The Pied Piper of Brooklyn

TWO YEARS AGO, in July 2023, I was among the first in India to write about former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.  Long before he was a household name. What was even more surprising at that time was how few in the media seemed interested. I was not sure why.

Of course, Ramaswamy became quite famous not only in India, but the world over, as his campaign progressed. He did exceptionally well right up to the point when he conceded to frontrunner, and now president, Donald J Trump. Ramaswamy, born in 1985, was only 37 then, among the youngest presidential candidates in the history of the United States.

Today, there is another Indian-origin political candidate for high office, Zohran Kwame Mamdani. Even younger, at just 33, Mamdani is the Democratic nominee for New York City’s mayoral race, the winner to be sworn in on November 4, 2025. But unlike Ramaswamy, Mamdani is the most discussed political debutant not just in the US but, possibly, all over the free world. As far as India is concerned, the only one who comes close in living memory is Arvind Kejriwal, who stormed into national politics in 2012 and became Delhi’s chief minister the following year.

What, then, accounts for Mamdani’s huge presence and fan following? Youth, charisma, charm, personality, campaigning strategies, marketing gimmicks—a winning combination of all these? Not really.

The answer lies in my earlier comparison with Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy had all the above qualities—and more—going for him. By most accounts, smarter, better qualified, besides being a self-made billionaire in his own right, Ramaswamy comes out ahead.

But there is one fundamental difference. No, I am not referring to the fact that Ramaswamy is Hindu and Mamdani Muslim—though this matters too. The more important difference is that Ramaswamy is a Republican, conservative, and professedly anti-woke. Mamdani, on the other hand, is not only a liberal Democrat, but a self-proclaimed socialist, who has publicly stated that he would like to “seize the means of production.” Mamdani’s media magnetism has a much simpler cause: he is the darling of the left. And it is the left that controls the media all over the free world.

Do I grudge Mamdani his innings in the limelight? Not at all. Knowing his parents a bit, more so his gifted filmmaker mother, Mira Nair, I can easily share in their pride. The admiration Zohran attracts in the wider secular Indian- American and international cosmopolitan Indian elite doesn’t surprise me at all.

Before I analyse the “meaning of Mamdani” to invoke the evocative title of fellow-columnist MJ Akbar’s headline, some might ask, “Is being the mayor of New York city such a big deal?” The answer is undoubtedly and resoundingly “Yes.”

Not only is New York the proverbial Big Apple in so many senses of the world, it probably has the biggest budget of any city in the world. A whopping $112.4 billion, according to CBS, which is nearly half the entire budget of New York state. And over 10 times the budget of Delhi, a city-state which enjoys the highest annual expenditure in India.

Only 20 countries in the world have a higher annual budget than New York City’s. Just for comparison, Poland’s budget is $126 billion, just $14 billion more. New York City’s GDP is close to $2.3 trillion, more than half of India’s, which boasts that it will overtake Japan this year to be the world’s fourth-largest economy.

Why am I bandying these figures about? Because, somewhat akin to Delhi, New York City is so cash-rich that socialism of the Mamdani variety seems not only welcome, but even feasible. But is it? Not really. Because New York City is already running a huge deficit—$13 billion, over 10 per cent of its sanctioned expenditure.

How can a city which is short of cash and nearly broke afford to give out even more freebies and sops? Neither New York state, let alone the federal government led by Trump, is likely to indulge Mamdani’s fantasy-mongering populism. Who, then, will bankroll his promises?

Simple, he says: tax the rich. And use race— attack white privilege, as a bludgeon. Also, appeal to the city’s large Muslim vote bank. Mamdani, no surprise, supports the Intifada and Free Palestine causes. He also wishes to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In one of his speeches, he is on record as saying that he is a Gujarati Muslim, but there are no Muslims left in Gujarat. This is a bizarre and outrageous falsehood. Muslims in Gujarat probably exceed the entire population of New York City; certainly, they are twice as many as the total number of the Muslims in all of the US.

These and other statements have left people wondering whether Mamdani is an original innocent or con artist. Given that he is a politician, it is anyone’s guess which is a more likely. Trump has called Mamdani a “communist lunatic.” Mamdani is certainly not a lunatic even if he is very likely to be a communist. Worse, he also appears to be a jihadi sympathiser. His antipathy for Israel, Zionism, and Hindutva are well-known.

But what makes him more dangerous is that he seems oblivious to the experience of his parents’ and grandparents’ generations in India, which would have proven to him that state-sponsored socialism simply doesn’t work.

From eight-year waits for a Vespa or Lambretta in the 1960s to four-year advance bookings for either an Ambassador or Fiat (Premier) in the 1970s, to Maruti allotment letters being sold on the black market in the 1980s—I am speaking only of vehicular shortages. But let’s not forget how difficult it was to get a telephone connection or, for that matter, something as ordinary as sugar. His own family members, having lived through that era, could easily have disabused him of his delusions.

That is why I suspect that there is something deeper at play. Mamdani may be the cat’s paw for forces deeper and darker. The same forces that turned fuel-laden jetliners into live missiles crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001? That tried to “Occupy Wall Street” 10 years later in 2011? That flooded illegal immigrants, including dangerous criminals, into New York City, maintaining them at state expense in the Pakistan-owned Roosevelt Hotel?

Aren’t these forces at work right now, creating disaffection and social unrest in cities all over the US, the latest example of which was Los Angeles burning? You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to surmise that Mamdani represents nothing short of an attack, this time from within, on American capitalism itself. What Al Qaeda terrorists did not succeed in doing, Mamdani might if he wins. He may not only defund the police as he has promised, but depopulate Wall Street itself.

Elitism wrapped up in delusion and deception oozing charm and panache make for a heady brew more dangerous than a Molotov cocktail?