Indians avoid places prone to hate crimes

NEWDELHI: The American state of Kansas — where 32-year-old Wednesday — is not particularly prone to hate crimes, nor is it home to a disproportionate amount of Indians. And Kansas is not an outlier. In general, Indians in the United States tend not to live in states where they are most vulnerable to hate crimes.

In North Dakota, which had the highest rate of crimes motivated by the victim’s race or religion in 2015, according to data from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Indians are just .28% of the population. And in Montana, which ranked fourth-highest in race- and religion-based hate crimes in 2015, Indians account for .05% of the population, the lowest of all US states.

Kansas, for its part, reported 54 hate crimes motivated by race or religion in 2015, ranking 15th in such crimes per population. Its population is made up of about about .52% Indians.

Some states, on the other hand, have both a relatively large proportion of Indians and a high hate crime rate. New Jersey, which has by far the highest proportion of Indians — 3.80% — also ranks sixth in its rate of race- and religion-based hate crimes.

Kuchibotla, who was from Hyderabad and came to the US as a Master’s student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, may be America’s first victim of a race-based hate crime since the election of Donald Trump, who won the presidency in part by tapping in to the racial anxieties of white Americans. Yet the country is no stranger to hate crimes motivated by race and religion.

In 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, the US saw 4,586 such crimes, a slight increase from 2014.