The Modi government may adopt an ostrich-like attitude or even justify what the Americans have done, but the fact remains that for Indians, the manner in which hundreds of undocumented Indians were sent back was viewed as a national humiliation.
First person accounts of their hardship – cuffs on hands and feet, long flights on military aircraft, turbans of Sikhs being taken off – all showed that the Donald Trump administration showed zero sensitivity in treating the deportees with no dignity and did not stick to international protocol. And, instead of objecting to this, India’s external affairs minister, the suave and veteran foreign affairs expert S Jaishankar, in parliament, defended the Standard Operating Procedures of the Americans. But as Vivek Katju, another veteran Indian diplomat, said, these are not Indian SOPs. Talk about grovelling and rubbing salt on the wounds of the Indians.
As for Narendra Modi, he stuck to his usual ‘maun vrat’ of avoiding a comment whenever a serious situation demands a statement. It is obvious that all his bombastic nationalistic rhetoric is just plain waffling – when it comes to action, or talking about substantive issues, he is missing. Whatever happened to ‘my friend Donald Trump’ that Narendra Modi used to talk about, when he journeyed there in 2019, and when Donald Trump came to Ahmedabad the year out?
The Americans, especially Trump supporters – i.e. the MAGA (Make America Great Again) crowd are not bothered about what Indians think. The deportation of illegal Indian migrants is going to play out quite differently there.
This is going to feed into the resentment they already feel for Indians in the US. For many Americans, Indians – both legal and undocumented – are viewed as stealing local jobs. Indians get the highest number – almost three-fourths – of H1B visas. We in India see it as a matter of pride, they don’t. The largest number of those waiting for a Green Card are Indians.
Consider the many achievements we in India read about in newspapers and on WhatsApp groups – high education levels, among the highest mean incomes, top positions in companies like Google and Microsoft and even regularly winning Spelling Bee competitions! We are the ‘model minority’, living the American dream and not indulging in violence or terror activities.
Also read: Three Things About India that Shackled Indians Returning Home Tell Us
Trump’s supporters do not necessarily see it that way. They were aghast when Trump supported the programme after becoming president. They were even more critical when he appointed Sriram Krishnan as his AI advisor because of his views on removing country caps on Green Cards. These Americans may not want Silicon Valley jobs, but they think legal migrants – Indians among them – steal jobs that could have gone to locals.
Scratch just below the surface and it is racism.
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Even being a MAGA supporter could not help Vivek Ramaswamy who lost his job in Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) along with Elon Musk. And the all round success of Indian Americans is not going to win them much support either. The nomination of J.D. Vance quickly resulted in far-right attacks on his wife Usha, the daughter of Indian immigrants. At one time, when Vance was a Trump critic, he had said that the latter’s supporters were more racist than the average American.
But it is not just about the MAGA cohort. Even others must be getting irritated with this model minority. To see Indian H1B holders getting jobs in Silicon Valley must hurt some other job applicants as much as an Indian getting ahead in school and college.
There are enough Indians who have exposed the model minority myth, but one section that is missing in all this myth making about the success of the Indians in the US was the vast, yet invisible, number of illegal, undocumented migrants. They exist in the underbelly of the American dream and make news only when they die. But to anybody who cares to see, they are all around in the US. Even as a visitor, I have seen undocumented migrants in fast food joints, driving cabs and many low-paying jobs; each one of them will share their story if you ask. And the stories are similar – they paid an agent huge money after selling their house or land, came through a very arduous route, barely earned any money just to get by and constantly lived in fear of the police, but hold on because the future looks better here rather than back home.
Both the Americans and successful Indian-Americans barely give them a glance – the latter because they don’t want to know anyone who is not in their class (and caste). This is no different than what happens back home.
But successful, legal Indians cannot escape reality either. For the right-wing American, anyone with brown skin is now suspect. No one is going to stop and ask if the person is illegal or undocumented. Resentment and racism among Americans will increase now.
Meanwhile, to please his followers, Donald Trump will go after illegal migrants with even more gusto. More planes with handcuffed Indians will land and the Modi government will not be able to do anything about it. No more rallies of NRIs and PIOs when Modi goes there – he has to now contend with the ugly fact of the undocumented migrants. He may pretend they don’t exist, but they are now front and centre. What is he going to do to help them? WhatsApp forwards about how NASA is full of Indians will now sound shallow. And on its part the model minority will now have to wake up to the fact that its happy self-image has been dented severely.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
