How Hindu America mobilized for the 2016 election

In 2015, Chicago manufacturer Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar founded the Republican Hindu Coalition on a straightforward conviction. Hindu and Indian Americans were among the most entrepreneurial, family-first, and security-minded people in the country, yet no one had ever organized them as a Republican constituency. Modeled on the Republican Jewish Coalition, RHC set out to build that bridge. Its rallying cry borrowed from the wave that carried Narendra Modi to power in India in 2014, “Ab Ki Baar Modi Sarkar,” and pointed it toward Washington. Ab Ki Baar Trump Sarkar. This time, a Trump government.

The effort reached its peak in October 2016. RHC staged a charity event in Edison, New Jersey that drew roughly 8,000 Indian Americans, and Donald Trump took the stage to call India and the United States “best friends” and close with the line the community would remember, “Ab ki baar, Trump sarkar.” Kumar backed the message with resources, joining a small circle of donors who gave the maximum to Trump Victory, and the coalition put a Hindi-language ad built around the slogan in front of voters in the battleground states where Indian-American families could shift a margin. For the first time, a Hindu-American organization was running a national program for a Republican presidential nominee.

Trump won the White House, and the movement among Hindu and Indian-American voters became one of the quieter stories of the cycle. James Kahrs later set it down in Ab Ki Baar Trump Sarkar, with a foreword by Speaker Newt Gingrich, chronicling how one man and one slogan reached a community both parties had overlooked. For RHC, 2016 was the proof of concept. It showed that Hindu Americans would organize, give, and vote when someone finally asked, and it set the template for the coalition we are building today.