Indians face identity crisis in America
CONFUSING TIMES Despite support within neighbourhoods, the sense of being different and standing out from the crowd has heightened for Indian students since Trump assumed office
A college student has shaved off his beard. A techie with a work visa is afraid he’ll never get another job. A young woman says she will never see Republicans the same way.
It’s a confusing time for Indians in America. And while there is support within their neighbourhoods, and often outrage against the ‘tell them to go home’ attitudes surfacing in pockets of the country, the sense of being different, of standing out from the crowd, has become heightened since the start of the Trump administration.
Take Sushovan Sircar, a student at Georgetown University in Washington DC. He used to sport a luxuriant beard that completed his hipster look.
Last month, the 28-year-old student of cybersecurity policy decided to shave.
“I have become acutely aware of my skin colour in the last few months, after the rise of alleged hate crimes against Indians and Indians mistaken for ‘Arabs’,” he says.
“The last two months have seen three violent attacks against people of Indian origin in Kansas city, Kent and South Carolina, which resulted in two deaths. I didn’t want to stand out any more than I already do, and my family back home has been worried too. So I shaved off my beard, and the absurdity of this fear is saddening,” he adds.
Development professional Apala Guhathakurta, 24, describes New York as a “safe bubble”.
“I have found so much support among the people here. They are nicer than before,” says Guhathakurta, who moved to the US with her family at the age of six.
“The most notable change for me is that anyone new I meet or make eye contact with, at parties, in the street, on the subway, I wonder who they voted for. I wonder if they think I don’t belong, that I should ‘go back to where I came from’,” she says.
At work, she says she and her colleagues watched in distress as Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, who had run a campaign built largely on the anti-immigrant, anti-outsourcing rhetoric.
“After the results, our entire organisation mourned,” says Guhathakurta, who works in the field of public health, with a special focus on women and girls.
“We already had indications of how our work would be affected. We also mourned the pure misogynistic, nationalistic, and manipulative way he won the election.” A recent survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) has indicated that 40% of US colleges are seeing a decline in applications from international students.
The largest drop reported was from India and China, who together made up 47% of the international students in the country in 2016.
Among the students already there, many say they feel it’s time to take a stand. Some are participating in protest marches for the first time ever, others are taking every opportunity to confront extreme views on issues like immigration.
“Most people I come across at the university are very liberal. There are Republicans in the university space but their politics of conservatism is more economic than social,” says Shourjya Deb, 27, a student of public policy and administration at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
“In the university space, the way of life is such that people are kind of afraid of being called out as racists or fascists. But even here, when I ask Republicans if they want me to leave the country, they are embarrassed and don’t know how to handle the question.”
Both Guhathakurta and the now-cleanshaven Sircar have been on their first political rallies ever since the election results. “I joined the women’s march in January and it was electric,” Guhathakurta says.
Sircar walked in three separate protest marches on January 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration.
“I felt it was my moral duty to do so,” he says, adding with a laugh that even growing up in Kolkata he never protested, but he does now.
Perhaps most troubled are the jobseekers with H1B visas — the employment-based visa category for temporary workers.
“Job-hunting has become much more difficult for us,” says Susmit Sen, 35, an IT engineer from Nebraska who has been in the US for three years. “Indians who have already got a green card are in a safe spot, at least professionally, but there is a sense that those without one are now in for trouble. People like me, without a green card, have openly been told, no H1B candidates, please.”
I didn’t want to stand out any more than I already do, and my family back home has been worried too. So I shaved off my beard, and the absurdity of this fear is saddening. The most notable change for me is that anyone new I meet or make eye contact with... I wonder who they voted for. I wonder if they think I should ‘go back to where I came from’. In the university space, people are kind of afraid of being called out as racists or fascists. But when I ask Republicans if they want me to leave, they don’t know how to handle the question.