential election. Yet when Mamdani—a South Asian Muslim politician with an explicit anti-caste record—ran for NYC mayor in 2025, caste was systematically erased from mainstream coverage.
As Dalit scholar and activist Yashica Dutt documented, despite Mamdani's earlier public commitment to anti-caste organising and his co-sponsorship of a caste protection bill, "Caste, which has taken a massive backseat since the Presidential election last year, will perhaps not be a prominent part of the South Asian discourse in this election."
This was not accidental. This is systematic political suppression. Hindu nationalist networks are deliberately removing caste from the vocabulary of diaspora politics precisely as they mobilise caste-based violence against Dalit achievement. They erase caste so that their caste violence goes unrecognized. They weaponise silence.
The suppression of caste in the Mamdani race occurred while the same organisations launched transnational attacks on Justice Gavai. This dual strategy—electoral erasure combined with violent mobilisation—reveals the core infrastructure: prevent both institutional (judicial) and electoral (political) challenges to Brahminical dominance. When an openly anti-caste South Asian politician runs for office, caste disappears from public discourse. When Brahminical dominance faces institutional threat, caste violence mobilises across platforms and continents.
The Dalit Diaspora Within a Diaspora
The Indian American diaspora presents a paradox: visible success statistics mask internal hierarchies of caste that remain largely invisible in mainstream discourse. According to
2024 survey data, Indian Americans are among the most educated ethnic groups in the US, with 81 percent holding bachelor's degrees and median household income of $166,200. Yet this aggregate success obscures devastating disparities: 67 percent of Dalit Indian Americans report workplace discrimination, compared to minimal discrimination faced by upper-caste professionals who dominate tech leadership, academia, and civic institutions.
The Hart-Celler Act's preference for skilled workers created a diaspora that was disproportionately upper-caste from its inception. Brahmin, Bania, and other privileged-caste professionals arrived with educational and social capital, established professional associations and institutions that they controlled. Even as immigration diversified post-1990, institutional leadership remained concentrated in upper-caste hands. Affirmative Action policies in South Asia enabled more Dalit immigration after 1990, bringing "lower" caste populations in larger numbers. Yet this demographic shift did not translate to institutional power.
For Dalit immigrants, the diaspora offers no protection—it reproduces caste while silencing it. Upper-caste social networks exclude Dalits from professional advancement. Many Dalit immigrants hide their caste identity to avoid discrimination.
The Transnational Infrastructure of Brahminical Violence
What has emerged is what Sumit Samos describes as a "virulent alliance of right-wing digital content creators, godmen, 'X' users, Brahminical clergy, and complicit TV media" that "operates as a spontaneous coalition, mobilising around any topic or individual that they perceive as a threat to the cultural and social dominance of upper-caste Hindus."
But this ecosystem is no longer contained to India. It operates transnational infrastructure where caste-based incitement happens on US-hosted platforms (YouTube, X/Twitter), US-based diaspora money funds campaigns targeting Indian judges, and tech companies profit from amplifying caste violence.
Major Hindu nationalist organizations operate across major US cities with sophistication and resources. Research from US Commission on International Religious Freedom and reporting by Quartz documents that organisations including the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS)—the overseas wing of the RSS—operate chapters in the US and maintain formal training pipelines where American volunteers attend RSS headquarters in Nagpur. This is not grassroots religious practice—it is a coordinated, funded, international political operation.
These organisations have cultivated diaspora professionals, funders, and media personalities. They have built civic organisations that serve as organising infrastructure. The Times Square campaign cost significant resources. The coordinated YouTube content, the open letters, the viral hashtags—all point to organized, funded mobilization.
Platform Complicity and the Regulatory Vacuum
YouTube's hosting and monetisation of Ajeet Bharti's incitement content reveals tech platform complicity in transnational caste violence. The platform did not passively allow this content—it algorithmically recommended it to diaspora audiences, monetized it, and only removed it after sustained pressure from civil rights organisations.
This reveals a regulatory vacuum: caste discrimination is not illegal in most US states. While Seattle became the first US jurisdiction to add caste as a protected category in February 2023, California's caste protection bill was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom in October 2023 after intense lobbying from the Hindu American Foundation. The HAF opposed the bill claiming it was "unnecessary" and would "single out" Indian Americans. Newsom's veto message argued that discrimination based on caste was "already prohibited" under existing categories, a position directly contradicted by documented workplace discrimination against Dalit workers.
Tech platforms therefore have no legal obligation to remove caste-inciting content, even when it directly correlates with violence. Meanwhile, the same platforms have responded to Hindu nationalist lobbying by suppressing content critical of Hindutva ideology. This creates asymmetrical regulation: incitement to caste violence remains online while critiques of Hindu nationalism are flagged or removed.
The absence of explicit legal recognition of caste as a protected category in US law is itself a product of Hindu nationalist political pressure that has successfully blocked caste protection legislation.
This legal gap enables the continued operation of transnational caste violence on US-hosted platforms while platforms remain unaccountable to anti-discrimination law.
The Victimhood Narrative as Political Strategy
The "Stop Hindu Genocide" framing exemplifies how Brahminical victimhood operates as political strategy. The claim that Hindus face "genocide" is absurd on its face. What actually exists is Brahmin dominance in corporate boards, tech companies, media, judiciary, and police; Brahmin presence as a "powerful global class" in the diaspora; and systematic exclusion of Dalits from similar spaces despite constitutional protections.
Constitutional protections, judicial independence, electoral representation of Dalits and OBCs, implementation of reservations, and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act have brought into question the Brahmin dominance that was previously unquestioned. Their response is to mobilize rage against those who benefit from these protections. To attack a Dalit Chief Justice. To attack politicians who advocate caste protection. To erase caste from diaspora discourse while weaponizing it against Dalit advancement.
This is what decolonial scholars call "ontological domination"—the ability to define reality such that Brahmin dominance appears as erasure, judicial independence as persecution, constitutional secularism as genocide.
What such campaigns accomplish extends beyond individual harassment. These trends don't just intimidate individuals; they work to dissuade a whole generation of Dalits from speaking their minds, participating in high public discourse, in exercising their duties in top public institutions or aspiring to positions of leadership for fear of becoming targets.
Justice Gavai is not the first. Before him was UPSC topper Tina Dabi, subjected to vicious caricature and ridicule for daring to achieve excellence. Before her was Dr BR Ambedkar himself, targeted throughout his public life with death threats and fierce opposition from conservative Hindu factions.
Despite loud public tributes to Dr Ambedkar and performative gestures of Dalit inclusion by political parties, such incidents lay bare the fragility of Dalit dignity in India's upper echelons of power.
According to India Justice Report 2025 data, only 3% of High Court judges are from SC/ST communities, demonstrating the continued exclusion of Dalit judges at the apex of the judiciary. The shoe thrown at Justice Gavai was meant to communicate that Dalit achievement, when it operates from institutional power and constitutional commitment, will face coordinated violence—physical, verbal, digital, and transnational.
This is the message sent: Dalit advancement will be punished. Dalit dignity will be assaulted. Institutional power held by Dalits will be attacked. And this message operates across borders, mobilized by diaspora networks, amplified by tech platforms, coordinated by well-resourced organizations.
Dalit Dignity as Counter-Narrative
Not all responses were silent.
Navsarjan, a Gujarat-based Dalit human rights organization, along with its sister organisations Dalit Shakti Kendra and Dalit Foundation, planned a symbolic counter-campaign to distribute approximately 5,000 pairs of shoes to needy students across Gujarat and other states including Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan. This campaign was set to take place from Constitution Day on November 26 through 6 December, which marks Dr. Ambedkar's death anniversary.
The campaign's genius lies in its refusal to let the dominant narrative stand. It reframed the shoe—hurled in violence, meant to dehumanize—as an instrument of dignity. It centred on constitutional commitment and Ambedkarite legacy. It asserted that Dalit power is not an aberration but a constitutional promise.
Yet this response remains largely invisible in US diaspora spaces. The Indian American media ecosystem, dominated by upper-caste professionals and Hindu nationalist sympathisers, has not amplified these Dalit voices. The erasure continues even as the response unfolds. This silence is not neutral—it is complicity.
The Fragility of Constitutional Promise, The Necessity of Resistance
What the assault on Justice Gavai reveals is the fragility of Dalit dignity even at the apex of institutional power. But it also reveals something else: that the challenge to caste supremacy is sufficiently real to provoke this level of rage. The Times Square billboards, the YouTube incitement, the transnational campaign—these are symptoms of a system under pressure. They are the violence of the threatened dominant.
The intensity of the mobilisation reflects the severity of the threat. When Brahminical dominance faces constitutional challenge, it mobilises. The ferocity of the Times Square campaign, the coordination across platforms, the sustained digital violence—this is not a measure of anti-Hindu sentiment. This is a measure of how serious Dalit power has become as a threat to upper-caste institutional control.
The question now is whether constitutional democracy will survive. Whether platforms will be held accountable. Whether the Indian state will prosecute caste violence instead of tolerating it. Whether the US diaspora will choose solidarity with Dalit movements or complicity with Hindu nationalist violence.
The shoe has been thrown. The echo has crossed continents. The message has been amplified. What remains is the question of whether Dalit constitutional power—the power to say no to Brahminical supremacy, to use law to constrain caste violence, to exercise judicial independence with dignity—will be defended or dismantled.
History suggests that such power is only defended when people refuse to be silent. When they refuse to let caste remain invisible. When they refuse to let erasure function as a political strategy. When they build infrastructure—institutional, legal, organisational—that matches the infrastructure of oppression. When anti-caste organising becomes not a margin issue but a central question of what democracy means.
For the US diaspora, this means naming caste in institutions where it has been rendered invisible. It means de-brahminising professional spaces where upper-caste dominance has gone unnamed. It means choosing whether to reproduce Brahminical hierarchy in America or to build movements of solidarity with Dalit power both in India and in the diaspora itself.
The work begins there.
(David Sathuluri is a recent graduate from Columbia and he is engaged with questions around caste, climate change and urban spaces. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author's. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)