New York’s newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, faced online ridicule for eating with his hands, exposing lingering colonial hierarchies around race, civility, and culture. The controversy sparked debates on identity, diaspora hypocrisy, and how colonial-era notions of refinement still shape global attitudes

Greater Noida: When the newly elected New York mayor Zohran Mamdani was recently mocked for eating with his hands, it exposed the enduring afterlife of colonial hierarchies.

Mamdani has won a globally-watched election to become the first South Asian mayor of New York City. En route, the Democratic party candidate and son of Indian-origin immigrants—filmmaker Mira Nair and academic Mahmood Mamdani—had to face various kinds of attacks, including a smear campaign that targeted him for

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