India Day Parade Transcends Disputes to Delight of Thousands Along Madison Ave. Route

Madison Avenue came alive as thousands of celebrants took to the streets for the 2024 India Day Parade on Sunday August 18. It was the 42nd year of the event celebrating Indian Independence Day, whose historical date is August 15, 1947. Billing itself as the world’s largest India Day Parade, the event is sponsored by the American India Foundation and left nearly everyone in attendance delighted.

If there was an exception to the joys brought on by colorful pageantry that stretched from East 38th Street down to Madison Square Park and included a delicious food bazaar, it’s likely because of a pre-parade controversy that would end up being the only attention many media outlets gave the event, despite parades in general being a telling barometer of the city’s street life and politics at any given moment.

Briefly, the interfaith kerfuffle concerned a float featuring a miniature, carved wooden replica of Ram Mandir, or the Temple of Lord Rama, dedicated to one of the Hinduism’s most venerated deities, in Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Readers of the ancient Indian epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata will recognize Ayodhya as an important place name too.

Way back in the 16th century—in the years 1528-29 to be exact—before there was an Indian nation per se, there was the Mughal empire, and an Islamic Mosque called the Babri Masjid that was built upon the site Ram Janmabhroomi, which Hindus revere as the birthplace of Rama.

Fast forward five centuries to December 1992, when a rally of more than 100,000 Hindu nationalists turned violent and the Babri Masjid was torn down.

In India, subsequent unrest between Hindus and Muslims killed an estimated 2,000 people, with anti-Hindu reprisals occurring in the majority Islam nation of Bangladesh and the Islamic state of Pakistan.

By contrast, nearly 80 percent of India is Hindu, followed by Islam at around 14 percent, then Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Animism, Jainism and on down to fractions of Baha’I (well known to jazzy New Yorkers for Dizzy Gillespie’s promotion of the faith), Zorastrianism. India even has a few thousand Jews.

Confused? If so, you’re not the only one and, with no disrespect intended to any of the aggrieved parties, it’s why the public complaint letter by the Indian American Muslim Council, the Council on American Islamic Relations and other groups brought the ambiguous and conflicting reactions it did

Addressed to Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul, the signatories asserted that Ram Madri float is “not merely a culture display but a vulgar celebration of anti-Muslim heat, bigotry and religious supremacy.” India, the letter pointed out, is a secular country.

While other observers have for decades stated their belief that the rise of Hindu nationalist politics is a threat both to minority groups in India to secular liberal politics generally, the issues are little known, if not esoteric, outside Indian diasporic circles.

Mayor Adams for his part said, “No one should be anti-conversations in marching in these parades... I want to send a symbolic gesture that the city is open to everyone and there’s no room for hate.”

Parade organizers, meanwhile, disputed this interpretation, defended free speech and come Sunday, the float rolled on with no reported disturbances

While this settles nothing in India or the Indian diaspora, it did outwardly affirm the inclusive theme of this year parade: ”Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,” or “the world is one family.”

And, as the gods— plural— know, not all families get along, and the stories behind family disputes often have more than two sides.

For the ebullient thousands who did come to Madison Avenue, the parade was a wondrous expression of cultural pride—though not one designed to silence critics or provide easy comfort to outside pieties.

Though Mayor Adams did not himself attend—whether this was related to the Ram Mandir controversy is unclear—the NYPD did, including a pair of imposing mounted officers; the department’s marching band; and the Desi Society, representing South Asian and Indo-Caribbean officers, near the front of the parade. (Adams did attend the Queens India Day Parade a week later, an event where he was the Grand Marshal.)

Among the celebrities following NYPD’s finest were actress Sonaksi Sinha, who was also this year’s Grand Marshal; Bollywood actor Pankaj Tripathi and actor turned politician, Manoj Tiwari.

Among the forty floats were fifty marching bands and other performers, along with an uncountable number of the saffron orange, white and green flags of India. Representatives from the Consul General of India were also present.

As at the recent Dominican Day Parade, a float promoting the Republican Presidential ticket Donald Trump and J.D. Vance belied common assumptions about “minority” politics in the city.

That this occurred on the eve of the Democratic National Convention no less, where the half Indian-American Kamala Harris was set to accept her party’s nomination was an irony no observer could miss.

Likewise, banners protesting violence against Hindus in majority Muslim Bangladesh were a striking contrast—or is that complement to?—the controversy preceding the parade.

As for visually impressive Ram Mandir float that roused so much ire and attention, its sponsoring group, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America’s (VHPA) was unapologetic.

In statements released after the parade, VHPA not only quoted parade participants expressed their gratitude for the float, (“The presence of the Ram Mandir replica was a powerful symbol of our shared heritage and values, and it resonated with everyone present.”), but referred to their critics as “Muslim fringe groups and their cronies.”

Completing the circle of not-wholly-harmonious “inclusion,” an unexpected Jewish voice was also heard.

Said Sherona Varulkar Kelley, a community leader representing the Jews of India who marched within the parade: “We are so proud to have been able to walk in solidarity with our Hindu brothers and sisters. India has been a most unique place for the Jews. India, our motherland, gave us shelter for over two thousand years. Jews, especially the Bene Israel of Maharashtra, never knew antisemitism. Only in India! Our love, respect, and eternal gratitude to all the Hindus.”

Or, as the legendary Cindy Adams might exclaim, only in New York, kids, only in New York.