President Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro recently made a snide remark amid the ongoing trade war and said Brahmins are making profits as India continues to buy oil from Russia. A major row broke out over whether he meant Brahmins caste of India or the rich people of India as ‘Brahmins’ refer to the elites in the US. Hindu American Foundation director Suhag A Shukla reacted to the row and said to every Indian, Navarro’s remark was a slur. “Same dangerous, conspiratorial, stereotypical, false villainization of a people,” Shukla posted on X. Shukla said the slur was comparable to if an Indian trade negotiator had said ‘Jews were profiteering in America’. “What if an Indian trade negotiator said: ‘I want Americans to understand what is going on. Jews are profiteering by buying Russian oil at the expense of the American people.’ That’s how Indians heard this @RealPNavarro —as a slur. Same dangerous, conspiratorial, stereotypical, false villainization of a people,” Shukla wrote. Shukla or HAF is not the first Hindu organization to have reacted to Navarro’s Brahmin statement. HinduPACT’s American Hindus Against Defamation branded the remarks “inappropriate” and “Hinduphobic”. “It (Mr Navarro’s remark) is not a ‘critique’; it is a colonial-era trope recycled to depict India as unjust,” AHAD declared. “This is not foreign policy. It’s weaponised Hinduphobia,” the group’s Executive Chair, Ajay Shah, said, “People like Navarro have no place in American political life.“

What did Peter Navarro say about Indian Brahmins?

Navarro has been speaking at length on Trump’s 50% tariff on India — justifying it. “India is nothing but a laundromat for the Kremlin…You got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people,” he said leading to a major row in India. New Delhi said the statement was inaccurate and misleading.

Confusion over Brahmins

In the US, ‘Boston Brahmins’ refers to the old, wealthy, elite families of Boston, Massachusetts, who historically held great social, cultural, and political influence in New England and the United States. Notable Boston Brahmins are the Adams family, the Lowells, the Cabots, the Lodges, the Peabodys, the Forbeses, the Winthrops and the Saltonstalls. But the word Brahmin is from the Hindu caste system, and in a way, ‘Boston Brahmins’ refers to the American upper class.