An Inheritance of Justice-Making

This past weekend, while indulging in some late-night TV channel surfing, I lucked upon the 1991 film, Mississippi Masala. Starring Denzel Washington and the Indo-British actress, Sarita Choudhury, as embattled interracial lovers, the movie is set in the de facto segregation of Greenwood, Mississippi, circa 1980. With great insight and a deft touch, the film portrays the oppressive environment endured by Greenwood’s black community in the persistent shadow of white racism, as well as the class fissures in the black community that are the result of the centuries of white supremacist physical and psychological onslaught. At the same time, with equal insight and sensitivity the movie depicts the class cleavages and skin-color prejudices within the Ugandan-born Indian community that ended up in Mississippi after their 1972 expulsion by the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. As background and subtext, the film also explores the relationship between the black and Indian populations in their Ugandan homeland. Notably pervaded by an egalitarian social sensibility, Mississippi Masala was groundbreaking in the way it brought all of these elements together. The crucial anti-classist and anti-racist statement it made was acknowledged by a standing ovation at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and with three awards at the 1991 Venice Film Festival.

Further reflecting Ms. Nair’s egalitarian concerns for social and economic justice is her 1983 film, Salaam Bombay!, which she produced and co-wrote. In Salaam Bombay! Nair and company took pains to present an indicting, disturbingly authentic portrayal of the terrible plight of children forced by poverty and social breakdown to survive in the streets. So hard hitting was the film that it won 23 international awards at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Nair’s commitment to social and economic equity was further demonstrated by her decision to dedicate the profits from Salaam Bombay! to the creation of the Salaam Bombay Trust, which has become a major non-profit supporting at risk adolescents. [[Ms. Nair teaches film-making and producing at Columbia University.

Although his work has not afforded him the public visibility of Ms. Nair, in some ways the social justice bona fides of Mahmood Mamdani are even more impressive. Mahmood Mamdani, a native Ugandan of Indian descent, was one of 23 Ugandan students brought to the United States in 1963 by the Kennedy Airlift, a US-funded scholarship. In 1965, while a student at the University of Pittsburgh, Mahmood Mamdani responded to the call of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to join the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama where he was jailed for participating in anti-segregation protests.

Mamdani returned to Uganda after graduation, only to be expelled to a refugee camp in England by Idi Amin’s purge of Ugandans of Indian descent. After Amin was overthrown Mamdani returned to Uganda, but his citizenship was rescinded by President Milton Obote for criticizing Obote’s policies. From there, Mamdani’s career and activism took him to stints in Tanzania, South Africa and India. He eventually returned to the United States, where he earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1974 with a dissertation, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda, that presaged the centrality of liberationist politics to his academic career. Today he is a world-renowned theoretician of colonial and postcolonial studies and the history of human rights. The author of a number of ground-breaking interdisciplinary books and studies, he has received numerous prestigious international awards, including three honorary doctorates. In a 2008 open online poll, Mamdani was voted as the ninth "top public intellectual” in the world on the list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Prospect Magazine (UK) and Foreign Policy (US). Like Mira Nair, he teaches at Columbia University, where he is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and a professor of anthropology, political science and African studies. He also serves as the chancellor of Kampala International University in Uganda.

Mahmood Mamdani is the husband of Mira Nair. And as you’ve probably guessed, the spawn of the union of these two passionate social justice advocates is Zohran Mamdani, the 2025 Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, in whose case the proverbial apple has landed exceedingly close to the tree. The justice-centered political and economic policies he champions in his campaign are his inheritance, part of his DNA, imbibed at his parents’ feet from childhood. He grew up steeped in impassioned discussions of class and racial oppression and exploitation and the importance -- and responsibility -- to develop strategies to effectively address people’s needs. The impact of this legacy is clearly seen in the grass-roots issues raised in his mayoral campaign. Indeed, Zohran Mamdani has said that he owes to his parents, “not simply the person that I am, but the thoughts that I have.”

It is this inherited life-long moral compass that has inspired the Democratic Socialism of Zohran Mamdani. Unlike the status quo politics of today, Democratic Socialism seeks a society in which everyone has an equal vote, an equal say-so, in the policies that affect their lives and wellbeing, no matter their wealth or social status, with no contrived obstacles or gerrymandered barriers to dilute the weight of their votes.

Why is the election of Zohran Mamdani important for non-New Yorkers, indeed, for all Americans? Because Mamdani represents a much-needed new direction for the nation’s largest city and presages a much-needed new direction for American politics in general. Mandani’s candidacy offers a new political direction in which ethics and morals and responsibility to assist our struggling neighbors count more than polls and cynical political calculation, a new direction in which the real needs of the nation’s struggling masses are the center of governmental focus, not the self-serving interests of the richest campaign donors. In short, the candidacy of Zohran Mamdani offers a new direction in which the people’s needs – the needs of all people -- are foregrounded, in which everyday people are treated as subjects, not objects.

Today, America needs a figure to articulate and model what a true public servant is, does, and should be; someone to exemplify the kind of unwavering dedication to the principles of justice and opportunity for all that few political figures today even gesture toward. In this historical moment, undoubtedly Zohran Mamdani is that person.