Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat mayoral candidate for New York, has caught the fancy of many around the world. Yet when we take a closer look at him, the 33-year-old does not appear so wonderful. If Mamdani isn’t a fraud, he’s certainly one of the most dangerous and disingenuous politicians in America.

US President Donald Trump called him “a 100% communist lunatic,” even as Mamdani suggests otherwise. Note that Mamdani is on the record for saying that “the end goal” is “seizing the means of production.” 

Will the real Mamdani please stand up?

Before we carry on, let me explain why Mamdani is interested in controlling the means of production. He comes from de facto South Asian royalty. In India, the land of his forefathers, the currency of social status is not wealth but power. Children of top bureaucrats get to swim in Olympic pools while the hoi polloi struggle to get drinking water. Billionaires doff their cap to petty bureaucrats because that is the cost of doing business.

If a bureaucrat is late for a flight or a train or a movie, everyone has to wait until the “sahib bahadur” (brave lord) arrives. No billionaire can claim such privilege. A posh Englishman who went to Harvard wrote a fashionable though superficial book about the billionaire raj in India. As a casual visitor to India, I can say he was wrong. India has a bureaucrat raj, not a billionaire raj. Think of a pantomime cartoon villain who is the master of the universe. That is exactly the privilege Mamdani comes from. If you read on, I will explain further.

For now, let us give Mamdani the benefit of doubt. Assume he said what he did about seizing the means of production to play to the gallery. Assume further that he ain’t no real communist, he’s just a washed out hip-hop counselor and rapper with a penchant for paying homage to the Holy Land Five whom Mamdani kindly called “my guys” and who were convicted on all counts for giving $12 million to Hamas. 

Perhaps the “my guys” comment might just have been virtue signalling. On the left, it is fashionable to call Israel an apartheid regime and ignore the crazy jihadist Islamic ideology of Hamas as well the organization’s murderous ways. So, our man was just following fashion. Perhaps he is just a child of elite parents who fled a failed system from which their forebears profited. 

Unfortunately for Americans, Mamdani now wishes to impose those same failed principles and frameworks of his forebears on the US. Therefore, it is important to examine his background. Mamdani went to Bank Street, a private school, where preschool tuition currently starts at $37,554, and middle school will cost you $68,793 a year. From there Mamdani went to the Bronx High School of Science, which boasts the most Nobel Prizes of any high school. Clearly he was no science star and, if he is a product of this joint, I doubt the school’s alumni have won any Nobel prizes in economics. Finally, Mamdani attended the tony Bowdoin College, an exorbitantly expensive private liberal arts school in Maine. Leveraging his high school science know-how to the hilt, he studied Africana Studies and co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine. Wherever Mamdani came from, he was no slumming Salaam Bombay kid.

Elite kid with crazy ideas

It is incongruous to find Mamdani as the poster child for the poor and the disadvantaged New Yorkers and even Americans today. In fact, his background makes it difficult to see how the son of an Oscar-nominated mother and firebrand Columbia University professor would understand the average Joe, despite the slick marketing of his campaign. Note that Mamdani makes $142,000 a year plus a per diem as an Assemblyman and owns property in his country of birth that is valued between $150,000 and $200,000. 

This not-so-poor mayoral candidate is advocating rent control. I’m sure he’s just the kind of guy he has in mind for rent stabilized apartments. Come to think of it, Mamdani lives in one in Astoria. His current location may be modest, but he likes posher digs, telling the New York Editorial Board in an interview, “If I was able to put in a rent freeze, I wouldn’t be in a rent-stabilized apartment. I would actually be on the Upper East Side, in a new apartment.” 

At least Mamdani is consistent, as he goes on to say, “I am someone who is deeply skeptical of means testing.” A chicken in every pot and an Upper East Side apartment for everyone, especially himself, is Mamdani’s political creed. If he wins the mayoral election, no doubt prosperity and Ferraris will rain down on the young man himself. Mamdani doesn’t seem to realize that, if he implements rent control, the Upper East Side will be a tenement, and Gracie Mansion, the home of the New York mayor, will be subdivided into squalor in no time.

Then again, Mamdani’s grasp of economics is not his strong point. In an interview with Erin Burnett, Mamdani was asked, “Do you like capitalism?” Mamdani responded, “No, I, I, I have many critiques of capitalism.” (8:00 minute mark here) His answer was amazing for a guy who wants to run a city that is the embodiment of capitalism. 

Mamdani says of the city with the most billionaires in the world that those with such wealth shouldn’t exist. To adapt a famous headline, “Mamdani to billionaires: drop dead.” Of the people who pay the most in taxes to keep the city afloat, he says in another interview, “I don’t think we should have billionaires.” These comments are important because they provide a window into Mamdani’s thinking. He genuinely believes that billionaires do not have a right to their wealth and their assets are unseemly. If billionaires should not exist, what about millionaires? Is a net worth of $999 million alright or is it too much as well?

New York has turned against billionaires before. Andrew Cuomo, the 67-year old former governor of New York state whom Mamdani has just beaten in the Democratic primary, targeted the wealthy earlier. However, during the Covid pandemic, Cuomo realized that was the wrong approach for a city and state that leans heavily on the most affluent. The 0.7% who make $1 million or more a year pay 35.6% of the Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) tax, and 42.4% of New York City’s Personal Income Tax (PIT). That is highly progressive as is and has been pushing many of the wealthiest to the sunnier shores of Florida. While New York City recovered many of its most affluent post-pandemic, Mamdani’s primary victory is once again accelerating this trend.

The 33-year-old star of the Democratic Party is promising freebies at a time the US debt is at a record high, and his city of choice is not exactly flush with cash. In more ways than one, he is bringing third world populism to America. How is this elite kid with crazy ideas convinced that Peronist populism will work in this country? Perhaps the answer lies in his Bowdoin education as The Spectator surmises. I take the view that we will get a better answer if we study Mamdani’s family background instead.

The story of Mamdani’s elite Hindu grandfather

Many see Mamdani as an underdog who upset Cuomo. That is indubitably true. However, as I point out earlier, he ain’t no Oliver Twist. His mother’s family occupied the commanding heights of privilege in newly independent India.

A little bit of a history lesson is important here. Prior to India’ independence in 1947, the British ruled India through the Indian Civil Service (ICS). The ICS was known as the “steel frame” of the British Raj. At the district level, the ICS officers were and, still are, referred to as collectors. It was their job to collect extortionate taxes rapaciously and ruthlessly, often causing famines in the process.

After independence, India did not disband the ICS and delegate power to elected mayors. Instead it renamed the ICS as Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and increased its powers. Under Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, New Delhi embraced socialism. An already-powerful colonial bureaucracy now acquired draconian powers. The IAS occupied the commanding heights of the economy and the state. To put this matter in context, the head of the Archeological Survey of India, the Reserve Bank of India, and the Competition Commission are all headed by IAS officers. They head all departments in the government and are the most powerful superelite in the world.

My Indian friends point out repeatedly that IAS officers are brown sahibs who replaced white sahibs in their colonial bungalows with their 20 servants. Many also point out that they are the top dogs of postcolonial corruption. To be fair, back in Mamdani’s grandfather’s days, IAS officers were not so corrupt. They were still notoriously incompetent though. 

Almost invariably the IAS officers of the Nehru era studied some humanities a la Africana Studies but they were in charge of science education, engineering projects, and state-owned enterprises. It is to these innumerate IAS officers — colonial bureaucrats turbocharged by socialism — that India owed its pathetic “Hindu rate of growth.” Some of my Indian friends indignantly argue that this Hindu rate had nothing to do with Hinduism and everything to do with the command and control license-permit-quota socialistic IAS raj that lasted until 1991, the year known in history for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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Mamdani’s maternal grandfather, Amrit Lal Nair, was an IAS officer. Nair’s father had changed his last name from Nayyar to Nair, presumably to win brownie points with the British. As an IAS officer, Nair helped set up the first government-owned integrated steel plant in India under the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). Note that Nair had no expertise in the steel industry and had never run a factory before, but IAS officers are like gods in India and are deemed to be able to do everything. Perhaps this family heritage convinces Mamdani that he can run grocery stores in New York but more on that later. Anyway, note that it was the Germans, not Nair, who really built the SAIL steel factory that began production in 1959.

After embracing socialism, the government got into the business of business. Not only did it run steel factories, but it also ran hotels, airlines and almost everything else. In 1953, the Indian government nationalized Air India. Under Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, India embraced the Soviet Union more closely. In 1969, Indira — no relation to Mahatma Gandhi — nationalized all 14 of the major banks and squeezed out private industry.

Father and daughter created a leviathan state with the IAS as their praetorian guard. Needless to say the inevitable occurred: corruption and cronyism flourished. Taxpayer subsidies went to bloated state-owned enterprises, not to schools and hospitals. The economy collapsed and hundreds of millions remained trapped in poverty.

More tragedy followed. In 1975, Indira declared the “Emergency,” which allowed her to rule by fiat. This leftist authoritarianism was very similar to the Soviet regime. Indira suspended civil liberties, locked up opponents, and even gave her son, Sanjay Gandhi, “extra constitutional authority” to, among other things, create a police state. Indira and Sanjay used IAS officers to rule the country just as their British predecessors had used the ICS. Mamdani’s maternal grandfather did fine under Indira and Sanjay as did Congressman Ro Khanna’s grandpa.

The story of Mamdani’s celebrity mother and professor father

Grandpa Nair was at the top of the Indian social tree and made sure that his daughter went to the poshest of posh boarding schools. She went to Loreto Convent, Tara Hall in a city that was the de facto capital of British India. For at least six months, senior British officials retired to Shimla to escape the enervating heat of the Indian plains. 

It was in this summer capital in the Himalayas that Christian missionaries set up boarding schools to train the high-born children of the British Empire. In 1892, the Loreto Sisters came to set up a Catholic boarding school. Mira Nair, Mamdani’s mother, studied in this exalted colonial institution. She started college at Miranda House, founded by Sir Maurice Gwyer, and transferred to Harvard after her first year in 1976. Remember, Indira was ruling India as a dictator in this year and Mira’s father was dutifully serving in the IAS. In those days, only the superelite in India could even think of an overseas education, and Mira was one of the chosen ones.

Today, Mira is known as the celebrity director of films like Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala, and Monsoon Wedding. They are anglicized Bollywood-esque movies, which have earned Mira plaudits among critics and even some monetary success. She owns three homes in New York City, Kampala, and New Delhi. The Big Apple is her home base though, and she and her husband hustled to get back as fast as possible during the Covid pandemic lockdowns. Note that she did not choose to live in Kampala or New Delhi during this period.

Mira is a Punjabi Hindu who married a Gujarati Muslim. Her husband is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and a professor of anthropology, political science, and African studies at Columbia University, and he also serves as the chancellor of Kampala International University in Uganda. Like Mira, Mahmood Mamdani also went to Harvard and he “specializes in the study of colonialism, anti-colonialism and decolonisation.” A prolific author, Mamdani Senior grew up in Kampala and is a Gujarati Shia Muslim of the Twelver branch, just like Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

My Indian friends point out that Zohran Kwame Mamdani was raised in his father’s faith. His father chose Kwame as the middle name after Francis Kwame Nkrumah, a Ghanaian pan-Africanist leader. Neither in name nor in faith does Mamdani demonstrate any connection to the Hindu tradition of his mother Mira’s family. My Indian friends further point out that this is in keeping with a centuries-old tradition of Muslim men marrying Hindu women and bringing them into the Islamic fold. The children of such mixed marriages almost invariably identify with Islam. Love live paternalism and patriarchy — multiculturalism and multi-religiosity be damned.

To go back to Mamdani Senior and Mira hunkering down in their New York digs, it is important to note that they aren’t half shabby. Theirs are hardly the homes of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” Marxists. Instead, they look more like the homes of people who espouse egalitarian, socialist, anti-colonial nonsense so long as they’re at the top. Hell, I might espouse socialism too if I had a $2 million Chelsea loft.

A savvy, slick campaign

Mamdani’s parents give us clues about his terrific political campaign. He has access to both Harvard and Hollywood. He is the darling of the left-leaning South Asian elite, many of whom are children of IAS officers. Naturally, his social media prowess is extraordinary and his videos are rather good.

I will just examine one of Mamdani’s videos. In a fantastic campaign ad shot in Hindi, he explains New York’s rank voting as well as his agenda. Mamdani splices Bollywood movies into his message as he speaks in Hindi. Deewaar, a cult 1975 movie, is thrown into the message. In that bit, Vijay, the all-action man who takes the path of crime, is saying to his straight-arrowed cop brother, Ravi, “I have buildings, property, bank balance, bungalow, car. What do you have?” In the movie, the brother responds, “mother.” Breaking from the clip, a smiling Mamdani responds, “you.” This video is meant to pit the people against the billionaires, implying they are all crooks like Vijay.

Let me explain the subtext further. In 1975, Indira was ruling India through the likes of Mamdani’s IAS grandfather. She had criminalized most private economic activity through the license-permit-quota raj that I have already mentioned above. Smuggling cheaper goods of higher quality and bribing officials was often the only way to get ahead. In his video, Mamdani is blaming Vijay for being a crook. What he is getting wrong is that the system created the crime, not the other way. At the end of Deewaar, Vijay is killed by his brother. Indeed, he is the tragic hero of the movie. Taking the analogy from his own campaign ad, I have a question: will Mamdani metaphorically shoot billionaires on the streets of NYC and turn them into tragic heroes? 

In the 1970s, superstar Amitabh Bachchan played the angry young man fighting an unjust system. In Deewaar he takes to a life of crime. In 2025, is Mamdani playing the cheery young man taking on another unjust system?

Hypocrisy of brown privilege

A friend in Indian Punjab quipped, “Mamdani was not only born with a silver spoon in his mouth but also a pearl necklace, diamond crown, and jeweled bracelets in a gold thali.” A thali is a round Indian plate with a rim that typically has many dishes.

My Punjabi friend’s point is that we are dealing with a scion of a South Asian leftist elite that blames colonial oppressors to deflect responsibility from the fact that they failed their fellow citizens. After the British left, Mamdani’s IAS grandfather lived in those very bungalows the British built and imposed socialism on the country. At the same time, he educated his daughter in elite Western institutions, and she pulled stakes for the US.

As many of my middle class Indian friends point out, this sanctimonious South Asian elite has preyed on white guilt for decades. They made hay while the sun was still shinin’. In his college application to Columbia University, Mamdani identified his racial background as “Asian” and “Black or African American.” He claims he ticked two boxes to represent his Ugandan-born South Asian background, but it’s clear Mamdani manipulated a nuance to rig the system to gain an advantage.

We can view Mamdani as yet another charismatic young politician doing whatever he can to get ahead. However, just as people talk about white privilege, Mamdani represents brown privilege. Many of the South Asian elites send their children to the US. Typically, these elites have enjoyed all the fruits of empire but profit from railing against it. Their children and grandchildren who become Americans are dyed in the wool socialists because their families gained from this system. They also have the sense of entitlement that they, not markets, should control the commanding heights of the economy. 

Along with entitlement, these inheritors of brown privilege have a sense of victimhood. They argue incessantly that they suffered against white oppressors who frequently robbed them of their language, religion, and culture. Naturally, identity politics follow. Mamdani is appealing to the poor by blaming billionaires. He is attracting LGBTQIA+ voters by supporting “gender-affirming treatments to trans youth.” Mamdani is seducing South Asian voters through slick Bollywood-inspired ads. He is drawing in Muslim votes by laying claim to his Islamic heritage.

Just to be clear, Mamdani’s family enjoyed all the fruits of the British Empire. So their railing against the empire is a little rich. Now Mamdani seeks to bring in the old spoils system that his Hindu IAS grandfather administered in India. He seeks to bring socialism to the land of capitalism, failing to answer a critical question: Why did socialism that India chose through its free will fail so spectacularly?

Third World paternalism comes to America

Recently, I came across a fascinating scholar on Fair Observer named Harshan Kumarasingham who explained how brown and indeed black sahibs took charge when the colonial masters left. This Eastminster model is very different from the Westminster democracy of the UK. In a nutshell, postcolonial elites composed of the likes of Mamdani’s grandfather imposed paternalism, elitism, and neocolonial socialism.

Nehru is a poster child of this class brimming with brown privilege. The man who set India off on the socialist path went to Harrow, the same hallowed British school as Winston Churchill, and then to Cambridge. Dr. I.P. Singh, who is now in his 80s, tells me that Nehru was only comfortable in English and spoke poor Hindi. He also called himself “Pandit Nehru,” a Brahminical title that was hardly egalitarian or modern. Yet India’s anglicized first prime minister had the arrogance to speak for the great unwashed not only in his own country but also in the entire Third World. Like Nehru, Mamdani went to posh schools and is now promising a new form of paternalistic socialism. It did not work in India, and it will certainly not work here in the US.

It is certainly true that Mamdani is raising the right questions. There is undeniably a cost of living crisis, and most New Yorkers are struggling to make ends meet. In addressing this issue, Mamdani is indisputably resonating with a number of New Yorkers, especially the younger generation. He smiles a lot, has clear talking points, and stays on message. Yet Mamdani is the classic example of style over substance, and almost all of his answers to the questions facing New York are plain wrong.

Let us take the simple example of government-run grocery stores. Many have already pointed out that grocery stores have among the lowest margins in America. They generally make a mere 1-2% in profits after tax. Running these stores is not easy and requires expertise. Mamdani wants the city government to run these stores in much the same way IAS officers like his grandfather ran steel mills and airlines. Remember that the IAS ran state-owned enterprises into the ground, and they were only kept aloft thanks to ever-ballooning taxpayer subsidies in the halcyon days of socialism. Governments running businesses has always been and continues to be a damnably stupid idea.

To make matters worse, Mamdani plans to use union labor at his proposed grocery stores. I studied literature, not finance, and even I fail to see how this would make groceries cheaper. Mamdani also misunderstood the NYC FRESH budget item he plans to use to pay for his pet grocery stores, which is not an encouraging sign for a potential mayor of one of the most complicated cities on the planet. 

Some people worry that Mamdani’s grocery store plan will result in a government takeover of the local industry and is a “blueprint for collapse” — I don’t. There’s no way a government entity will be able to compete in a market that has tiny margins using union employees in the total vacuum of a market incentive. It would be like fearing the Department of Motor Vehicles opening a bodega down the street. 

More importantly, the waste will be enormous, the employees utterly indifferent, the savings to both taxpayer and patron illusory, and the cost ridiculous, which is why I’m all for trying this idea and laying bare (again) these ridiculous claims backed by socialist lunacy. I’m still trying to figure out how New York City’s government shells out $1 million for toilets. Not only that, how do five, count ’em, five grocery stores cost 60 million taxpayer dollars? If you build enough low-price, nonprofit grocery stores, you’ll bankrupt the city. 

Yet another Pied Piper

Mamdani sells his immigrant story with great gusto. His anticolonial comments win him much acclaim from the left. Even the likes of Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell, two famous British politicians turned podcasters, have fallen prey to Mamdani’s charms. On close scrutiny, Mamdani’s anti-colonial drivel is vacuous. He is what the French would call a member of la gauche caviar. You could use the terms “limousine liberal” or “champagne socialist” to describe Mamdani as well.

In brief, Mamdani comes from a long line of people who bought into the idea of socialism for their own personal benefit, while never experiencing the worst of it themselves. They profited from the system even as it increasingly teetered on the verge of collapse. These brown sahibs then sent their kids to America, where expensive schools, fancy houses, and success were to be had in a way that was impossible in India or Uganda. 

Ironically, the privileged brown kids who fled a dysfunctional system created by their fathers are now seeking to bring that misery to their adopted lands. As a Texan I can’t wait to watch this latest “experiment” in socialism implode. 

The internal contradictions of Mamdani’s political platform boggle the mind. He told Jacobin, “I began my political organizing life around Palestinian solidarity.” Yet Mamdani should know fully well that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah would leave LGBTQIA+ people alive for more than two minutes after meeting them. Mamdani is a sanctimonious scoundrel, a hypocrite of the highest order, or, at best, a man possessed of no coherent worldview.

There is another tiny little matter that Indian historians point to me. The South Asian Muslim elite has imperial memory. From 1192 to 1858, the official language from Pakistan to Bangladesh was Persian. This Muslim elite now controls two states and remains wealthy as well as powerful in secular India. Yet it sings the song of victimhood and self-pity. Note that the man who wants to “globalize the intifada” might well be a closet Islamist. Even though he has a Hindu mother, he has scrubbed out his idol-worshipping relatives just as the Soviets airbrushed inconvenient leaders out of history. 

The Democratic Party purports to represent and support the poor, the disenfranchised, and the working class. Yet in Mamdani they have found a leader from postcolonial elites reeking of privilege, and known for avariciousness, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. Beware New Yorkers!

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.