Nehru and Bollywood music: How Mamdani win resonates with Indian Muslims

The news of Zohran Kwame Mamdani's election as mayor of New York City has triggered shockwaves thousands of miles away, in Mumbai and Delhi.

A man of Indian heritage being elected mayor of one of the world's great cities would usually be a cause for celebration amongst Indian politicians and journalists.

Mamdani is not just an Indian but one of Gujarati heritage too, just like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But there is one key and consequential difference.

Zohran Mamdani is a Muslim and a staunch critic of India's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Video clips went viral of the 34-year-old Democratic Socialist and New York state assemblyman quoting India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in his victory speech.

"A moment comes but rarely in history when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance," Mamdani proclaimed, reading from Nehru's famous speech at the dawn of India's independence from the British empire in 1947.

"Tonight, New York has done just that," he added.

Zohran Mamdani closes victory speech as mayor of New York to Dhoom Machale. This is like a Bollywood movie in real life 😭🔥 pic.twitter.com/2M9ic2wazO

— sohom (@AwaaraHoon) November 5, 2025

Mamdani then ended his victory speech to the sound of Dhoom Machale, a famous 2004 Bollywood song.

The music played as Mamdani's Syrian-American wife Rama Fuwaji, his Punjabi Hindu mother Mira Nair (a prominent filmmaker) and his Gujarati Shia Muslim father, the academic Mahmood Mamdani, joined him on stage.

BJP vs Mamdani

Mamdani has never hidden his Indian identity. He often appeared in campaign videos wearing traditional Indian clothing, and even faced racist abuse from right-wing American commentators after he was photographed eating biryani with his fingers.

Significantly, however, figures from India's ruling BJP have been unusually quiet in response to Mamdani's victory.

Many X users are still waiting for the customary congratulatory tweet from Prime Minister Modi. 

Zohran Mamdani makes history to become New York City's first Muslim mayor

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But some BJP figures couldn't resist raising their voices - most prominently Ameet Satam, the BJP chief in the major city of Mumbai.

Satam warned that "the colour of some international cities is changing," vaguely mentioning the "surnames of some mayors".

"If someone tries to impose a Khan on Mumbai, it will not be tolerated!" he declared in an apparent anti-Muslim dogwhistle.

This followed a BJP member of parliament Rekha Sharma urging the Indian diaspora in New York to vote against Mamdani on Tuesday.

"People of Indian origin when you vote think twice. An Indian mother doesn’t make Mr Mamdani a well-wisher of India," she said.

Mamdani won widespread support from New York's 600,000-strong South Asian community, although he was condemned by Hindu nationalists groups in the US.

'Mirror held up to India'

Meanwhile, thousands of Indian Muslims took to X to celebrate Mamdani's historic win. For many, it is a moment of enormous symbolic importance, and a bittersweet one.

While Indian Muslims face intensifying discrimination in their own country, a member of the American diaspora has become mayor in New York.

Mamdani is a rare Indo-Aryan South Asian Muslim name.

ani is a Gujarati derivational suffix (also used in Sindhi) and mamd is the Gujarati rendition of Mohammad (like it's mehmet in Turkish).

So Mamdani is Gujarati for something like Mohammedan.

— shoaib daniyal (@ShoaibDaniyal) November 5, 2025

Indian Muslim writer and journalist Rana Ayyub described Mamdani's election on Wednesday as "a mirror held up to India, reflecting both its lost promise and its lingering potential.

"In India, the world’s largest democracy and home to over 220 million Muslims, there is not a single Muslim representative in the ruling coalition in Parliament."

Mamdani's victory, as well as that of Indian Muslim-origin Ghazala Hashmi's win in Virginia, evokes "both pride and pain," she reflected.

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"Pride in seeing people who share their heritage inhabit positions of visibility and influence. Pain in recognizing that such possibilities have grown remote within India’s own political landscape.

"The Indian Muslim, once central to the making of the republic, now finds representation mostly in memories and diaspora achievements."

There is an added significance to Mamdani's win for many in India: his Gujarati heritage.

India's western state of Gujarat was the site of anti-Muslim pogroms which killed over 1,000 in 2002 while Modi was its chief minister.

Mamdani years ago lobbied to stop Modi from visiting New York. In May, during his campaign, he provoked a storm in the Indian media by saying Modi "helped to orchestrate what was a mass slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat". Modi has been widely accused of culpability for the carnage.

"This is someone we should view in the same manner as we do Benjamin Netanyahu - this is a war criminal," Mamdani added.

In response to Mamdani's remarks, the BJP's national spokesperson, Sanju Verma, called him a "rabid liar", a "disgrace" and a "Hinduphobic bigot".

In June Kangana Ranaut, a former actress and BJP parliamentarian, claimed Mamdani "sounds more Pakistani than Indian… whatever happened to his Hindu identity and now he is ready to wipe out Hinduism, wow!!"

It is no wonder, perhaps, that Modi is yet to congratulate Mamdani on his victory.

Zohran Mamdani Makes India more proud than both Adani & Ambani…

— Kunal Kamra (@kunalkamra88) November 5, 2025

By contrast, some opposition Indian politicians have enthusiastically hailed his election.

Priyanka Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party and the great-granddaughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, praised Mamdani for quoting the first Indian prime minister in his victory speech.

"And here in Nehru's own country, we see insults heaped in him on a daily basis," Gandhi remarked. Nehru is an unpopular figure with the BJP.

'Spectacular victory'

Shashi Tharoor, a Congress politician and prominent writer, described Mamdani quoting Nehru as "wonderfully apt". He gave his "warmest congratulations" to filmmaker Mira Nair on her son's "spectacular victory".

And Kunal Kamra, one of the country's most popular stand-up comedians, remarked: "Zohran Mamdani Makes India more proud than both Adani & Ambani…", referencing two Indian industrialists.

A video went viral among Indian users on X of Mamdani in 2023 speaking about Umar Khalid, an Indian Muslim historian and activist who was imprisoned after participating in a protest against a citizenship law which discriminated against Muslims.

Khalid has now been in prison for over five years without charge.

A video from 2023 from a gathering in New York ahead of the PM Modi's visit to the US in 2023 where Zohran Mamdani reads Umar Khalid's Notes from Jail. pic.twitter.com/yiGQCCgiyw

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) November 5, 2025

Senior Indian Supreme Court lawyer Sanjay Hedge, meanwhile, posted a video on X of Mamdani's father reciting an Urdu couplet by the 20th-century poet Muhammad Iqbal.

"He passionately jumped into the fire of love," reads a rough translation of the couplet, "while the wise ones dithered and watched from afar."