Indian Americans are increasingly finding themselves the targets of racism by far-right Christian nationalists, and those who identify as MAGA Indian Americans who work in President Donald Trump’s administration aren’t immune to the vitriol, reports Harmeet Kaur in Newsweek.
When FBI director Kash Patel wished his followers on X a Happy Diwali—a holiday celebrated by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and some Buddhists across the world—”far-right Christian nationalist and white nationalist accounts flooded his post with bigoted memes and rhetoric,” Kaur writes.
“Similar hostility followed Diwali greetings on X from former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, as well as posts about the holiday from the White House, the State Department, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders,” Kaur notes.
Some Indian Conservatives, she writes, are shocked by these reactions, including one who is known for making his own racist statements.
“After one X user said that the existence of Indians disgusted them, Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing commentator who has peddled racism against Black Americans for decades, mused: ‘In a career spanning 40 years, I have never encountered this type of rhetoric. The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation?’” Kaur notes.
While this vile rhetoric isn’t new, Kaur says, it’s rising from the political right, and Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdowns are leading MAGA to freely say the quiet parts out loud, “openly suggesting that only white Christians belong in America,” she writes.
Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, an editorial manager and analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who has examined anti-Indian hate speech and the far right online, says to look no further than the White House for the source of this racism.
“The call is coming from inside the house,” Venkataramakrishnan says.
Kaur says that Indian immigrants and Indian Americans are “the latest target of a growing anti-migrant movement in the US and around the world” and “the most consistent anti-Indian bigotry online focuses on the H-1B visa program, of which Indian nationals are the biggest beneficiaries,” she writes.
“The program, which admits highly skilled foreigners into the US to work in specialized fields, has sparked infighting among Trump supporters, with visa opponents such as deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller accusing India of ‘a lot of cheating on immigration policies,’” Kaur writes.
The far-right has taken aim at Indian Americans, saying they are the ones depriving other—read: white—Americans of good paying jobs.
“They accuse Indians of hiring only within their caste or ethnicity, invoke stereotypes about Indians being dirty or smelly, and highlight behaviors like eating with one’s hands as cultural backwardness,” Kaur says.
And it’s not just far-right trolls invoking these tropes, she writes.
“During the recent New York City mayoral race, the independent campaign of former Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo released (then quickly deleted) an AI-generated attack ad depicting Zohran Mamdani sloppily eating rice with his hands,” she says.
Success of Indian Americans makes them a prime target for hatred, according to Rohit Chopra, a professor at Santa Clara University who studies far-right online communities and who co-authored the reports for the Center for the Study of Organized Hate.
Indian immigrants and Indian Americans are among the highest-earning ethnic groups in the US, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data.
“The public image of the Indian community has been that of these basically successful tech professionals and CEOs,” Chopra says. “And the Indian community and Indian American community significantly plays up that image too.”
And, “as long-simmering resentment against affluent Indian Americans metastasizes into a demonization of the entire community,” Chopra says “there’s a danger that this could inspire real-world violence.”
Most recently in Florida, a Republican councilman, Chandler Langevin, posted on social media that Indians come to the U.S. to “drain our pockets.” Despite constituents calling for him to resign, he refused, but was formally censured.
In Irving, Texas, a Dallas suburb popular with Indian American tech executives, three masked men staged a roadside protest carrying signs that read “Don’t India My Texas,” “Deport H-1B Visa Scammers” and “Reject Foreign Demons,” Kaur writes.
A South Asian community leader in Texas said that white supremacist groups were harassing people outside Hindu temples, Kaur reports.
Salil Maniktahla, an Indian American who lives in Springfield, Virginia, said he was accosted by someone in a restaurant who hurled slurs at him, saying “Trump is your president,” and “go home.”
“What I see now is that a lot of people are mouthing off in ways that they felt they were prevented from doing prior to 2016,” Maniktahla tells Kaur.
Vice President JD Vance, “whose wife Usha Vance is Indian American, dismissed remarks from a government staffer such as “normalize Indian hate” as youthful indiscretion,” Kaur says.
Chopra says that Indian Americans need to wake up to what’s going on.
“I think that sections of the Indian American community have been living in this fool’s paradise,” Chopra says.
“This should serve as a kind of wake-up call — that racism that’s directed at people of color and minority groups, you are not exempt from. And maybe that should spark some kind of reflection about questions of solidarity with other vulnerable groups,” he adds.
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