Dr. Indu Viswanathan
I am a lifelong New Yorker, so, naturally, Saturday Night Live has been a part of my regular media consumption for as long as I can remember. SNL has been the incubator for some of our favorite American comedians, producing fun droplets that sometimes integrate seamlessly into pop culture. (Think Debbie Downer.) At its best, SNL has provided a pressure release valve for sociopolitical tensions or light-hearted silliness that allows us to chuckle at ourselves. And, like many New Yorkers, I also bemoaned the decline in SNL’s quality in recent years. I haven’t kept up with SNL for a long time. I rarely watch it. That is, unless someone shares a link to a particular skit.
Yesterday, someone shared a link to a sketch from this weekend’s episode that goes out of its way to demonize Hinduism, incorporating Hindu gods and mantras into its alleged satire. (Read HAF’s Mat McDermott’s great description and analysis here.)
Naturally, the global Hindu community reacted swiftly, with calls to sue or silence them — often from individuals in or from countries where blasphemy laws shape public perceptions of fairness and free speech.
Only, the United States doesn’t have blasphemy laws. SNL has the right to say whatever they want. Calls to sue or silence them outright go against the very ethos of free expression that defines America. When people — whether immigrants to the U.S. or those outside of it — demand legal action against SNL for this, it sounds fundamentalist to the American ear, even though it’s simply coming from a different social context of laws. It sounds repressive. Those reactions feel excessive even to me, someone who found the skit deeply troubling.
Because at its core, this isn’t about SNL’s right to produce that skit. It’s about responsibility.
The Decline of SNL’s Satirical Ethos
Another narrative making the rounds is that this is part of some broader backlash against Trump — that because SNL leans left, it has always been Hinduphobic. As I said earlier, I’m a longtime SNL viewer, and the quality of the show in general has plummeted. Everyone agrees on that. There are occasional moments of humor, but what made SNL culturally significant — especially within progressive circles — was its ability to use humor to break down difficult conversations, to engage people, and to foster a sense of community. Whether or not that community was truly inclusive of all perspectives is debatable, but historically, it hasn’t demonized an entire minoritized race or ethnicity. Not like this.
That’s where this skit failed. Instead of carrying forward its tradition of using humor to bridge divides, it fueled separation. And it did so within a vacuum — one in which most Americans, even progressives, have almost no meaningful, generative exposure to Hinduism.
The Vacuum of Hindu Representation
What SNL represented is exactly how Hinduism has been spoken about in the United States since its very founding. Yes, there are places in America where Hinduism is represented beautifully and accurately. But the average American — with their diminished attention span — isn’t going to attend a lecture at the Vedanta Society or spend a weekend at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam. They’re going to connect the dots between the most easily accessible portrayals, and right now, those portrayals are overwhelmingly negative or superficial.
The average American’s knowledge of Hinduism is woefully thin. What they get in school is a couple of textbook pages — at best — usually focused on caste oppression, reducing a vast and complex tradition to a social problem. In this vacuum, what fills the space? Mockery. Sometimes, it’s the shallow imitations from New Age spaces. Sometimes, it’s right-wing fear-mongering.
And here’s where some Indian commentators get it wrong. What SNL did is part of a horseshoe effect. The same way right-wing Americans call Hinduism ‘satanic’ and urge people not to watch the skit (or to support Kash Patel’s right to take his oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita), they aren’t defending Hindus’ right to define our own tradition. They’re saying, This is demonic. It’ll take your souls. That’s not support — it’s another form of erasure.
The Permission to Mock Hinduism
There seems to be a specific permission structure on the progressive left that allows for the mockery of the Hindu religion itself. This matters. Mocking religious beliefs and traditions, especially in the absence of any meaningful representation, sends a message that Hinduism is fair game in ways that other traditions are not. This selective derision stands out, particularly because Hinduism is not a dominant or hegemonic force in the U.S. — Hindus are a microminority.
Some have suggested that the skit was meant to mock Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which itself was a racist caricature of Hinduism. However, as someone who experienced the impact of that film as a child, I didn’t see SNL satirizing it. The skit felt more like a reenactment — one that lacked any self-awareness or critical lens. It wasn’t subverting racist tropes; it was repeating them.
Others have suggested that Hindus should relax because the skit was meant to mock Christianity — and that the strong adverse reaction of Christians to the skit is evidence of its effectiveness. The only problem is that this is done at the expense of Hindus and Hinduism by dramatizing harmful, age-old misrepresentations of Hinduism as a satanic cult.
This is incredibly irresponsible, especially at a time when Hindu temples are being vandalized across the United States. If a popular and once-respected show portrays Hindus as demonic or ridiculous, even the most tolerant American might conclude: Well, they might be Satan worshipers, but they have a right to their religion. That’s a grotesque misrepresentation. It diminishes the actual cultural and spiritual life of Hindu (American) temples, and it undermines the idea that Hinduism has something to contribute to American democracy — not just something to be tolerated by it.
The Hypocrisy of Progressive Satire
This skit also highlights a broader critique of the progressive left: the selective application of ‘punching up’ in satire. The dominant argument in progressive spaces is that it’s fair game to mock and exaggerate representations of those in power — white, male, Christian, straight — because they hold disproportionate power. Satire, in this framework, is about speaking ‘truth to power.’
But somehow, this rationale extends to Hindus and Hinduism, despite the fact that Hindus are a microminority in the U.S. Some speculate that this reflects the presence of Hindus in positions of political power — people like Kash Patel or Tulsi Gabbard. But their political affiliations are irrelevant here. Hinduism, as a tradition, is still openly degraded across the political spectrum, including on the right. Just look at the right-narrative that if Usha Vance was truly assimilated and truly supported her husband, she would have converted for him.
What SNL’s Skit Really Signals
At the end of the day, SNL isn’t that important. It’s not a driver of culture so much as a reflection of it — a signal of the progressive zeitgeist. And this skit signals something worth paying attention to: how progressive spaces engage with pagan and heathen traditions, including Hinduism. Progressive spaces are, by and large, agnostic if not suspicious of religion, but at least they used to project a kind of right to privacy when it came to minoritized faiths. What used to be an effort to foster inclusion and understanding is now, in the case of Hinduism, an uncritical embrace of ridicule and misrepresentation.
No one expects SNL to accurately convey the depth of Hinduism. But at the very least, given their expansive reach, they could be responsible enough not to reinforce the permission structure for others to misunderstand and vilify Hinduism and, as an extension, Hindu Americans.
P.S. It doesn’t help when members of the Hindu diaspora themselves produce media that reinforces these tired and familiar stereotypes. Picture This, Amazon Prime’s new movie starring Simone Ashley and Sindhu Vee, plays to the lowest common denominator, satirizing a Hindu pandit as fat, greedy, and superstitious — further cementing Hinduphobic tropes in mainstream narratives.
We need a greater diversity of media — more and better representations of Hindus and Hinduism that expand the scope of how we are seen, understood, and depicted. Including through satire. And that’s only going to happen through the creative arts and sociocultural savvy — not through methodically constructed and serious-faced polemics. That’s on us, not on Hinduism-ignorant writers and comedians at SNL.
This article was originally published on Medium and republished here with permission from the author.
About the author:
Dr. Indu Viswanathan serves as the Director of Education at the Hindu University of America (HUA). She has an Ed.D. from Columbia University. Her work is grounded in decoloniality dedicated to contributing to and learning from the lived experiences of Hindu Americans. Dr. Indu Vishwanathan is the co-founder and Director of Understanding Hinduphobia.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Voice of Hindus. Any content provided by our contributors or authors is their opinion.
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