New York Says Salaam Bombay!

Come November, if Amitabh Bachchan visits New York to remake old hit, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006) or if Shah Rukh Khan, who dies in Kal Ho Na Ho (2003), wants to be re-born in a sequel, they may face competition from the likely new city mayor – Zohran Kwame Mamdani. He borrowed to great effect their trademark words and gestures during a tumultuous election campaign.

Zohran mimicked, probably still does, Deewar movie’s iconic Mere paas maa hai line and spreading out his arms SRK-like, exhorted the New Yorkers, “Mere paas aap hain” (I have your support).

A video reimagines a line sung by Kishore Kumar in Karz (1980): Kya tumne kabhi kisi ko pyaar kiya? Kisiko dil diya? (Have you ever loved someone? Given someone your heart?). Mamdani’s version: “Have you ever voted for anyone? Have you ever ranked anyone?”, covering explainers on ranked-choice voting to multilingual, immigrant voters. These Bollywoodian ‘re-mixes’ worked.

To win their vote, he undertook walkathons and sent out appeals in different languages. His campaign focused on affordability, with policy goals including a rent freeze, free buses, and universal childcare. In a speech hours before he won the primary, he promised “to govern our city as a model for the Democratic party – a party where we fight for working people with no apology”.

His viral campaign video, deeply infused with South Asian culture and entertainment, garnered praise for its cheery tone and energised young voters – a factor many social commentators deemed a crucial demographic for Democrats.

Mamdani’s real success, however, is still far away. He must defeat his Republican rival and any other contender to be the mayor. The fight has only begun, and the buzz that his winning the Democratic Party nomination last month, defeating four-time mayor Andrew Cuomo, has refused to die.

The challenge, both from and for Zohran Kwame Mamdani, 33, a greenhorn assemblyman, is huge. For, in seeking to lead the US’s most prestigious and politically key city, he has posed the biggest challenge so far to President Donald Trump. He has caught Trump unawares, and not just the Americans, but all those across the world who are riding the current Right-wing political surge.

Trump is not the first and will not be the last of this global phenomenon. In menacing terms, he has called Mamdani a “lunatic Communist”. Busy deporting thousands he considers ‘illegal’ migrants, he has said he would check if Zohran is one of them. He has threatened to arrest him. And if Mamdani succeeds, block funds to New York. Last century’s McCarthyism may be America’s past, but Trump and his MAGA supporters are the present. They call the political shots.

Neither a ‘lunatic’ nor a ‘Communist’, Mamdani is a social democrat, a ‘progressive’ in America’s political parlance. He has picked up the gauntlet Trump has thrown and has urged New Yorkers not to be intimidated, telling them: “If you speak up, they will come for you.”

It is not going to be easy. The ordinary, under-privileged New Yorkers voted in the primary. They outnumbered the rich and the powerful who, residing in upscale NY suburbs, were complacent or had ceased to be voters.

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Mamdani won by promising free city bus rides, starting government-owned shops, freezing rents on private homes, cutting back on police and things that the large populace of have-nots would love. But he is talking socialism in the world’s most influential capitalist haven.

New York’s powerful business and corporate groups would not relish this talk. Of them, the highly influential Jews are angry at Zohran’s advocacy of the Intifada and calling Israeli premier Benyamin Netanyahu a “war criminal”. The coming weeks must see their fightback. The socialist combination of Mandela and Martin Luther King that Mamdani quotes reverentially may be heady for the poor New Yorkers, but not for the rich.

It also poses a dilemma for his party. During the Presidential poll primaries for the Democratic Party in 2016 and 2020, the voters might have rejected Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ idea of socialism in favour of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. But five years later in New York, they decided to give Mamdani a chance.  The mood change is difficult to gauge.

One thing that would certainly prompt opposition to Zohran, tooth and nail, is his Syrian-American wife, Rama Duwaji. Her multimedia career includes pro-Palestinian works. According to the New York Post, Duwaji’s work — “largely pen-and-ink-style digital illustrations — centres on pro-Palestinian, Arab and female identity themes, showing burqa-clad women crushed under rubble or keffiyeh-clad protesters being pinned down by police.”

As cross-cultural battle lines are etched, even the South Asian may be divided. If the current India-Pakistan spat helps or hurts Zohran is unclear. He has clubbed Indian Prime Minister Modi with Netanyahu for what happened in 2002 in Gujarat, where his father, Mahmood, an eminent academic at Harvard, has roots.

The family background may be a factor, judging from some critical reactions from ‘white’ Americans. A picture shows Zohran eating with his hand, prompting calls that he should “go back”. Eating with your hands may be culturally “un-American”, but Indians consider it divine and Asians, normal. So, where should he “go back”?

Who will tell the New Yorkers that once touted as “a nation of immigrants”, America ought to be at ease with this Uganda-born son of a Gujarati Muslim and a Punjabi Hindu mother brought up hundreds of miles away from Punjab? Mira Nair, as a celebrated filmmaker, and Mahmood, the academic, have delved into Asian, African and American lives in their works with equal ease. 

Although Mira is said to be behind Zohran’s well-organised campaign, speculation persists about her ‘Hindu’ name being kept out to ensure the ‘Muslim’ vote. Influential American media have kept her name out even as they celebrate Zohran’s ‘multiculturalism’. One wonders if America views this Asian-African synthesis only in Hindu-Muslim terms.

Zohran’s middle name, of African origin, denotes extremes in fortune, health and spirituality, of someone versatile and idealistic. How does this mayoral candidate fit into a vibrant American society that people from across the world dream of being part of and flock to, both legally and illegally?