Indians have never had it so bad in America
During my adolescence in America I experienced racism. For us it was an attack from both white-skinned kids as well as from African-Americans. It’s a reasonable bet that almost each of the estimated two million Indian-Americans have at some point heard the question, When are you going back to your country? (The correct response: When are you going back to yours?) But we certainly never had it as bad as it is now, with Indian-Americans and others mistaken for terrorists. Since the November election of dimwit demagogue President Donald Trump, a wave of hatred has spread across America, and not just in “middle America”: brown-skinned men and women have been shoved onto pavements or subway platforms by those looking “to take their country back”; racial epithets being screamed as they walk down the street for a cup of coffee has become as common as going for a cup of coffee; and as we saw a week ago, they have fallen victim to shootings.
The killing of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, one of two engineers shot down at a Kansas City bar, tells us much about the IQ of American military veterans – who you’d expect to be a bit smarter if they’re had to engage brown-skinned civilians around the world — if one of them confuses a Hyderabad-born engineer for a terrorist. They’re almost as bad as the Indian police who, as last week’s acquittals of men who spent a decade in jail having been falsely accused of terrorism shows, also automatically assume certain people to be jihadis. Or they’re almost as bad as internet trolls who assume that if you’re a left-wing university student then you’re a militant, and thus fair game for mob assault; or who threaten with rape the daughter of an army officer who gave his life in India’s Kargil war. The American solider is more lethal because not only does his society allow him access to unnecessarily dangerous weapons like the semi-automatic assault rifle, but he’s trained to use it to kill, not maim. No wonder Indian-Americans have openly asked one another not to speak Indian languages in public. The name on a bullet is written only in English.
No right-wing troll will ever see the parallel between the murder of his fellow geek in an American bar because some people just don’t like looking in a mirror. Similarly, the bravery of Ian Grillot who miscounted the Kansas City gunman’s bullets and lunged
Middle-class parents now wonder whether or not it is safe to send their children to America, but we know that’s just a passing phase. to save the Indian engineers, only to get shot in his hand and chest, is not something spoken about at great length in America, by its leaders. In silence is acquiescence, after all. It’s why airport procedure in America has become so cumbersome even for travelers who are far from extremist but just happen not to be white-skinned – the cogs in the homeland security machine don’t want to take chances because mistakes happen; and what if someone is actually a terrorist in disguise? Similarly, in India you hardly ever hear of acts of bravery, of defending people under attack, be they students, journalists or just people with the wrong-sounding name. Nobody wants to take a chance, and no one wants to get in the way of “a State that finally works”.
Middle-class parents now wonder whether or not it is safe to send their children to America, but we know that’s just a passing phase. The Indian middle-class number one big dream is to migrate to America. Their number two big dream is that Modi will Make India Great Again (MIGA). Of course, MIGA conflicts with MAGA (Make America Great Again), or with America First. It’s a conflict in which no Indian parent need an astrologer to see that the next four years in America can’t be all good news for the brown-skinned.
What must irk some of our Indian-American brethren is the fact that though they thronged a Trump campaign rally in New Jersey last October, and despite the money that their affluent community poured into his winning effort (you might remember that Trump ad in which he said, abki baar, Trump sarkar, roughly translated as this time, a Trump government), their President did not utter a word about the Kansas City shooting of an aviation engineer by a deranged veteran. It must really annoy them since Trump spares no chance to comment or tweet on non-existent “terrorism” incidents in Bowling Green and in Sweden. Obviously, if a brown gunman had mowed down two white engineers in a bar anywhere in the world, it would immediately be categorised as terrorism. Somehow the term “terrorism” never seems to apply to whites these days.
But then again, when was the last time these Indian-Americans looked in the mirror? Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been adopting a Trump-like silence long before Trump. His sturmabteilung (political militia) go around literally stomping on dissent, and he pretends to be above it all. The only time he opens his mouth is during elections, to talk of kabristans. With today’s demagogues polarising the world into the pre-modern era, the real extremists must be sitting back and laughing themselves silly. Aditya Singha is a senior journalist and author
based in Delhi