At midnight on January 1, 2026, in an abandoned subway station in the bowels of Manhattan, New York’s first South Asian, Muslim, African-born Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, was sworn into office. Later that same day, a more expansive ceremony was held on the steps of City Hall. The second ceremony featured many notable guests, including popular progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. The guest that struck me the most, however, was one who went unnoticed by many who reported on the occasion. The second inauguration ceremony was brought to a close by the Canadian-Punjabi rapper known as Babbulicious. He performed a slightly reworked rendition of his song Gaddi Red Challenger—a song that celebrates the Punjabi diaspora that both Babbulicious and Mamdani belong to.
This article is an opinion piece whose contents represent the standpoint of its author and not UPF Lund or the Perspective’s Editorial Board.
Mamdani has been given many epithets since bursting onto the scene in late 2024, after announcing his candidacy for the mayoralty of New York. Different aspects of his character and background have been emphasised by different people—as a democratic socialist born in Kampala, Uganda, the son of a Muslim academic and a Hindu filmmaker, his diverse background matches the city he now governs.
Accordingly, the inauguration and the performance that concluded it were both loaded with symbolism. In the days following, one thing stayed with me longer than the rest. Watching New York’s first Muslim mayor sing along in Punjabi to the words of a man clad in a Sikh turban carried a weight I hadn’t expected. As a member of the South Asian diaspora myself, it was unthinkable to me that the American public would not only place their faith in, but also celebrate, a Brown Muslim man the way that they have for Mayor Mamdani. Until this January. In the context of the misplaced Islamophobia that claimed the lives of so many Sikhs in the wake of 9/11, and against the backdrop of the virulent Islamophobia and xenophobia that permeate our lives today, the inauguration felt like an unimaginable triumph.
Beyond the surface-level symbolism of January 1st, Mamdani’s landslide success as a self-described democratic socialist sparked hope for politicians running on progressive platforms in other parts of the world, and for those of us who vote for them. His record-breaking campaign was relentlessly rooted both in the people he wanted to represent and his politics of affordability. It felt like a sign that we who despair at the nationalist and exclusionary (sometimes downright fascist) politics that are gaining ground around the world—we, too, could turn back the tide. If New York City—a city with a population almost as large as that of Sweden—could elect a man who once went on a hunger strike for a ceasefire in Gaza, then there must be hope for us to replicate the same phenomenon in our own communities.
It is easy to grow disillusioned and apathetic in the face of the sheer volume of atrocities and injustices that overwhelm our social media and news feeds. When every morning brings fresh news of natural disasters, human rights violations, and crumbling democratic institutions, giving up and turning away seems to be the simpler option. Speaking at the Dayton Literary Peace Prize ceremony on May 4, 2026, Iranian-American poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar said: “Empire uses the abstraction of data amidst a firehose of meaningless language to cudgel us into idleness and cynicism.” Fascists want us to be complacent. A distracted and disheartened population is a compliant population, one that does not resist as their rights are slowly stripped away.
To combat these forces, I find solace in the words of writers, activists, and political theorists. Speaking on the future of Israel and Palestine in Lund in December 2025, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé reminded listeners of the importance of imagining a better future, emphasising that imagination is important, especially in times of despair. Quoting Antonio Gramsci, Pappé said, “You cannot have a revolution without imagination.” Indian writer Arundhati Roy introduced the essay collection Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. (2020) with an overview of modern India’s descent into authoritarianism and fascism. She concluded her introduction with an account of an anti-Muslim pogrom and the Indian government’s announcement of the Covid-19 lockdown, finishing with “What lies ahead? Reimagining the world. Only that.”
So it is easy to fall prey to the forces that want us to be quiet and compliant. And it is harder to pick our heads up and call a spade a spade; to call a fascist, a fascist. Doing so requires that we first find it in ourselves to imagine a better future, to hope for a fairer tomorrow. The strength to do so can be found not only in ourselves, but also in the people around us—people like Pappé, Roy, and Mamdani. People whose words and actions remind us that resistance is not only necessary, it is also possible. People who remind us that progress, no matter how it comes, is not only a dream—it can be a reality, too.
In a speech given days before the mayoral election in 2025, Zohran Mamdani spoke about the weight that his faith carries for him, saying, “I will no longer look for myself in the shadows. I will find myself in the light.” Day by day, the world is falling apart around us. It is up to us to lift our gazes and shift our focus away from despair—to imagine a brighter, better society than the one we live in today. Anything less risks playing into the hands of warmongers and fascists; anything less, and we may never be able to build a better world than the one we are growing into.
By Tara Srikkanth
May 22, 2026
