Suhag Shukla remembers the weight of a word before she even hears it. It is a specific kind of gravity, the kind that pulls at the corners of a community's identity until the edges start to fray. When the Chicago Tribune recently pinned the label "far-right ideology" to Hindu American advocacy, it wasn't just a stylistic choice in a newsroom. It was a branding iron.
Words have teeth. They bite into the skin of public perception and leave scars that take generations to heal. For the Hindu American community, a group often praised for its quiet contributions to medicine, technology, and the culinary soul of American cities, being suddenly draped in the robes of "far-right extremism" feels less like journalism and more like an ambush.
The Sound of a Gavel in a Newsroom
Imagine a father in a Chicago suburb. Let’s call him Naveen. He has lived in the same brick house for twenty years. He pays his taxes, volunteers at the local food pantry, and spent his weekends helping his daughter master the complex geometry of a Bharatanatyam dance recital. He thinks of himself as a neighbor. A citizen. A thread in the American quilt.
Then he opens the morning paper.
He reads that the organizations representing his faith, the groups that fought for his right to celebrate Diwali in public spaces or advocated for accurate history books in his children’s schools, are being categorized alongside the most radical, fringe elements of political extremism. In one stroke of a keyboard, Naveen is no longer just a neighbor. He is a suspect.
This is the "invisible stake" that Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, is fighting against. When she slammed the Chicago Tribune for its phrasing, she wasn't just nitpicking a vocabulary list. She was defending the right of a minority community to define itself rather than being defined by outsiders who might not know a mantra from a manifesto.
The Architecture of a Label
Labeling is a shortcut for the lazy. It is easier to call something "far-right" than it is to understand the nuanced, centuries-old philosophical underpinnings of Dharma or the specific geopolitical anxieties of a diaspora. When media outlets use these broad brushes, they create a reality that the average reader accepts as gospel.
Consider the mechanics of the "far-right" tag. In the Western mind, that phrase conjures images of white supremacy, isolationism, and the rejection of pluralism. It is a box designed to hold hate.
But apply that same box to Hindu Americans—a group that is ethnically diverse, largely immigrant, and statistically leans toward the Democratic party in American elections—and the logic falls apart. It is a square peg being hammered into a round hole with such force that the wood is beginning to splinter.
The danger isn't just in the inaccuracy. It’s in the isolation. When a community is labeled "extreme," the doors to the public square begin to lock. Their concerns about religious freedom or civil rights are dismissed as "agendas." Their grievances are categorized as "dog whistles." They are effectively silenced before they even open their mouths to speak.
The Human Cost of a Headline
The sting of this rhetoric is felt most sharply in the schools.
A hypothetical student—we’ll call her Anjali—is sitting in a high school history class. The teacher mentions a recent article about "Hindu far-right" groups. Anjali, who spent her morning lighting a small lamp at her family’s altar, feels a hot flush of shame. She wonders if her friends now see her faith as something dangerous. She wonders if she should hide the small Om pendant tucked beneath her shirt.
This isn't a metaphor. It is the lived reality of a generation of young Hindu Americans who are finding that their heritage is being politicized by people who have never stepped foot in a temple.
The Chicago Tribune’s choice of words wasn't just a critique of a specific political stance. It was a signal to the rest of the world that this specific religious identity is now "fair game" for the kind of scrutiny and suspicion usually reserved for hate groups.
Shukla’s pushback is an act of reclamation. It is a demand for the nuance that the media usually affords to other minority groups. Why is it that when other communities advocate for their interests, it is called "civil rights," but when Hindu Americans do the same, it is labeled "nationalism" or "extremism"?
The Ghosts of History
To understand the sensitivity here, one must look at the ghosts. For decades, the Hindu community in the West was the "model minority." They were the doctors, the engineers, the quiet achievers. But that safety was always an illusion. It was a peace bought by staying invisible.
The moment the community decided to find its voice—to point out bias in textbooks, to protest the depiction of their deities on toilet seats or beer cans, to demand a seat at the political table—the narrative shifted. The "quiet" minority became the "aggressive" minority. The "spiritual" practitioners became "ideologues."
It is a classic bait-and-switch.
By labeling advocacy as "far-right," critics can bypass the actual arguments being made. They don't have to address the facts of a specific policy or the validity of a civil rights claim. They just have to point at the label. It is the ultimate intellectual shortcut.
Beyond the Ink
The fight between a community leader and a major metropolitan newspaper might seem like a small-town squabble, but it is a microcosm of the 21st-century's greatest struggle: the battle over who gets to tell the story of "Us."
If a newspaper can rebrand a religious minority as a political threat, then no identity is safe. The integrity of the press depends on its ability to distinguish between a community protecting its heritage and a political movement seeking to subvert democracy. When those two things are conflated, the truth is the first casualty.
The Hindu American leaders standing up to these headlines are doing more than just correcting a record. They are asking a fundamental question about the future of American pluralism: Is there room in this country for a minority to be assertive without being labeled an enemy?
The answer to that question won't be found in a style guide or a newsroom memo. It will be found in the way we look at our neighbors. It will be found in the moment we decide to put down the branding iron and actually listen to the people behind the labels.
Until then, the ink will continue to bleed, and the scars will continue to form, long after the newspaper has been tossed into the recycling bin.
The label is a wall. The story is a bridge. We are currently building too many of the former and far too few of the latter.
