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Explosion of racism against Indians reflects ineptitude and irreversible decay of Western society – Firstpost

Explosion of racism against Indians reflects ineptitude and irreversible decay of Western society – Firstpost



Is this how a society declines? On the face of it, America is doing well.

Very well, in fact. Its economy is booming, leaving rich competitors far behind. China, its nearest economic and military rival, is struggling with a slowdown. Chinese population is aging, stock market is tanking, foreign investment is declining, and a general mood of pessimism abounds. Xi Jinping tried his bit in lifting the spirits during his New Year address, but it does seem as if Beijing will take a very long time in catching up with the American economy, if ever, leave alone within a decade.

Americans have never had it so good. In terms of energy resources, relative age of population, vastness, robustness, dynamism of its consumer and capital markets, the vigour and vitality of its private sector, the United States is blazing a trail others are struggling to follow.

To quote The Economist, “In 1990 it (the US) accounted for about two-fifths of the GDP of the G7. Today it makes up half. Output per person is now about 30% higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan — gaps that have roughly doubled since 1990. Mississippi may be America’s poorest state, but its hard-working residents earn, on average, more than Brits, Canadians or Germans.”

And yet, despite this dream run, the Democrats were pumelled in the polls and economic discontent was a major plank for president-elect Donald Trump who will take over in a few days’ time.

What gives? It turns out that a carcinogenic wound is festering within the American success story, eating away its society from within, and the dazzle of its economic strength and military might hides more than it shows.

Politics offers some clues. America’s corrosive politics reflects the rift within its society. White America feels inadequate, left out and angry. It was the major driving force behind Trump’s return to the White House who gave shape to the anger with his ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) movement. This was known. What remained unknown until very recently is the level of malice behind this resentment.

That became clear during the explosion of racism against Indians and Indian-Americans. The trigger was Trump’s decision to appoint Sriram Krishnan, a Chennai-born tech expert, as ‘Senior White House Policy Advisor’ on Artificial Intelligence.

The spate of xenophobic attack against Indians or Americans of
Indian descent – the most hardworking and law-abiding migrant community – by MAGA malcontents over the issue of immigration shows that for all of America’s progress, strength and the power of its thriving economy, a significant section of its population feel incompetent and shortchanged. Ironically, their rage has found expression through a cancerous attack against the healthiest building blocks of the American success story.

The nativist fury against Indians cannot simply be explained through economic competition, though that could be one of the aspects driving this hatred. The prejudice is borne out of a toxic mix of perceived racial superiority and a deep-seated fear that migrants ‘good only for manual labour’ are ‘stealing American jobs’. White ego is bruised.

Racism against Indians in America, of course, is nothing new. ‘Hindoo History’, a handle on X (formerly Twitter) that chronicles the history of ‘Hindoos’ and Indians in America primarily through old newspaper clips, posts a
report The Detroit Times in 1910.

Under the headline ‘HINDUS CONTINUE TO FLOCK TO US’, the newspaper report from over a 100 years ago states: “No Effort Made at Frisco to Stop Entry of Undesirables, Although Other Ports Bar Them”. It goes on to add that “the dumping place for the scum of the orient and India is San Francisco.”

“From this port the scum is distributed throughout California, Washington and Oregon. The scum of the orient is the Hindu. Dirty, dressed with yards of filthy white, green or blue cotton bound around the head…”

“The Hindu stalks through the streets of the coast cities. He is the worst type of immigrant. He is not fit to become a citizen. His very mode of life makes him entirely foreign to the people of the United States.”

One will be hard pressed to find any difference in the discourse on Indians between then and now. The H1B visa controversy, which in its essence is a backlash against immigration, is an extension of the same sentiment. It reveals two distinct things about America.

1. The MAGA coalition is coming unstuck

The MAGA coalition of Christians, white nationalists, ‘groypers’ (a loose bunch of racists that spread antisemitic and Hinduphobic views online) as well as some Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs that unified the Republican voter base and took on the Democratic election machinery to deliver the results for Trump, is at risk of coming unstuck due to a fundamental difference over immigrant talent under programs such as H1B visa that are indispensable for the American growth story.

The Trump voter base is split down the middle and at war with itself. The primary location of the battle is Elon Musk-owned social media site ‘X’. The white nativists are against all forms of immigration. As long as those in question are illegal immigrants from America’s southern border – the unvetted millions that entered during the Biden-Harris administration triggering a voter backlash – the coalition holds.

Musk, for instance, frequently railed against illegal immigrants. So did his DOGE colleague Vivek Ramaswamy who has called for mass deportation of illegal immigrants, stating that individuals who enter the US illegally cannot be allowed to stay. One of the MAGA coalition’s opt-repeated narratives was that Democrats were letting in undocumented immigrants by the thousands to commit large-scale voter fraud in presidential elections.

Trouble arose when the debate turned to legal immigrants. The MAGA base is not ready to accept the fact that there is a shortage of skilled technical workers in the US, and that the tech titans of Silicon Valley rely on imported human capital, among which Indian professionals are the most sought after, to sustain America’s global leadership in cutting-edge technological advancements.

For the anti-immigrant MAGA base, Indians, the engine behind America’s technological edge, are the most hated outgroup.

Though most Indians enter America legally, and that too through the employer-sponsored visa program intended for talented professionals, the fact that they are the recipient of the highest number of H1B visas used primarily for technological jobs such as data analytics, cloud computing, cyber security, AI, generative AI and IT allied IT services industries – make them the MAGA punching bag.

For instance, as BBC points out, “Indian-born Silicon Valley CEOs are part of a four million-strong minority group that is among the wealthiest and most educated in the US. About a million of them are scientists and engineers. More than 70% of H-1B visas – work permits for foreigners – issued by the US go to Indian software engineers, and 40% of all foreign-born engineers in cities like Seattle are from India.”

The white nativists, out-educated, outclassed, outsmarted, outshined and upstaged by high-skilled, brown-skinned cohort from abroad, accuse Indians of ‘robbing’ American aspirants by undercutting the visa program. Their impotent rage and divisive rhetoric are aimed as much at H1B visa holders as the employers who are inviting them – such as Musk, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella or IBM’s Arvind Krishna.

Musk, who promises to wield enormous influence in the upcoming Trump 2.0 administration, runs Space X and Tesla, and is among the
top employers of H1B visa holders.

He has declared war against the “hateful racists” and “incompetent fools” who must be removed “root and stem from the Republican Party.” Once a holder of H1B visa, Musk says there is a severe shortage of native talent in America.

“Of course my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans and we DO, as that is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process… However, there is a
dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”

His ally Vivek Ramaswamy, whose parents are from India, has blamed it on “American culture” that venerates “mediocrity over excellence”, “celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian”, and “will not produce the best engineers’, prompting even more bile from the MAGA base.

Caught in this battle are the Indians and Indian-Americans who form around
one-third of tech employees in Silicon Valley and according to a report, “CEOs of Indian origin head 16 Fortune 500 companies and collectively employ 2.7 million Americans and generate nearly $1 trillion in revenue.”

2. The Horseshoe theory

The ‘horseshoe theory’, attributed to French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye, hinges on the idea that ‘extremes meet’, and that far-Left and far-Right politics have more ideological alignment in a political spectrum than the political centre. The efficacy of this theory, that has its critics, can be tested in the current controversy.

While the American Right’s xenophobia against Indians and Indian-Americans – particularly Hindus – is framed as economic anxiety, the roots of it lie much deeper in White Christian prejudice against Hindu Indians. The hatred has therefore been more visceral and guttural, seeking to dehumanize Indians and cast them as a demon-worshipping inferior race that wallows in human and animal excreta.

If the Right’s racism is explicit, the Left’s more subtle and hypocritical. The Left in the US proposes that Americans suffer from ‘systemic racism’ and aims to take up the cudgel for minorities of all stripes, but that model breaks down when it comes to Indians and Hindus even though this community – the richest among migrant communities – is frequently touted as a ‘model minority’ and contributes more than it takes away.

It seems incredible, therefore, on the hatred against Hindus, the cosmopolitan Left and the nativist Right meet in a stunning confluence of indentitarian politics.

Bernie Sanders comes out against H1B visas,
singing the MAGA anthem in all earnest, while New York Times, the torchbearer of the Liberal Left, finds in H1B holders the only immigrants worth criticizing.

The newspaper loses its voice when it comes to unvetted, illegal aliens sneaking into America from the southern border but comes out swinging against legally admitted high-skilled workers who anyway cannot be hired by employers in America unless labour department compliances aren’t met.

The New York Times editorial, for instance, blames Musk, accuses Indian IT firms of ‘exploitation’, and claims that “Americans working in the tech industry have been systematically laid off and replaced by cheaper H-1B visa holders.” It claims “most H-1B visa holders are lower-paid labor, not top talent.” This is false, since the US has legal safeguards in place that make it impossible for firms to hire foreign workers by bypassing Americans qualified for the job.

The American Left’s support for ethno-nationalism and subtle boosting of the Right’s explicit racism proves the efficacy of the ‘horseshoe theory’. The Hindus are soft targets for racist attacks from the Left and Right because they don’t aspire to win gold medal in ‘oppression Olympics’.

While the Left seeks to impose the ‘oppressor-oppressive’ framework on immigrants, the Right seeks to achieve through legislation that it cannot through free competition. Hindus in America fit neither of the modules. They break all stereotypes.

According to data from Migration Policy Institute (MPI), “In 2023, households headed by an Indian immigrant had a median annual income of $166,200, compared to $78,700 for all immigrant-led and $77,600 for native-led households.” Alongside, “Indian immigrants are much more likely to be proficient in English than the overall foreign-born population. In 2023, 21 percent of Indians ages 5 and over reported speaking English less than ‘very well,’ compared to 47 percent of all immigrants.”

So, what explains the persecution of Hindu diaspora? The root of it lies in Hindus’ stubborn non-conformity towards Left or Right frameworks, single-minded pursuit of excellence, coupled with a chronic inability to form any sort of political unity that would enable a meaningful pushback.

As Amit Majumdar writes in a brilliant essay for The Open magazine, “Alarmingly, Hindus have proven, so far, an exception to the rule that persecution short of eradication hardens, unites, and activates a religious group. Instantaneous dissemination of images of attacks on Hindus—whether a pogrom in rural Bangladesh, or a brutal temple invasion in Canada—have yet to conjure effective, transnational mass agitation.”

They are incapable of imitating the Muslims, whose political unity and religious cohesion give them a potent leverage and fearsome bargaining power.

Finally, it has been sad to watch the inversion of moral polarity in Western societies that seek to lionize, even justify the triumphalism or misdeeds of a community that readily indulges in violence or sexual predatory behaviour while unleashing racist animus against a community that contributes far more than it takes in its adopted nation.

The writer is Deputy Executive Editor, Firstpost. He tweets as @sreemoytalukdar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.





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