In September 2018, the former CEO of Twitter (as the predecessor of X was then called) Jack Dorsey set the cat among the pigeons when he posed with a group in India holding a sign that read: Smash Brahminical Patriarchy. Vijaya Gadde, the then legal, policy and trust and safety lead of Twitter, had to apologise, writing: “I’m very sorry for this. It’s not reflective of our views. We took a private photo with a gift just given to us – we should have been more thoughtful. Twitter strives to be an impartial platform for all. We failed to do that here and we must do better to serve our customers in India.”Fast forward seven years, and Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s special adviser, sparked a social media debate when he told Fox News during an interview: “Look, Modi’s a great leader. I don’t understand why he’s getting into bed with Putin and Xi Jinping when he’s the biggest democracy in the world. So I would just simply say to the Indian people: please, understand what’s going on here. You’ve got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people. We need that to stop. Yeah, and we’ll be watching that closely.”Read: Who is Peter Navarro? The statement, which came after his earlier claims that Russia-Ukraine was “Modi’s war” and that the road to peace ran through New Delhi, ignited a storm on X where even politicians from different parties weighed in. Several members of the Opposition, including TMC Rajya Sabha MPs Sagarika Ghose and Saket Gokhale, argued that the term was a reference to Boston Brahmins—a group of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) from Boston who historically represented America’s upper class. Karti Chidambaram, Lok Sabha MP from Sivaganga, echoed the sentiment.Priyanka Chaturvedi, a Rajya Sabha MP from Shiv Sena (UBT), vehemently disagreed, writing: “Peter Navarro’s invocation of a particular caste identity in India to make his point, even if it is to imply the ‘privileged lot’ vis-à-vis the rest, is shameful and sinister. PS: spare me sermons on usage of the word Brahmins in American context.” Historian Hindol Sengupta also rejected the Opposition’s interpretation, arguing that Navarro’s comment had “nothing to do with Boston Brahmins.” RSS ideologue S.S. Guruswamy, meanwhile, framed it as “the other side of caste politics driven by (Leader of Opposition) Rahul (Gandhi).” What made Navarro’s intervention particularly striking is that it echoed the kind of left-liberal academic talking points usually found in American university seminars or NGO reports rather than on Fox News.
