Vice President JD Vance has been accused of hypocrisy and “Hindu-phobia” after declaring he wanted his wife to convert to Christianity.
Speaking at a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi, Vance was asked by an audience member about his marriage to Usha Vance, America’s first Second Lady of Hindu faith.
The pair married in an interfaith ceremony in Kentucky in 2014, with a Hindu pandit and a Christian officiant officiating. They now have three children who are being raised as Christians.
There’s another Great Indian Wedding to celebrate…🙂 pic.twitter.com/WGDKAvcrv1
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) July 16, 2024
“You are raising three kids in an intercultural-racial-religious household,” a woman in the audience asked the Vice President during the event’s question and answer session.
“How are you teaching your kids not to keep your religion ahead of their mother’s religion?”
Vance replied by saying that when he met Usha, “I would consider myself an agnostic or an atheist and that’s what I think she would have considered herself as well.”
“Now, most Sundays, Usha will come with me to church,” he added.
“As I’ve told her, and I’ve said publicly, and I’ll say now in front of 10,000 of my closest friends: Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that because I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.”
The vice president added that if Usha decided not to convert “then God says everybody has free will.”
But while Vance’s remarks were met with applause from MAGA Republicans and Christian conservatives more broadly, he also faced a backlash from other quarters.
The Times of India, the nation’s third biggest newspaper and the world’s largest selling English-language daily, observed that “Vance came across as ‘Hindu-phobic’.”
He calls her agnostic. Afraid to admit her Hindu origin. Where has all this talk of religious freedom gone? They have this Congressionally mandated US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Charity should begin at home. https://t.co/zbXqWFiBw7
— Kanwal Sibal (@KanwalSibal) October 30, 2025
Former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwan Sibal also weighed in.
“He calls her agnostic. Afraid to admit her Hindu origin. Where has all this talk of religious freedom gone?” asked Sibal, who was also the Indian Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia.
“They have this Congressionally mandated US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Charity should begin at home.”
Austin-based tech executive Deep Barot responded with a “laugh out loud” emoji.
“Lol. Usha Vance is Hindu not agnostic,” he wrote on X.
“This is not very hard for you to follow. They even had a Vedic Hindu wedding and one of his kids’ names is Vivek. The biggest hypocrite of them all is JD Vance.”
With its origins in ancient India, Hinduism is characterized by its wide range of beliefs and practices and lack of a single founder. Its core beliefs include the concept of cause and effect (karma), the cycle of reincarnation (samsara), and the pursuit of spiritual liberation (moksha).
But Wednesday night’s event was not the first time questions about the religion have been raised at Turning Point, the organization founded by slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Earlier this month, former Republican presidential nominee candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who is now running to be Ohio’s new governor, was also forced to defend his Hindu faith by audience members questioning how he could seek office when he wasn’t a Christian.
“Jesus Christ is God, and there is no other God,” one male student told him.
“How can you represent the constituents of Ohio who are 64 percent Christian if you are not a part of that faith?”
The vice president and the second lady got married in 2014, four years after meeting at Yale Law School, when they joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America.”
A decade later, with Vance now the second in line to the presidency, their union has come under immense scrutiny, including last week when former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki suggested Usha needed to be saved from their marriage.
“I always wonder what’s going on in the mind of his wife,” the former Biden aide joked on the liberal podcast I’ve Had It.
“Like, are you OK? Please blink four times. Come over here, we’ll save you.”
Vance hit back, describing the comments as “disgraceful.”
“I’m very lucky to have a wonderful wife, and I know—at least I hope—that my wife feels the same about me,” he added.
The post Vance Blasted as ‘Hindu-Phobic’ for Wanting Usha to Swap Religions appeared first on The Daily Beast.
