The murmurings had begun already in America with the political elevation of Vivek Ramaswamy when the successful Cincinnati-born, Harvard and Yale graduate near-billionaire of Indian origin, decided to run for President seeking a Republican ticket. Ann Coulter, right-wing author, columnist, and influencer, told Ramaswamy on his face that she would not vote for him because he “is an Indian”.
Ramaswamy dropped out of the race, and actively threw in his support for Donald Trump. In turn, Trump, after a historic victory, picked him and Elon Musk to kickstart the new proposed Department of Government Efficiency. The murmurings became louder. But when Trump picked Chennai-born Sriram Krishnan, an old Musk associate, and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, as his advisor on artificial intelligence, the conversation exploded.
A barrage of right-wing and MAGA supporters objected loudly—Krishnan was an immigrant, and accused of being a “former Leftist”—how could he find a place in a Trump administration avowed to taking a tougher stance on immigration, they asked. Many demanded that the H1-B visa, most coveted by, and most given to, highest-paid Indians, should be scrapped. Indian engineers were, and are, critical to the growth and continued success of Silicon Valley. People of Indian-origin occupy corner office positions, and other major managerial positions, across America Inc. and yet the “My job was Bangalore-d” syndrome has never quite disappeared. In fact, with America, like large parts of Europe and the UK, facing an illegal immigration crisis, public positions on immigration and immigrants are becoming sharper.
There are a few contradictory things in this issue. On one hand, Americans of Indian origin are the ideal minority in the world’s wealthiest country. This community is the richest, most educated, and perhaps the most well integrated minority in American. It is often described as “the other one per cent”, a reference to their elite status. But it is also true that Indians are one of the largest illegal immigrant groups in America—this fact is rarely highlighted because even illegal Indian immigrants in America adjust and integrate quite well, mostly, and almost never taught the kind of crime and extremism that America and other parts of the West face from other illegal (or even legal) immigrant groups. There has, for instance, never been a police “no-go zone” which is largely inhabited by Indians or people of Indian origin.
But this too is starting to change as the separatist Khalistani issue has reared its ugly head in Canada, the US, the UK and some other parts of the West. A lot of gang war crimes in Canada today is led by criminals from Indian Punjab who have slipped through Canada’s infamously corrupt immigration system. Opinion against Khalistani Sikhs is growing more and more bitter in these, the most likely last days of a defunct Justin Trudeau-led hard Left administration.
Indian immigrants, till now, had the reputation of working hard, integrating, but rarely participating very actively in politics. They were seen as docile and politically ineffectual. This is no longer true. The first generation of Indian immigrants largely worked with an unwavering eye on financial success. The second generation worked to build community and establish a sense of culture in a foreign land. But now, in many cases, a new generation of Indian immigrants are eagerly participating in politics in larger numbers than ever. This politically active and influential Indian immigrant or person of Indian origin is something relatively new in the Western public sphere and its political imagination. It is, therefore, grappling to understand and accommodate the political needs and demands of this hitherto rather acquiescent community.
As attacks on India especially from the Left in the West have become more vitriolic in the last decade, more prosperous Indians around the world have found a voice, in part enthused by the new narrative of rising India, to defend their country of origin and their culture. Many of these Indians feel the so-called liberal is unable to understand, and unwilling to accept, India’s geopolitical rise, and resents its economic and political success, that there is a sustained effort to demean India’s efforts, and its culture. This story would be incomplete without talking specifically about the Hindu community among Indian immigrants and people of Indian origin, the largest part of such a grouping. These were usually the most prosperous but also most apolitical of the lot. But as the global hard Left conflated caste with race and, among other indignities, insisted on blaming the social tyranny of racism upon caste, insisted that Hinduism was nothing but a framework for the exploitative caste system, and denied, and tried to erase, histories of oppression faced by Hindus, including under Islamist medieval rulers, Hindu immigrant groups became more and more vocal about taking ownership of the story of their community, and their story. The rising influence of political Islam in the governing structures of many Western countries also pushed Hindu immigrant groups to join forces and participate in political activity. One recent example of this is the creation of a Hindu voice group during the British parliamentary elections after a radical Muslim voice group emerged with alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood and demanding soto voce implementation of sharia laws like anti-blasphemy regulation. As widespread apprehension grows in the UK that nationwide anti-blasphemy sharia-style laws are being brought in, communities like immigrant Hindus feel more threatened than ever as they fear rising institutional bias. This sense of bias is also creeping in as attacks on Jews in the West sometimes spill over, these days, on immigrant Hindu communities which are seen as “Jew-adjacent” due to growing support for Israel within India. That the two communities are the most economically powerful in America makes such comparisons easier, and more loaded.
The Indian community today faces, despite its success in every country, and its superior record of assimilation, challenges at both ends, so to speak. It faces criticism from the Left on culture, on alleged patriarchy and caste, on being entrepreneurial and pro-markets, and pro-Israel, and it faces pressure from the Right for just being from Asian origin, and sometimes on culture, on not being Christian, and for “taking away jobs”, and these challenges are set to increase. Traditionally, many in the Indian diaspora leaned towards so-called liberal political parties but in the recent past many have been startled by the hard Left and Islamist turn taken by several of these parties. So, they now veer Right. But, as they are discovering, things are not necessarily rosier there. The rude irony is that most of the successful Indian diaspora are as vigorously against illegal immigration as people of the Right—but they are now realising that this sentiment stretches right up to their coveted H1B visa.
The clamour and criticism in America against the selection of Sriram Krishnan has shown that no matter how much money the Indian community can throw at the problem, unless it develops much deeper strategic and political unity, and unless it builds long-term political alliances which go well beyond the customary Diwali diya lighting and photo ops, it will continue to be an easy target.
For India, this presents a real and present danger. Remittances bring in more than $120 billion and India has flaunted the success of its well-assimilated diaspora as a key narrational tool in its foreign policy outreach. The Indian diaspora is a critical asset for Indian foreign policy with its ability to construct bridges over choppy waters, and open doors which seem unduly tightly shut. If the narrative about the Indian diaspora changes, it will be a major victory for India’s most strident foes including Islamist collectives and Pakistan-and-China-backed assailants.
India has always sought to showcase its immigrants as consistently enhancing progress and norms in each country. It has prided on the fact that Indians are a net positive in every society and sought to showcase the difference the average Indian immigrant bring compared to, for instance, Pakistanis or Bangladeshis. It has also promoted the legitimacy and legality of the process followed by Indian immigrants. In India, there is bipartisan consensus on the power and influence of the diaspora and the good that it does for India. And India has worked to build such consensus across party lines in the contribution of the Indian diaspora.
All of this still holds. Overwhelmingly, the Indian diaspora still stands out for its exemplary contribution and its success, both economic and social. But for the first time in decades a serious and darker undertone is developing, its ugliness reinforced by political bias and racial prejudice, and, to be honest, aggravated by instances of Indian illegality.
This can only be countered by a deepening of political engagement by the diaspora, assisted by the Indian state. But the heavy-lifting would have to be done by the diaspora. It is they who are on the frontlines and the resourcefulness and intrepidity that they have shown in acquiring material success including great wealth must now be put to use in building resilient political networks. In this, there is something to learn from the rigorously bipartisan way in which the Israeli diaspora operates in America working across political parties and groups to put forward their points of view and putting serious resources in ensuring that their opinion hits home. The response to prejudice and attacks is not to reduce political engagement and become invisible but to re-narrate the true story of why this is an incredible group of people who have had such sterling contribution to the countries they have chosen to be part of.
A narrative is being built by the hard Left and Islamist groups in America and in other parts of the West that the Indian diaspora is more loyal to India than their home country. Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth. The repetition of this very dangerous lie is doing great damage to the diaspora in ways that perhaps it cannot immediately comprehend or analyse. This lie will have bitter long-term consequences unless it is vigorously countered and checked immediately. The fact of the tireless and patriotic contribution of the Indian diaspora to their home countries speaks for itself, the data will tell its own story but this data is yet to be comprehensively gathered across countries and narrated in a cohesively global manner.
The time has come for the Indian diaspora to wake up from their communitarian, ethnic stupor. Unless serious efforts are made, generations of goodwill can disappear within years and the negativity triggered could last for generations.
The engagement between diaspora community leaders and the Indian foreign policy universe must also deepen in terms of real actionable policy items shifting the focus from diaspora award ceremonies to creative ways in which the diaspora could more forcefully highlight its bridge-building role in opening the gateways of understanding the world’s fifth-largest economy. Donald Trump will become President in a few days and what happens to the Indian diaspora under his watch could well be a turning point, for the better, or for the worse for the Indian diaspora.
* Hindol Sengupta is professor of international relations at O. P. Jindal Global University, and co-founder of the foreign affairs platform, Global Order.