A new feature on X (formerly Twitter) which makes the location of account holders public, has amusingly shown several large anti-migration and “America First” accounts being located outside the US. While these foreign accounts that specialise in generating racist anti-migrant content for content payouts have been located all over South Asia, South East Asia, South America and Africa, the pushback against these accounts has been used predominantly to stoke anti-Indian racism. This is not surprising. Since 2024, there has been a demonstrable uptick in anti-Indian racism online. A report by the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate found that 65% of such racist posts on X were US centered.

While Indian reactions to online racism tend to be varied, ranging from anger against white supremacy to self-reflective criticism of Indian behaviour (both within the diaspora and at home), we often fail to correctly contextualise the role these different factors play. Racism is primarily driven by the bipartisan rise of anti-immigration sentiment in the American political discourse. The diaspora’s ability or willingness to seek solidarity from other targeted groups however seems to be hampered by the broader political discourse in India, which, partly due to social media and partly due to the active appropriation of the diaspora by the Modi government, is no longer contained within national borders.

Indian immigration and anti-immigrant Racism

Anti-immigrant racism isn’t a modern phenomenon. It originally went hand in hand with colonialism. While colonialism legitimised expropriating the resources of the colonies to the imperial core, anti-immigrant racism prevented the colonised populations from following these resources to the imperial core. Anti-immigrant racism therefore drew on the same tropes that were used to justify colonialism – essentially that natives who were too dirty or barbaric to govern themselves were also unsuitable to be admitted into the imperial core.

Immigration to the US, despite its soaring rhetoric, has always been centred around racial discrimination. For example, from 1917 to 1965 several non-white races were blocked from immigration by law.

Modern anti-immigrant racism is similarly best understood materially, as being driven by the perceived need to safeguard the historic gains of colonisation from racial redistribution. Therefore the biggest themes of racist discourse, including conspiracies like the “great replacement theory” focus on stoking fear around the volume of immigration. In this framework, the targets are most often decided by the numerical threat they are seen to pose.

While Mexicans remain the largest immigrant group in the US (and also the largest target of anti-immigrant racism), the exponential growth of the Indian diaspora in the US in the last three decades has increased their vulnerability to the same abuse. In 2023 about 5.2 million people in the US self-identified as “Indian” (this includes American citizens born in the US, as well as immigrants).

Beyond the number of Indians present in the US today, there is a broader perception that “hordes” of India’s young population will eventually seek migration. While China has managed to absorb the population made redundant from agriculture into manufacturing, there isn’t enough demand in the world to sustain a second China-like manufacturing story.

The populations that are being made redundant from agriculture in India’s slow industrialisation are therefore pushed either into painful short term migration into India’s few cities, or (if they are wealthier) to seek migration to the West, often through informal “donkey” routes. In 2024, the Migration Policy Institute estimated the number of undocumented Indian immigrants in the US to be around 375,000. Pew Research estimates the number to be higher.

Curbing immigration has become a bipartisan political project in the West. As this is a political project that requires some form anti-immigrant racism to sustain the cruelty inherent in it, all parties find a form of anti-immigrant racism that best suits their voters. While the most explicit forms of racism are certainly from white nationalists, including offensive references to the immigrant’s appearance, smell, eating habits and supposed lack of personal hygiene, progressives seek out more refined forms of racism. For example, they blame Indian accounts for spreading MAGA (Make America Great Again) racism online and for telephone scams. They also accuse Indian immigrants of importing the violent politics or misogyny of their homelands to the West.

Immigrant communities (and their well-wishers back home) often focus on what the community can do to make themselves more acceptable to the dominant group. These theories are tempting because they offer a sense of control in a situation designed to provoke powerlessness, and generate a feeling that racism might be offset by modifying community behaviour. They hope that by becoming a “model minority”, they will gain acceptance or at least be left alone. There is also a tendency within the diaspora to seek power by participating in anti-immigrant racism themselves, often attempting to distinguish one’s own immigration story from the rest on the basis of the legality of entrance, the duration of their stay, their religion, caste and class location.

This is destined to fail because the anti-immigration discourse is not about the legality of immigration or the quality of immigrants let in. It is a simple rush to shut the gates on the basis of race. Once an immigrant group becomes big enough, “model minority” framings fail to fundamentally alter racist narratives against them in the eyes of the dominant group. For example, when many in the diaspora supported the deportation of undocumented Indian immigrants in chains earlier this year, the online racist discourse simply shifted from “illegal” immigration to the H1B visa.

Traditionally, targeted immigrant groups would seek alliances with other targeted groups to compensate for their numerical weakness vis a vis the dominant group. The broader political discourse both in India and the US in the last decade has fundamentally diminished the ability of the Indian diaspora to do this.

The rise of Hindu nationalism and the fragmentation of the diaspora

The Modi government’s outreach within the diaspora has been almost entirely focused on the Hindu diaspora. The Indian Muslim diaspora has generally been ignored while the Indian Sikh diaspora has been actively demonised. The Hindutva reimagination of India as fundamentally and essentially Hindu, regardless of the Constitution, has arguably left portions of the Muslim and Sikh diaspora increasingly alienated from the Indian identity abroad.

The 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS) found that while 88% of Hindu respondents termed being Indian as “somewhat or very important to their identity”, only 66% of Muslim respondents felt the same way. While there isn’t enough data to conclusively establish the role played by Hindu nationalism in this alienation, it is reasonable to assume that it has played some role.

This religious fragmentation has also impacted solidarities within the broader South Asian diaspora. The use of social media has made sustaining a barrier between the stark dehumanisation of minorities that has become characteristic of the Indian political, journalistic, and academic discourse and the diaspora difficult. This has manifested in violent religion-based clashes within the diaspora.

In 2022, Leicester, which has historically been a site of racist violence saw unprecedented violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims. Similar clashes have occurred between Sikhs and Hindus in Canada in 2024 and in Australia in 2023. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has generally reserved its concern specifically for Hindu victims of such violence, further cementing this religious fragmentation of diaspora identity.

Caste and the diaspora

While the first wave of Indian immigrants who entered the US (before racial prohibitions were enacted in 1917 and 1924) were predominantly working class, the next wave, who entered after 1965, were almost entirely comprised of what was termed “middle class” in India – a euphemism for the relatively well-off, college educated and often upper-caste Indian, who due to their accumulated caste capital were the most qualified to meet the immigration criteria. The introduction of the H1B visa in the early 1990s led to a surge in migration driven by the tech industry, without fundamentally altering this caste composition. In the 2024 IAAS, 46% of Hindu respondents identified as “general” or “upper” caste and 32% of survey respondents did not identify with any caste. Only 2% identified as Dalit and 5% as OBC.

Until recently, Dalit members of the diaspora, being in a significant minority, and doubly discriminated against on the basis of race and caste, reported feeling compelled to hide their caste identities publicly. The emergence of Dalit activism in the West, and a growing awareness of the similarities between caste and race in the US particularly in the last decade has changed this. Activists argue that the 2020 Cisco caste discrimination case has fundamentally altered the way caste is viewed in the US. It mainstreamed both conversations on caste and highlighted the need for specific laws to protect against caste discrimination.

While the 2024 IAAS found that over 79% of upper caste respondents supported specific caste discrimination laws, groups like the Hindu American Foundation have vehemently argued that such laws would be “anti-Hindu”. And while the reasoning provided by California Governor Gavin Newsom for vetoing a specific caste discrimination law was vague, it is not unreasonable to suppose that lobbying by some of these groups played a role. While the Indian government has not publicly commented on these laws, in February 2025, Kshama Sawant, one of the architects of the Seattle city council’s caste discrimination legislation was denied a visa to visit her ailing mother in India. Actions like this have served to further fragment the diaspora along caste lines.

Foreign policy influencers and Islamophobia

I have argued earlier that a series of prominent Indian “foreign policy” influencers, with large Indian follower counts, shape perceptions of India and Indians in the global public sphere. As these accounts primarily generate content for domestic majoritarian consumption, they focus on perspectives that stoke anti-Muslim sentiment and fears within India. However, since the issues they comment on are of wider global interest, their views gather global eyeballs.  This has impacted the diaspora as well.

For example, while the 2024 IAAS shows that the Indian diaspora remains split on Palestine (with about 35% stating that their sympathies lie mostly or entirely with the Palestinian people, 29% stating that their sympathies lie mostly or entirely with the Israeli people and 24% saying they sympathise equally with both), there is a tendency on social media to conflate the diaspora with the positions of these influencers in India who are overwhelmingly pro-Israel, and are often seen celebrating or mocking Palestinian death. This online behaviour tends to alienate other immigrant groups, especially from West Asia and Northern Africa from the Indian diaspora.

Anti-blackness and misogyny

India has an underdiscussed and long-standing racism and anti-blackness problem, compounded by misogyny. Multiple African students in India have been subjected to violent hate crimes and housing discrimination on the basis of race. While the Indian government’s response to these events has been to deny the racial element, with social media, the barriers that once kept Indian racism a secret have collapsed. Indian accounts (including celebrities) are all over social media expressing anti-black sentiments that would put the Jim Crow south to shame.

Ordinary accounts on X (formerly Twitter) are many times worse, especially in their interactions with or opinions about women of color online. While the Indian diaspora might genuinely not hold the same sentiments, these perceptions once created in the public domain make it very difficult for other racially marginalised groups to offer solidarity to them.

Way forward

The Indian diaspora in the West is currently caught in a challenging moment. Even conservatives like Vivek Ramaswamy and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Kash Patel have found that their closeness to the Republican party does not shield them from anti-immigrant racism. Online racism is only the tip of the iceberg.  In Ireland, online racism has already sparked physical attacks on Indians.

A section of the diaspora, being unwilling to directly take on the white nationalists, has chosen to direct their ire at left-liberals in India, whom they term “self-hating”, and whose criticisms on caste and patriarchy in India they blame for “stoking” anti-Indian sentiment abroad. This is misguided. The Indian diaspora is a target not because of how left-liberals in India see them, but because of their numerical presence in the West. To pretend otherwise is to weaponize anti-Indian racism abroad to silence dissent in India.

Others in the diaspora have suggested delinking their Indian identities from material advocacy for India. In the context of the ongoing tariff battles between India and the US, prominent current and former members of the diaspora have argued that members of the diaspora should not feel compelled to lobby for Indian interests in the US, and that it is unreasonable and counterproductive for Indians to expect the diaspora to play this role. This is a fair argument, and it may well be the best way forward, where the Indian diaspora in the US, like older Indian diasporas in Africa and the Caribbean, crafts its own identity, politics, and alliances, freed from association with political and cultural discourses in India. This may also be representative of what the diaspora wants.

In the 2024 IAAS survey for example, 51% of the respondents said they did not identify with any Indian political party. But this will require them to acknowledge that many activities that they treat as cultural assertions, like providing financial and discursive support to Hindu nationalist linked groups in the US, have material impacts on Indian politics. In the era of social media, this isn’t a one-way street. For the diaspora to successfully delink themselves from the unpleasant blowback of Indian politics, they must cease to participate in it.

Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.

Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.

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