Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA)

The Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) describes itself as a grassroots advocacy and civil rights group for the Hindu community of North America. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States and a registered not-for-profit in Canada, with offices in Iselin, New Jersey, and Toronto. Its board lists Nikunj Trivedi as president. Its stated aims are to speak for Hindus in North America, to counter what it calls misinformation and prejudice about Hindus, and to promote pluralistic expressions of Hindu identity. It appears in this record because of its part in the dispute over California SB 509.

SB 509: SB 509 would have required California's Office of Emergency Services, with the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, to develop training for police on recognising and responding to transnational repression. The Sikh Coalition backed it and reported that it passed the Assembly 47 to 0 and the Senate on a unanimous roll call. CoHNA opposed it. Its release of 13 October 2025 says it opposed the bill from March 2025, testified in Sacramento three times, and called it divisive and duplicative, with vague terms that could be used to label people with foreign roots as proxies of a foreign government. CoHNA gave the example of Hindus protesting anti-India graffiti on their temple being labelled proxies of the Indian government. Those are CoHNA's own arguments.

On 13 October 2025 Governor Gavin Newsom returned the bill unsigned. His message said the issue was better handled by administrative action with federal agencies, that Cal OES had already developed a training, and that the bill would remove the state's flexibility because no unified federal definition exists. CoHNA welcomed the veto.

Other moments:

• 27 January 2025: CoHNA announced a partnership with the US Department of Justice's Community Relations Service on a four-hour training, “Engaging and Building Relationships with the Hindu American Communities”.
• 5 June 2026: CoHNA welcomed the failure of New York bills S.6531 and A.6920, which would have added caste as a protected category. It says the bills would “institutionalize bias” and that there is “no proof of systemic caste discrimination in the US”. These are CoHNA's positions.
• It runs an annual Hindu Advocacy Day at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington.