Vivek Ramaswamy Is Attempting Quite the Religious Balancing Act. He Just Might Pull It Off.

In a video taken from the passenger seat of a car after Narendra Modi’s address to the joint session of Congress in June, Vivek Ramaswamy was full of praise for the Indian prime minister.

“Modi talked unapologetically about Indian national identity,” he said in the video, which was posted on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. “He quoted the Vedas, ancient Indian scriptures. Yet here in the United States we have now gotten in the habit of apologizing for our own national history. … That’s what I think we need to learn here from Modi’s visit, is that we in this country are at our best when we too do not apologize for who we are.”

These seem like standard talking points on their face. But there were two somewhat remarkable things about the comments. First, Ramaswamy referenced something so distinctly Indian—the Vedas (Hindu religious texts)—when addressing a Republican base that’s overwhelmingly white and Christian. Second, and more strangely, he seemed to praise Modi’s Hindu nationalism—and call for an American equivalent.

An American equivalent can mean only one thing. Hindus represent about 1 percent of the U.S. population; Ramaswamy certainly isn’t advocating for Hindu nationalism in America. Instead, he appears to advocate for a similarly shaped religious nationalism in the U.S. based on the country’s majority faith: Christianity.

Indeed, Ramaswamy has all but explicitly supported Christian nationalism on the campaign trail. “Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values, there’s no doubt about it,” the candidate told NBC News in July. And in an interview with NewsNation this month, he declared, “I believe I live by those values more so than many self-proclaimed Christian politicians.”

But unlike other prominent Indian American presidential candidates—notably, his opponent Nikki Haley (raised Sikh) and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (raised Hindu)—Ramaswamy is not a Christian convert, and he has not played down his non-Christian background. Instead, he has touted his Hindu faith to the white evangelical base. So when he advocates for Christian values, he does so as an outsider.

It’s a two-step, and a new and unproven tactic, but Ramaswamy appears to believe that by presenting his faith as just as conservative as theirs, white evangelicals won’t care about the specifics. His pitch is that it doesn’t matter that he’s not a white Christian nationalist himself: He can be just as strong an advocate for it as anyone else.

“To see someone explicitly make this claim, but embody himself as this other form of religious nationalism—I think that is new,” said Andrew Whitehead, a leading scholar of Christian nationalism at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. “It’s such a unique political move.”

How can a person like Ramaswamy promote an ideology that appears so hostile to his own demographic? To understand why a brown Hindu man would advocate for Christian nationalism—or the belief that America was founded as, and should be governed as, a Christian nation—requires an explanation that goes beyond mere cynicism and the concept’s popularity with the GOP base.

Primarily, it’s helpful to remember that as Tamil Brahmins, Ramaswamy’s family sits at the very top of India’s caste system. This isn’t uncommon in the U.S. In recent decades, the country has limited immigration to skilled Indians—and only those with enough funds to transplant their lives—making the Indian diaspora one of the wealthiest minorities in the U.S. And those of Ramaswamy’s particular privilege have experienced something akin to whiteness in their own context, said Dheepa Sundaram, a professor of Hindu studies at the University of Denver. “Hindus suffer harms under white supremacy,” she said. “But I think he’s trying to have it both ways: Stan white supremacy and be like, ‘Hindus are part of your club.’ ”

But there’s much more to Ramaswamy’s worldview than simple privilege. There’s also the popularity of nationalism as a concept among the Indian diaspora. Scholars have noted in recent years that a significant number of Indian Americans from both political parties have found themselves drawn to Modi’s Hindu nationalism. Despite Modi’s bloody record—the U.S. once denied his diplomatic visa over his tolerance of anti-Muslim killings in the state of Gujarat—and despite the violence being inflicted on minority religious populations in Modi’s India, many Indian Americans are excited by Modi’s insistence on elevating India’s cultural identity.

“One of the things we partly saw with Donald Trump was the popularity of Modi among the diaspora, even among people who don’t agree with his policy decisions,” Sundaram said. “They like the idea that there’s pride in Indian nationhood.”

This attraction perhaps makes particular sense in the U.S., where as a minority culture, Indian Americans are often met with a deep ignorance. Take Ann Coulter’s recent tweet after Wednesday’s presidential debate, for example: “Nikki and Vivek are involved in some Hindu business, it seems. Not our fight.” This comment is not only racist, but simply wrong. Haley is Christian, of a Sikh background. She’s never been Hindu.

Ramaswamy, for his part, does have direct connections to Hindu nationalism. In 2022 he was a keynote speaker for an event organized by a group called HinduPACT, an initiative of a group called the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America. VHPA is in turn an arm of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which the CIA classifies as a “militant religious organization.” The VHP has called for Muslims to be banned from office in India; the VHPA has said it shares the VHP’s values. (“I ​​will tell you that the idea of thinking about America’s own roots and seeing it through a Hindu lens is not as far-fetched as you might think,” Ramaswamy said at the event.)

According to Sundaram, championing this “national pride” overlooks the reality of what Modi’s Hindu nationalism is going for: exclusion. “When [Ramaswamy] says, ‘We need to embrace our nationalist identity,’ he’s also subtly agreeing with Modi’s policy of ignoring violence against religious minorities,” Sundaram said. “He’s couching it as a positive: embracing national identity. But it doesn’t just mean Christian nationalism. He’s also saying there’s a group of people in this country that don’t belong.” In India, that’s Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and tribal groups. Here, it’s primarily Muslims and atheists.

You might notice the overlap. “Sometimes the Hindu right allies strategically with Christian evangelicals, particularly when it comes to Muslims,” said Rohit Chopra, who researches global media and cultural identity at Santa Clara University. “There’s an idea of Muslims as the shared enemy.”

Ramaswamy has not said anything about Muslims. What he has done, though, is try to slot Hinduism in with the privileged religions of the U.S.

You can see this intention in how he talks about “Judeo-Christian” values. “We share the same values, the same Judeo-Christian values in power,” he told a crowd at a town hall in New Hampshire, according to NBC News.

According to Chopra, Ramaswamy’s use of Judeo-Christian instead of simply Christian shows his optimism. Despite Christian nationalism’s exclusion of Jews from its goals, Ramaswamy is trying to appeal to a less extreme version of the ideology that’s just expansive enough to tolerate Judaism. He seems to believe that if Christian nationalists can accept Jews into their project, they could embrace Hindus too. “The term Judeo-Christian itself is a relatively late element to enter American political discourse,” Chopra said. “It’s also because you have conservative people who are Jewish.” According to a 2021 Pew study, about a quarter of American Jews lean or identify as Republican. “If you look at the rhetorical move on the right to Judeo-Christian, in some ways, Vivek is trying to perform the same move again.

“Vivek is trying to make a case that starting in ’20, ’23, we want to think of America as Hindu-Judeo-Christian,” he added. “How many people is he going to persuade? I don’t know.”

Ramaswamy is making this case through two tactics. The first is by downplaying the specifics of Hinduism—its deities and rituals and mysticism. For example, Ramaswamy’s list of 10 “truths” begins with “God is real.” He has called Jesus Christ “a son of God.” (Many Hindus embrace the idea of many deities; some see Jesus as a possible one of them, among others.) And although Hinduism is often thought of as having polytheistic elements, Ramaswamy has sought to portray it more simply as monotheistic. And he told the Associated Press, “I was raised in a belief system where there is one true God who empowers each of us with our own capacities. As we say in the Hindu tradition, God resides in each one of us. In the Christian tradition, you say we’re all made in the image of God.”

“He’s trying to redefine his Hinduism in a way that sounds similar to Christianity,” Chopra said. “The whole project is to market Hinduism in a certain way to make it palatable to Americans.”

Ramaswamy’s second tactic is by emphasizing particular values that he credits to Hinduism—in ways some experts say is theologically hollow. He has claimed that Hinduism has led him to believe in “our need to defend religious liberty, to stand for faith and patriotism, and stand unapologetically for the fact that we are one nation under God.” Those values, though, are more political than anything else. He told a crowd in New Hampshire that “religions like ours” stand against “wokeism, climatism, transgenderism, gender ideology, COVID-ism.”

“He’s trying to signal to Christian nationalists that his faith should not be scary because it holds the same values that their faith does,” Sundaram said. “He wants to talk about strong borders, limited immigration, having a faith-based approach to mental health, of all things. And all those things, I think, are him trying to appeal to the Christian nationalist vision of Christianity. But those are not part of mainstream Hinduism per se.”

Chopra agreed that Ramaswamy’s depiction of Hinduism is not the norm. “His Hinduism is very selective, reductive, instrumental: a convenient understanding of Hinduism refashioned for the American concept of nationalism,” he said. “You see that in the version of Hinduism put forth by right-wing Hindu groups.”

Ramaswamy’s experience of his religion is naturally as individual as anyone’s. And as Audrey Truschke, the Asian studies director at Rutgers University, noted, it’s particularly easy to stake a specific theological stance with Hinduism because it’s so diverse. “There’s so many ways to be Hindu,” she said. “There’s a flexibility within Hindu theology that’s difficult to understand from a Christian perspective.” But the issue, Chopra said, is how Ramaswamy is presenting all of Hinduism as closely related, at a philosophical level, to American evangelical Christianity. “To say it’s the reality for all Hindus is absurd,” he said. “It’s clearly motivated, because it’s not even a well-thought-out, well-developed, theologically argued position.”

Because Indians have dealt with Christians for centuries, there is a long tradition of making Hinduism appear more palatable to white Westerners, including by arguing for a monotheistic concept of God. But Chopra sees only politics in Ramaswamy’s stance. “If he had developed the position, you could engage with it,” he said. “Vivek seems to be making this stuff up on the fly.”

As Sundaram sees it, Ramaswamy does have a valid claim to Judeo-Christian values simply by growing up in the U.S., steeped in it. He went to a Catholic high school and often credits a piano teacher for his “Protestant work ethic.” He shouldn’t need to bring his own faith into the conversation to prove his point.

But he does it anyway. Whitehead, the scholar of Christian nationalism, said this tactic may not pay off for Ramaswamy, given just how racialized Christian nationalism is. Trump could use Christian nationalism as an effective tool without being a true believer—Trump, it seems clear, has no strong religious feeling—because of his appearance. “He at least aligns with the implicit understanding of the ‘true American’: a white Protestant man,” Whitehead said. But invoking a particular Christian vision of America can prove powerful when it comes to exciting voters, he noted. “If it will work, that remains to be seen,” he said.

Truschke said there’s some precedent for Hindus embracing Christian nationalists, even as the latter typically would exclude them from their vision of the country. “He’s not the first guy who’s attempted an alliance with Christian nationalists,” Truschke said. “That’s a long-standing tactic.” She referenced a group of right-wing Hindu nationalists who have allied with Georgia Republicans for their political goals having to do with “religious liberty.” “Georgia Republicans will pray to their Christian God [at shared events], and yet it’s worth it to them as Hindus, because it’s an alliance of interests.”

It’s all so awkward. Ramaswamy and those like him are promoting an ideology—Hindu nationalism—that has led to the persecution of Christians. At the same time, despite being nonwhite, they’re promoting another ideology—Christian nationalism—that has ties to white supremacy. He’s offering to represent a religious demographic that often sees Hindus as heathen polytheists, or as souls that need saving.

“The extent to which Vivek Ramaswamy is arguing there’s a natural resonance between Christian nationalism and Hindu religious nationalism, I think, would make even Hindu far-right groups uncomfortable,” Chopra said. “To say his Hindu values are consistent with Christian nationalism, that he can be part of the same ideological family—that claim of Vivek’s is completely steeped in historical amnesia.”

There’s one final reason, though, that Ramaswamy may be linking Hindu and Christian nationalism: He may be sending a signal to Hindus just as much as Christians. Indian Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. But in recent years, with Modi’s rise in popularity, the party’s hold has been slipping.

“There’s been talk for years,” Truschke said, “social, political scientists wondering if the Indian American community at some point will flip.”

So by discussing the Vedas, Ramaswamy is trying to welcome more Hindus to the Republican Party. It might seem odd, appealing to Hindus with a Christianized version of their religion. But Hindu nationalism has always been more about culture than religion. “It doesn’t require religiosity,” Truschke said. “It only had to do with religious identity as far as Muslims and Christians were not included.”

Winning over right-wing Hindus would be a savvy move for Ramaswamy, Truschke said. “They are not only wealthy but come with the benefit of a deeply organized set of organizations that can offer resources and mobilization, and can create narratives and turn out votes if needed,” she said. “All of that is really valuable.”

Sundaram thinks this tack may work. “Part of his appeal to Hindus is saying, ‘Actually, our faith is in line with these nationalistic Christian groups, and we should not be trying to oppose them but show where we have common ground,’ ” she said. “He sees himself being able to appeal to the larger Indian population by stanning Modi, whose popularity within the diaspora is far greater than the GOP. That is a deliberate call to Hindus that see Democrats as maybe not allies in the way they saw as before. He’s trying to disrupt the pervasive belief in the Hindu community that Republicans are inherently racist and white supremacist, and that we can’t possibly vote for them even if we disagree with the policies on the Democratic side.”

The question is: Can he do that credibly while also convincing white, Christian Republicans that he is not an outsider, but in a way, one of them too? It’s a tricky and dubious balancing act. But given his recent rise in the polls, Sundaram said it might not be totally far-fetched.

“I think Vivek Ramaswamy sees an opportunity here.”