On October 11, 2026, as hundreds of worshippers gathered at the Sri Venkateswara Swami Temple in Aurora, Illinois, for the first night of Navaratri, a 19-year-old man arrived armed with a rifle and body armor, according to prosecutors. A jammed gun and a tip from the suspect's co-worker prevented what could have been a massacre. Authorities later found a manifesto espousing white supremacist views.
US Congressmen Ro Khanna, a Democrat, and Rich McCormick, a Republican, have called on the FBI and the Department of Justice to investigate the plot as a hate crime. In a letter, they warned that the attack "did not emerge in isolation," pointing to a broader rise in hostility toward Hindu Americans and Indian Americans. A 2026 Carnegie Endowment survey found that one in four Indian American adults reported being subjected to racial, ethnic, or religious slurs since the start of 2025.
The incident comes amid a surge in online hate targeting Hindu communities. In September 2026, Bo French, a Texas Republican candidate for state office, posted a photo of Indian American students at a University of Texas at Austin football game, claiming that "the problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined." The post, viewed 54 million times, sparked responses calling for violence against Indians and the desecration of Hindu temples.
The demonization of Hindu worship
French's post made no mention of religion, yet the reactions it provoked specifically targeted Hindu temples. As a professor of Hindu studies, I argue that anti-Indian and anti-Hindu hate in the United States are deeply intertwined. Some of this hostility targets the Hindu practice of worshipping deities through sacred images, drawing on a long history of prejudice that portrays Hindus as idolaters. This hate is amplified on the same online platforms that spread racial hostility.
In Hindu temples, worship centers on murtis—consecrated images in which the deity is understood to be present. These temples and images have become frequent objects of online abuse. In September 2025, Alexander Duncan, then a Republican US Senate candidate in Texas, objected to a large image of the deity Hanuman in Sugar Land, asking, "Why are we allowing a false statue of a false Hindu god to be here in Texas? We are a Christian nation!" The post was viewed over 6 million times. In August 2026, pastor Dale Partridge posted an image of the Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple in New Jersey, claiming that "our 1700s Christian forefathers would have this demon temple leveled in 24 hours."
A September 2026 report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate found that Hindus "have been singled out for attacks on the basis of their religion." The report notes that posts routinely refer to devotees as "demon worshippers," deride Hindu deities, and sometimes call for temples to be destroyed and replaced with "American" monuments. These posts frame Hindu worship as "fundamentally incompatible with Christianity."
When such posts invoke America and Christianity, they reflect an outlook that sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry call Christian nationalism—the belief that America should be distinctively Christian. In a 2017 survey, almost a third of Americans said the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation.
The long history of prejudice
This current manifestation of Christian nationalist hostility to Hinduism is best understood in the context of a broader history of American Christian responses to Hinduism. As religious studies scholar Michael Altman argues, the charge that Hindus worship false gods and idols took hold in American national culture nearly two centuries ago. Nineteenth-century American schoolbooks, shaped by Protestant beliefs, sorted religions into "true and false," treating Hindu "idolatry" as proof of moral degradation.
Scholar Vasudha Narayanan shows that in the early 20th century, some Americans embraced Hindu ideas while keeping Hindus themselves at a distance. Although a 1917 law barred most immigration from Asia, some Americans found inspiration in Hindu thought and yoga practices, presenting these not as Hindu but as "universal" spirituality.
After the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act opened the door to immigrants from Asia, the Hindu American population grew to over one million by 2000, according to religion scholar Diana Eck. Starting in the 1970s, these Hindus built dozens of temples, but Eck shows that these new temples were often met with hostility. In 1983, attackers desecrated a temple outside Pittsburgh, smashing sacred images and scrawling "Leave" on the altar. In the early 1990s, vandals spray-painted a future temple site in New Jersey with "Get out Hindoos."
Religious studies scholar Sailaja Krishnamurti traces how this animosity continued into the 21st century, pointing to films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which depicted Hindus performing human sacrifice, and televangelists like Pat Robertson, who denounced Hinduism as "demonic." Such depictions, she argues, are reflected in violence against Hindus. In 2019, a vandal spray-painted messages about Jesus and defaced images of Hindu deities.
The Aurora plot is a stark reminder that anti-Hindu hate is not a fringe phenomenon but a growing threat. As lawmakers and scholars call for action, the need to address the online amplification of such hatred has never been more urgent. The response must involve not only law enforcement but also a broader societal reckoning with the historical and ideological roots of this prejudice.
