Meet Zohran Kwame Mamdani
Jawed Naqvi
Jawed Naqvi
Published July 1, 2025
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
HIS rise has been swift and vertical. Donald Trump, among others, is struggling to figure out who exactly Zohran Kwame Mamdani is. They know that the newly elected Democratic mayoral candidate for New York in the Nov 4 elections stands for the liberation of Palestine.
They probably also know that he accuses Narendra Modi of mass murder in Gujarat, even if India’s supreme court has given him the proverbial clean chit for the 2002 carnage of Muslims.
In a pre-election interview, mayoral candidates were asked if they would help the Indian prime minister hold another rally in the city. All said no, but Mamdani went on to emphasise that he would never wish to meet Modi if elected mayor of New York.
Zohran should not perhaps worry about that possibility if reports are true about the possible resignation of Modi in September, when he attains the retirement age of 75 that he set for all BJP office bearers.
But Mamdani’s critics (and many supporters) don’t quite seem to know how or why he succeeded in toppling the Democratic Party’s applecart by upstaging its poster boy Andrew Cuomo in the race. Cuomo’s elitist supporters include Zionist Jews from Brooklyn, who reportedly helped mobilise a whopping $25 million to defeat Mamdani.
They are naturally worried by the turn of events. Mamdani’s reply to them was reassuring, even disarming. Hate crimes trouble him equally, including the current antisemitic uptick across the US. His pledge to them was his proposal for an 800 per cent increase in the city’s mayoral budget to arrest hate-crimes.
Trump, nevertheless, has called him a communist lunatic, and reports are coming in of assassination threats to the 33-year-old Ugandan migrant with a winsome smile.
To appreciate Zohran’s secular and progressive Hindu and Muslim lineage, it might help to look for a clue in his middle name, Kwame. The one Kwame his parents possibly named him after, and who best fits the sketchy political profile we have of the Mamdanis, is Kwame Nkrumah.
The radical left politician led Ghana to independence from Britain but was overthrown after a short tenure as president by a Western-backed military coup while he was visiting China in 1966. Nkrumah, together with Patrice Lumumba, Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere, was an idol for post-colonial masses in Africa and beyond. South Asians saw him as a genuine friend, and Jawaharlal Nehru courted him as a comrade. Some say he was the inspiration for Martin Luther King’s doctrine of peaceful resistance.
To appreciate Zohran’s secular and progressive Hindu and Muslim lineage, it might help to look for a clue in his middle name.
We also know that Zohran was born in Kampala, where his father of Gujarati Shia Muslim origins, began his journey as a scholar with a focus on colonialism, ethnic strife and migration. Mahmood Mamdani has written outstanding books on colonialism and society, a more widely lauded being Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. To get a handle on the phenomenon, his son is, we may benefit from discussing his father’s scholarly quest.
In Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Mamdani discusses the rise of political Islam, and answers questions that Americans have struggled with since Osama bin Laden, the former American protégé, staged a spectacular attack on the US. Mamdani dispels the easy description of ‘good’ Muslims being secular or Westernised and the ‘bad’ being slotted as pre-modern and fanatical. In his view, political Islam emerged from a modern encounter with the West. The terrorist movement at the centre of political Islam is an even more recent phenomenon, one “that followed America’s embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam”.
The book seems relevant to today’s perceptions of the Israel-Iran contest. Amid the megaphoned Western vilification of ‘mullahs’ ruling Iran, a 5,000-year-old civilisation is condemned by its parvenue rivals who were largely created from the British-French division of spoils following Turkey’s defeat in 1919. Look carefully, and all the post-Cold War Western targets were utterly secular states — from Iraq to Libya, from Algeria to Syria, and from Lebanon to Yemen. Damned if you are secular, damned if you are not.
Mamdani’s other acclaimed works include a signal point of departure in analysing the ethnic violence in Rwanda. Another work, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities posits that the modern state didn’t begin with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, but sprang into being in 1492: the year of the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain following the ‘Reconquista’, which coincided with the European colonisation of the Americas.
Zohran’s mother, Mira Nair, is a progressive filmmaker. Some of her acclaimed movies are seen in their approach as a facet of parallel cinema. Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala, The Namesake are more widely applauded, though her cinematic work on life in the slums of Uganda is a class apart.
Nair’s films are known for their vibrant storytelling, rich cultural textures and exploration of identity, displacement and human connections. The parents’ imprint is palpable in the son’s politics.
What makes his win even more remarkable is that Zohran “has refused to back down from his vocal support for Palestinian liberation, a position that has long been a death knell for candidates within a party whose establishment is unabashedly pro-Israel,” said The Guardian.
There are other compelling factors driving Mamdani’s success. His approach to New York differs from Frank Sinatra’s individualistic quest to arrive at “the top of the heap”. Zohran takes a leaf, instead, from Sahir Ludhianvi’s angst for Bombay. “Cheen o Arab hamara, Hindosta’n hamara/ Rehne ko ghar nahi hai, saara jahaa’n hamara.” (The far corners of the world belong to me, and I am its homeless citizen.)
Like Sahir, Mamdani identifies with “those who toil in the nights, so they can enjoy the fruits of their labour in the day. Where eight hours on the factory floor or behind the wheels of a cab is enough to pay the mortgage, enough to keep the lights on, enough to send your kids to school”.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2025
HIS rise has been swift and vertical. Donald Trump, among others, is struggling to figure out who exactly Zohran Kwame Mamdani is. They know that the newly elected Democratic mayoral candidate for New York in the Nov 4 elections stands for the liberation of Palestine.
They probably also know that he accuses Narendra Modi of mass murder in Gujarat, even if India’s supreme court has given him the proverbial clean chit for the 2002 carnage of Muslims.
In a pre-election interview, mayoral candidates were asked if they would help the Indian prime minister hold another rally in the city. All said no, but Mamdani went on to emphasise that he would never wish to meet Modi if elected mayor of New York.
Zohran should not perhaps worry about that possibility if reports are true about the possible resignation of Modi in September, when he attains the retirement age of 75 that he set for all BJP office bearers.
But Mamdani’s critics (and many supporters) don’t quite seem to know how or why he succeeded in toppling the Democratic Party’s applecart by upstaging its poster boy Andrew Cuomo in the race. Cuomo’s elitist supporters include Zionist Jews from Brooklyn, who reportedly helped mobilise a whopping $25 million to defeat Mamdani.
They are naturally worried by the turn of events. Mamdani’s reply to them was reassuring, even disarming. Hate crimes trouble him equally, including the current antisemitic uptick across the US. His pledge to them was his proposal for an 800 per cent increase in the city’s mayoral budget to arrest hate-crimes.
Trump, nevertheless, has called him a communist lunatic, and reports are coming in of assassination threats to the 33-year-old Ugandan migrant with a winsome smile.
To appreciate Zohran’s secular and progressive Hindu and Muslim lineage, it might help to look for a clue in his middle name, Kwame. The one Kwame his parents possibly named him after, and who best fits the sketchy political profile we have of the Mamdanis, is Kwame Nkrumah.
The radical left politician led Ghana to independence from Britain but was overthrown after a short tenure as president by a Western-backed military coup while he was visiting China in 1966. Nkrumah, together with Patrice Lumumba, Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere, was an idol for post-colonial masses in Africa and beyond. South Asians saw him as a genuine friend, and Jawaharlal Nehru courted him as a comrade. Some say he was the inspiration for Martin Luther King’s doctrine of peaceful resistance.
To appreciate Zohran’s secular and progressive Hindu and Muslim lineage, it might help to look for a clue in his middle name.
We also know that Zohran was born in Kampala, where his father of Gujarati Shia Muslim origins, began his journey as a scholar with a focus on colonialism, ethnic strife and migration. Mahmood Mamdani has written outstanding books on colonialism and society, a more widely lauded being Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. To get a handle on the phenomenon, his son is, we may benefit from discussing his father’s scholarly quest.
In Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Mamdani discusses the rise of political Islam, and answers questions that Americans have struggled with since Osama bin Laden, the former American protégé, staged a spectacular attack on the US. Mamdani dispels the easy description of ‘good’ Muslims being secular or Westernised and the ‘bad’ being slotted as pre-modern and fanatical. In his view, political Islam emerged from a modern encounter with the West. The terrorist movement at the centre of political Islam is an even more recent phenomenon, one “that followed America’s embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam”.
The book seems relevant to today’s perceptions of the Israel-Iran contest. Amid the megaphoned Western vilification of ‘mullahs’ ruling Iran, a 5,000-year-old civilisation is condemned by its parvenue rivals who were largely created from the British-French division of spoils following Turkey’s defeat in 1919. Look carefully, and all the post-Cold War Western targets were utterly secular states — from Iraq to Libya, from Algeria to Syria, and from Lebanon to Yemen. Damned if you are secular, damned if you are not.
Mamdani’s other acclaimed works include a signal point of departure in analysing the ethnic violence in Rwanda. Another work, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities posits that the modern state didn’t begin with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, but sprang into being in 1492: the year of the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain following the ‘Reconquista’, which coincided with the European colonisation of the Americas.
Zohran’s mother, Mira Nair, is a progressive filmmaker. Some of her acclaimed movies are seen in their approach as a facet of parallel cinema. Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala, The Namesake are more widely applauded, though her cinematic work on life in the slums of Uganda is a class apart.
Nair’s films are known for their vibrant storytelling, rich cultural textures and exploration of identity, displacement and human connections. The parents’ imprint is palpable in the son’s politics.
What makes his win even more remarkable is that Zohran “has refused to back down from his vocal support for Palestinian liberation, a position that has long been a death knell for candidates within a party whose establishment is unabashedly pro-Israel,” said The Guardian.
There are other compelling factors driving Mamdani’s success. His approach to New York differs from Frank Sinatra’s individualistic quest to arrive at “the top of the heap”. Zohran takes a leaf, instead, from Sahir Ludhianvi’s angst for Bombay. “Cheen o Arab hamara, Hindosta’n hamara/ Rehne ko ghar nahi hai, saara jahaa’n hamara.” (The far corners of the world belong to me, and I am its homeless citizen.)
Like Sahir, Mamdani identifies with “those who toil in the nights, so they can enjoy the fruits of their labour in the day. Where eight hours on the factory floor or behind the wheels of a cab is enough to pay the mortgage, enough to keep the lights on, enough to send your kids to school”.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2025
Zohran Mamdani getting hate for eating rice with his bare hands is exposing people’s ‘colonial mindset’
Congressperson Brandon Gill told the New York City mayoral candidate that 'civilised people in America don't eat like this.'
Images Staff
Updated 01 Jul, 2025
DAWN
Afiery debate sparked online after a video of Zohran Mamdani — poised to win New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary — eating rice with his hands, went viral, to which Republican Congressperson Brandon Gill said, “Civilised people in America don’t eat like this.”
Gill, in his rampant racism, added, “If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the third world.”
For context, during an interview with Uncivilized Media, Mamdani was asked a question about the “third holy grail of taboos in American politics: socialism, Islam and Palestine,” and that he was “going for the trifecta.” Instead of focusing on Mamdani’s answer about his politics being impacted by Palestine because of his upbringing in the third world, the internet chose to single out the fact that while responding, he was eating rice with his hands — a common occurrence in the East, but for some reason, the internet could not handle it.
End Wokness, a right-wing X (formerly Twitter) account with over 3.7 million followers, shared the video and wrote, “Zohran says his worldview is inspired by the 3rd world while eating rice with his hands.”
After Gill reshared the video, with his rather insensitive opinion, journalist Mehdi Hasan highlighted that Gill’s father-in-law was born and raised in India and “has definitely eaten with his hands.” Hasan questioned if the congressperson would ask his father-in-law to leave the US, too.
Gill’s wife, Danielle D’Souza Gill, was quick to respond and said, “I did not grow up eating rice with my hands and have always used a fork. I was born in America. I’m a Christian MAGA patriot. My father’s extended family lives in India, and they are also Christian, and they use forks too. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Another X user, however, shared a picture of Danielle’s father eating naan with his hands and asked, “Should we send him back?”
The blatant racism
The Mamdani hate brigade trudged on, flashing their racism and questioning the hygiene of eating with one’s hands. An X user asked why someone would eat rice with their hands if spoons existed.
Another person wrote, “If I ever saw a grown man eating like this, everything that comes out of their mouth imma discredit as bull c**p until they can figure out how to eat like a civilised person. What the hell is wrong with some people, man?”
One person believed it was okay to eat certain foods with their hands, but rice called for an “immediate deport.”
To this we ask, who’s drawing this distinction, because don’t all food items end up in the same place (your stomach) after you eat them, be it rice or burgers? Aren’t you using the same hands to eat with?
Others resorted to bigotry and called Mamdani a “monkey.”
Yes, it isn’t part of Western culture to use hands to eat food items, especially things like rice, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, or because Mamdani is an American, he needs to forgo his roots.
The implication that eating rice with his hands is ‘uncivilised’ is blatant racism. For centuries, people — not just South Asians, but other cultures — have used their hands to eat their food.
In many Asian, African and Middle Eastern cultures, eating with your hands is the traditional and normal way to eat. To imply that the Western way to eat is more civilised or correct is to imply that other cultures are inferior to the West, an idea rooted in colonialism.
An X user summed it up brilliantly: “The idea that there’s one ‘civilised’ way to eat or live, tied to Western customs, is rooted in a colonial mindset that dismissed the richness of global cultures.
“Mamdani’s work champions inclusivity and justice, celebrating the diversity of communities in America. Food, traditions, and ways of life aren’t ranked by ‘first’ or ‘third’ world — they’re expressions of humanity. Telling people to ‘go back’ for being themselves is the opposite of what makes America vibrant.”
Mamdani’s defence
Many jumped to the mayoral candidate’s defence, with one social media user stating, “Tell me you have had zero exposure to people from other cultures whatsoever without telling me. I firmly believe that one of our country’s greatest issues is a massive unwillingness and negligence toward meeting and understanding people and cultures dissimilar to one’s own.”
Another maintained that “the quote and replies show the ignorance and arrogance of many Westerners who think their practices are always the only right practices.”
An individual highlighted that it was “heavenly” eating with one’s hands, adding that all the attacks on Mamdani from the right seemed to have the opposite attack.
“Mate, you should try eating rice with your hands sometime. You can achieve an unparalleled level of understanding of the food: texture, mixing of flavours.”
One person believed that none of the rhetoric against Mamdani worked; therefore, people were talking about him eating with his hands.
“People who think it’s dirty must do something dirty with their hands and not wash their hands before eat[ing],” another person wrote, while someone else urged people to wash their hands before and after eating if they were concerned about germs.
As anyone who’s enjoyed a hot plate of biryani using their hands will tell you, their hands are generally thoroughly washed before and after.
An X user, who claimed to be quoting the Ottoman counterargument, said, “How would I know if this spoon is washed properly? I know for sure my hands are.”
An individual who said they grew up in Texas wrote that they ate with their hands when dining with other cultural groups and that it seemed that “the ‘hand-eating’ guests are much more serious about sanitation than the ‘non’.”
“The hate is so forced, man, y’all have nothing to complain anymore, give it up, you will live. Indonesians eat with their bare hands, too. Y’all don’t know how amazing botram is,” one person wrote, referencing a Sudanese term that denotes a feast.
Meanwhile, a social media user failed to understand the point of the criticism. “He’s a politician and connecting with his constituents. Maybe more politicians should try it. I’m no fan of this guy, but come on. There are better ways to ‘attack’ a political opponent.”
You and your faves do it too
Many people emphasised that several foods regularly consumed in the West were eaten with their hands. Pizza, burgers, fries, ribs, anyone? One user maintained that only when it came to rice did allegations of “third world country habits” burst forth.
“Tell me you are a racist piece of s* * t without telling people you are a racist piece of s**. Eating pizza, ribeyes, seafood with bare hands [is] okay. But when an Asian / POC (person of colour), suddenly it’s not okay? The hypocrite, the racism,” an individual wrote.
Another user aptly highlighted that America was the country that created KFC’s “finger-licking good” chicken, “but apparently, it’s not American to eat with your fingers.”
Other netizens shared pictures of US President Donald Trump and incumbent New York City mayor Eric Adams using their hands to eat food.
“I can’t believe he’s eating with his hands. Disgusting third worlder. He’ll never be civilised,” someone wrote alongside a picture of Trump digging through a box of McDonald’s French fries with — surprise, surprise — his hands.
Another X user put it aptly: “Is this what people call a negative quality? I don’t see it.” Perhaps there are better metrics for judging a politician than the way they consume food, especially when it’s intrinsically linked to their culture and the culture of billions.
Let’s not forget, finger food exists in the West as a whole subculture of eating, and it is considered normal for one to use their hands to eat certain things, as The Guardian reports. It’s 2025, the time is past to judge people and pass racist comments about how billions eat.
Afiery debate sparked online after a video of Zohran Mamdani — poised to win New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary — eating rice with his hands, went viral, to which Republican Congressperson Brandon Gill said, “Civilised people in America don’t eat like this.”
Gill, in his rampant racism, added, “If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the third world.”
For context, during an interview with Uncivilized Media, Mamdani was asked a question about the “third holy grail of taboos in American politics: socialism, Islam and Palestine,” and that he was “going for the trifecta.” Instead of focusing on Mamdani’s answer about his politics being impacted by Palestine because of his upbringing in the third world, the internet chose to single out the fact that while responding, he was eating rice with his hands — a common occurrence in the East, but for some reason, the internet could not handle it.
End Wokness, a right-wing X (formerly Twitter) account with over 3.7 million followers, shared the video and wrote, “Zohran says his worldview is inspired by the 3rd world while eating rice with his hands.”
After Gill reshared the video, with his rather insensitive opinion, journalist Mehdi Hasan highlighted that Gill’s father-in-law was born and raised in India and “has definitely eaten with his hands.” Hasan questioned if the congressperson would ask his father-in-law to leave the US, too.
Gill’s wife, Danielle D’Souza Gill, was quick to respond and said, “I did not grow up eating rice with my hands and have always used a fork. I was born in America. I’m a Christian MAGA patriot. My father’s extended family lives in India, and they are also Christian, and they use forks too. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Another X user, however, shared a picture of Danielle’s father eating naan with his hands and asked, “Should we send him back?”
The blatant racism
The Mamdani hate brigade trudged on, flashing their racism and questioning the hygiene of eating with one’s hands. An X user asked why someone would eat rice with their hands if spoons existed.
Another person wrote, “If I ever saw a grown man eating like this, everything that comes out of their mouth imma discredit as bull c**p until they can figure out how to eat like a civilised person. What the hell is wrong with some people, man?”
One person believed it was okay to eat certain foods with their hands, but rice called for an “immediate deport.”
To this we ask, who’s drawing this distinction, because don’t all food items end up in the same place (your stomach) after you eat them, be it rice or burgers? Aren’t you using the same hands to eat with?
Others resorted to bigotry and called Mamdani a “monkey.”
Yes, it isn’t part of Western culture to use hands to eat food items, especially things like rice, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, or because Mamdani is an American, he needs to forgo his roots.
The implication that eating rice with his hands is ‘uncivilised’ is blatant racism. For centuries, people — not just South Asians, but other cultures — have used their hands to eat their food.
In many Asian, African and Middle Eastern cultures, eating with your hands is the traditional and normal way to eat. To imply that the Western way to eat is more civilised or correct is to imply that other cultures are inferior to the West, an idea rooted in colonialism.
An X user summed it up brilliantly: “The idea that there’s one ‘civilised’ way to eat or live, tied to Western customs, is rooted in a colonial mindset that dismissed the richness of global cultures.
“Mamdani’s work champions inclusivity and justice, celebrating the diversity of communities in America. Food, traditions, and ways of life aren’t ranked by ‘first’ or ‘third’ world — they’re expressions of humanity. Telling people to ‘go back’ for being themselves is the opposite of what makes America vibrant.”
Mamdani’s defence
Many jumped to the mayoral candidate’s defence, with one social media user stating, “Tell me you have had zero exposure to people from other cultures whatsoever without telling me. I firmly believe that one of our country’s greatest issues is a massive unwillingness and negligence toward meeting and understanding people and cultures dissimilar to one’s own.”
Another maintained that “the quote and replies show the ignorance and arrogance of many Westerners who think their practices are always the only right practices.”
An individual highlighted that it was “heavenly” eating with one’s hands, adding that all the attacks on Mamdani from the right seemed to have the opposite attack.
“Mate, you should try eating rice with your hands sometime. You can achieve an unparalleled level of understanding of the food: texture, mixing of flavours.”
One person believed that none of the rhetoric against Mamdani worked; therefore, people were talking about him eating with his hands.
“People who think it’s dirty must do something dirty with their hands and not wash their hands before eat[ing],” another person wrote, while someone else urged people to wash their hands before and after eating if they were concerned about germs.
As anyone who’s enjoyed a hot plate of biryani using their hands will tell you, their hands are generally thoroughly washed before and after.
An X user, who claimed to be quoting the Ottoman counterargument, said, “How would I know if this spoon is washed properly? I know for sure my hands are.”
An individual who said they grew up in Texas wrote that they ate with their hands when dining with other cultural groups and that it seemed that “the ‘hand-eating’ guests are much more serious about sanitation than the ‘non’.”
“The hate is so forced, man, y’all have nothing to complain anymore, give it up, you will live. Indonesians eat with their bare hands, too. Y’all don’t know how amazing botram is,” one person wrote, referencing a Sudanese term that denotes a feast.
Meanwhile, a social media user failed to understand the point of the criticism. “He’s a politician and connecting with his constituents. Maybe more politicians should try it. I’m no fan of this guy, but come on. There are better ways to ‘attack’ a political opponent.”
You and your faves do it too
Many people emphasised that several foods regularly consumed in the West were eaten with their hands. Pizza, burgers, fries, ribs, anyone? One user maintained that only when it came to rice did allegations of “third world country habits” burst forth.
“Tell me you are a racist piece of s* * t without telling people you are a racist piece of s**. Eating pizza, ribeyes, seafood with bare hands [is] okay. But when an Asian / POC (person of colour), suddenly it’s not okay? The hypocrite, the racism,” an individual wrote.
Another user aptly highlighted that America was the country that created KFC’s “finger-licking good” chicken, “but apparently, it’s not American to eat with your fingers.”
Other netizens shared pictures of US President Donald Trump and incumbent New York City mayor Eric Adams using their hands to eat food.
“I can’t believe he’s eating with his hands. Disgusting third worlder. He’ll never be civilised,” someone wrote alongside a picture of Trump digging through a box of McDonald’s French fries with — surprise, surprise — his hands.
Another X user put it aptly: “Is this what people call a negative quality? I don’t see it.” Perhaps there are better metrics for judging a politician than the way they consume food, especially when it’s intrinsically linked to their culture and the culture of billions.
Let’s not forget, finger food exists in the West as a whole subculture of eating, and it is considered normal for one to use their hands to eat certain things, as The Guardian reports. It’s 2025, the time is past to judge people and pass racist comments about how billions eat.
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