OPEN LETTER to Mayor John B. Muns and the Plano City Council: Anti-Hindu Bigotry Has No Place in Our Public Meetings

Date: February 15, 2026

To the Honorable Mayor and Members of the Plano City Council,

On behalf of Hindus for Human Rights, we write in response to the recent public-comment incident at a Plano City Council meeting in which an outside speaker appeared in caricatured “Indian” attire and mocked Hindu traditions—reducing religious practice and cultural identity to crude stereotypes for entertainment.

We recognize that this individual was not a member of City Council, and we do not attribute his remarks to the Council itself. At the same time, the City Council chamber is a public forum with symbolic weight. The tone and boundaries upheld in that room shape whether residents feel they belong—and whether public participation is a safe, dignified practice for everyone.

For many Hindu and South Asian residents, this was not experienced as harmless provocation or “just comedy.” It was experienced as a familiar message: that our faith is strange, unserious, and fair game for humiliation in public life. When that message is delivered in an official civic setting—even by a visiting provocateur—it risks normalizing the idea that some communities can be publicly ridiculed while others are protected by basic norms of respect.

This incident also arrives amid a wider climate of anti-Indian and anti-immigrant hostility in North Texas. Across the region, rhetoric has escalated that portrays Indian immigrants and Indian Americans as “invaders,” “job thieves,” or demographic threats. When mockery of Hindu traditions is layered on top of scapegoating narratives, the effect is not abstract: it contributes to harassment, intimidation, and fear—sometimes in the very places where community members gather, including religious institutions.

We are a progressive Hindu organization. That means we defend pluralism not as a slogan, but as a civic duty. We believe in the fullest protections for free expression, including sharp satire and dissent. But free expression does not require that a City Council meeting become a stage for racialized religious mockery. “Public comment” is not the same thing as a license to degrade residents based on faith, ethnicity, or national origin. Civic discourse can be open and still insist on baseline dignity.

In that spirit, we urge the City of Plano to take the following steps:

1. Issue a clear public affirmation that Plano is home to residents of many faiths and backgrounds—including Hindus and South Asians—and that the City expects public participation to occur without dehumanizing stereotypes or religious ridicule.

2. Review and strengthen meeting decorum procedures so that public comment does not become a recurring venue for targeted harassment of any community (including religious minorities), while remaining consistent with constitutional obligations. Many cities adopt viewpoint-neutral rules that prohibit disruptive conduct, personal harassment, and hate-driven intimidation.

3. Ensure the safety and inclusion of residents attending meetings, including clear pathways for residents to report harassment connected to civic proceedings and to access support if they feel threatened.

4. Engage in proactive community outreach, including dialogue with Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and other faith communities in Plano, so that residents know the City sees them as full participants in public life—not as props for performance or targets for scapegoating.

We also encourage the City to resist the incentive structure that “performance provocateurs” rely on: attention, amplification, and the degradation of local governance into spectacle. Local government is where people argue about schools, roads, housing, safety, and budgets—often with strong disagreement, and rightly so. But when communities begin to associate public meetings with humiliation or hate, residents disengage, and civic life shrinks to the loudest and cruelest voices. That outcome harms Plano.

Hindus for Human Rights stands ready to support good-faith efforts to reaffirm religious pluralism and reduce bigotry in public spaces.

Thank you for your attention and for your service to the residents of Plano.

Sincerely,
Hindus for Human Rights

TO:
The Honorable John Muns, Mayor, City of Plano
Maria Tu, Deputy Mayor Pro Tem, Place 1
Bob Kehr, City Council Member, Place 2
Rick Horne, City Council Member, Place 3
Chris Downs, City Council Member, Place 4
Steve Lavine, City Council Member, Place 5
Shun Thomas, City Council Member, Place 7
Vidal Quintanilla, City Council Member, Place 8

CC:
Mark D. Israelson, City Manager — marki@plano.gov
Paige Mims, City Attorney — paigem@plano.gov
City Secretary’s Office (re: public meeting process and records)

CC
Multicultural Outreach Roundtable (City of Plano)
Community Relations Commission (City of Plano)