New York City’s socialist mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani is facing backlash after resurfaced remarks from his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, painted her son as “not an American at all” and “a total desi,” using language critics say drips with contempt for the United States.
“He is a total desi,” Nair boasted in a 2013 interview with the Hindustan Times, when Mamdani was a 21-year-old Bowdoin College student agitating against Israel and co-founding the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
“Completely. We are not firangs at all. He is very much us. He is not an Uhmericcan (American) at all. He was born in Uganda, raised between India and America. He is at home in many places. He thinks of himself as a Ugandan and as an Indian,” Nair said.
In Hindi and Urdu, “firang” is a term once used to describe Westerners — but some say it’s far from innocent.
“It’s the word used back in India to mock outsiders, to say you don’t belong,” said Mehek Cooke, an Indian-born attorney and GOP strategist, to Fox News Digital. “Using it here about your own child raised in the United States carries the same tone as calling someone a derogatory word — or worse. It’s flippant, divisive, and dripping with contempt for the very country that gave your family a better life.”
Cooke didn’t hold back. “When Mamdani’s mother says her son was ‘never a firang and only desi,’ it’s a rejection of America,” she said. “It’s ungrateful, disrespectful, and frankly repulsive to live in this country since age seven, receive every freedom, education, and opportunity America offers, and still deny being American.”
Mamdani, now 33, was born in Uganda and moved to the U.S. as a child before being naturalized in 2018. His mother — known for films like Monsoon Wedding — made clear that her family clung tightly to their Indian roots. “We only speak Hindustani at home,” she said in the same interview, describing her son as a “very chaalu fellow,” a phrase often used to mean clever or street smart.
For a candidate running to lead America’s biggest city, critics say the comments raise a question that cuts to the core: if your own mother insists you’re “not an American at all,” why should New Yorkers believe otherwise?
