In June 2025, Zohran Mamdani kicked off a conservative firestorm when he appeared on the Hell Gate and New York Focus mayoral candidate forum and called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "war criminal."
Mamdani said that, as mayor, he wouldn't hold a joint press conference with the Indian leader—a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the far-right, Hindu nationalist paramilitary group—if he ever came to New York City, due to the atrocities that happened under Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 when at least 1,000 Gujarati Muslims were raped, tortured, and murdered by local Hindu nationalist mobs.
"My father, his family comes from Gujarat in India, and his family is Muslim," Mamdani explained at the time. "I'm Muslim, and Narendra Modi helped to orchestrate what was a mass slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat to the extent that we don't even believe there are Gujarati Muslims anymore." Mamdani added, "This is someone who we should view in the same manner that we do, Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a war criminal."
Modi has taken RSS ideologies into his 12-year governance of India through his commitment to a Hindu nationalist agenda, his curbing of the free press, and his role in perpetrating alleged human rights abuses, including the 2002 Gujarat massacre. Now, as mayor, Mamdani is facing the fact that the leader of the RSS, the political group that shaped Modi, has booked out Madison Square Garden for a Saturday event—and there's probably nothing he can do about it.