Migrants, Masters, and the Gaza Misery

Piers Morgan, the 60-year-old US-based Brit of Irish descent, is a gifted, successful, and perennially controversial media personality in the US as well as the UK. However, what I am about to discuss is not him but the theme of his YouTube video, WHY INDIAN IMMIGRANTS BECOME SO RICH IN AMERICA!

Morgan credits the size of the average income of Indian immigrants, which is double the US average, to among other things, (a) their high-quality education in India before arrival in the US, (b) the fact that frequently both husband and wife obtain well-paid jobs in the US, (c) conducive family values, and (d) the willingness of many US-based Indians to take risks in their forties and fifties and move from jobs to businesses, including in real estate and pharmacy. 

Even as Morgan’s video did the rounds in the US and elsewhere, word spread of incidents in America against people of Indian origin. The most gruesome story was the September 10 murder in a Dallas motel of its Indian manager, 41-year-old Chandra Nagamallaiah, by a man named Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, evidently an illegal immigrant from Cuba with a history of previous crimes in different parts of the US. 

In front of his wife and child, Nagamalliah’s head was severed by a machete and kicked. Among the many who condemned the grotesque crime was Ro Khanna, the Congressman of Indian origin from California, who posted this on X:

“The brutal beheading of a hardworking Indian American immigrant in front of his wife & son is horrific. The murderer had multiple prior arrests for violent theft & child endangerment & was undocumented. He should not have been free on American streets.”

The story will sicken anyone, and hearts will want to reach out to the child and the widow. Relevant for broader India-US relations is the sobering fact, revealed on social media in the US, that sections of the American public harbor dislike, even resentment, for Indian immigrants. An earlier impression that Indians in the US were being viewed as some kind of “model minority” has been completely wiped out. 

Posting a video of Indians boisterously celebrating a festival in his residential “colony” – to use the India-wide expression for what suburban Americans call a “sub-division” – a white American added these words: “Typical view in my neighborhood outside Dallas. We have to cancel the H1-Bs. I want my kids to grow up in America. Not India.” 

WHITE NATIONALISM 

It’s not only about Indians. Immigrants of almost all kinds are subject to the new reality. Does the Statue of Liberty describe America any longer? Isn’t a truer image conveyed by the declaration of the present US government that illegal immigrants will be deported to South Sudan or Rwanda or El Salvador, unless they are accepted back in their country of origin? 

Disappointed migrants to the US from India or from other parts of the world must ask such questions and live with the fact that answers may not be comfortable. Populist leaders in the US are sending divisive cues, often championing “white nationalism” or “white Christian nationalism.” The blueprint of a race-blind Beloved Community that Martin Luther King had presented to America is now almost invisible.

Earlier this year, in February, the BBC carried a story on illegal migrants in the US of Indian origin, based on a paper written jointly by Professor Devesh Kapur of John Hopkins University and Abby Budiman, a PhD candidate there. Estimated numbers of illegal immigrants of Indian origin given there varied from a figure of 220,000 supplied by the Department of Homeland Security to “some 700,000,” which was the figure arrived at by the Pew Research Center. 

Estimates of the total number of people of Indian origin living in the US also vary – there may be around 5 million of them. These millions form a priceless bridge between the US and India. They also constitute a population that is suddenly starting to feel vulnerable. 

For readers who understand Hindi/Hindustani, I strongly recommend this remarkable assessment of America’s current state provided by one of India’s gifted and popular YouTubers, Akash Banerjee. 

Indians living in the US must also ask frank questions of themselves. Piers Morgan’s praise must not blind us. Nor should we be elated by the fact that “Little Indias” have been successfully established in city after city in the US, providing easy access to Indian food, Indian art, and Indian music, enabling many Indians to live simultaneously in both the US and India. 

This may be impressive for everyone and convenient for Indians, but shouldn’t the contentment and convenience of all who live in the US be the concern of Indians who have moved to the US? If it isn’t, can permanent goodwill be expected? 

AUSTRALIA & THE UK 

Uncertainty is not confined to migrants in the US. Australia, where Indians have become more visible year by year, has been seeing anti-Indian protests. The largely attended “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London on September 14 appeared to be an audacious bid, backed by far-right figures in the US, Germany, and elsewhere, to turn the UK into a White First country. 

In front of those gathered in London, Elon Musk, who is not a Brit, openly asked for the British parliament to be dissolved! 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded by saying that the demonstration had “sent a shiver through so many of our communities who now feel more scared than they did before.” Other UK voices demanded action against Musk, but it is interesting that “white nationalism” has become a global agenda, seeking to expel equality and fraternity as harmful values for humankind.

The organizer of the London rally, Tommy Robinson, whose original name was Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is the founder of the nationalist and anti-Muslim “English Defense League” and one of Britain’s most influential far-right figures. Also speaking at the rally, the far-right French politician, Eric Zemmour, said: “We (the French and the British) are both subject to the same process of the great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture. You and we are being colonized by our former colonies.” 

We know that “the great replacement” is an oft-used trope in the US too. For his London rally, Robinson capitalized on the September 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk, a significant Trump ally and charismatic young foe of D.E.I. -- diversity, equity and inclusion – a goal long espoused in America’s schools, colleges, and other institutions but now abandoned and often despised. 

Fed for years on anti-Muslim rhetoric, India’s Hindus will need to figure out -- whether they live in India, the US, the UK, Australia, or anywhere else – if they will climb onto the “white first” and anti-Muslim platform of Robinson, Zemmour, and company, where many far-right Americans too may be found, or whether they would still prefer a world where, regardless of race or creed, all live as equals and friends. 

India’s long history of respect for all faiths and traditions, the unique texture of India’s anti-colonial struggle, and India’s constitution all point in one direction. They ask the country’s Hindus, who constitute the vast majority, to pick the space of equality and spurn the platform of privilege and hierarchy. However, given the pressure and persistence of the anti-Muslim tirade in India, it is hard to predict what the Hindus will decide. 

One indicator, not an encouraging one, is India’s position on the Gaza genocide and the ongoing seizure of Palestinian territory in the West Bank. While Washington has long been complicit in Israel’s aggressions, the American people seem increasingly disturbed by the Gaza destruction, and major European countries do not appear to be far from finally recognizing Palestine as a state. India, however, which recognized Palestine long ago and continues to have diplomatic relations with the Palestinian authority, seems unable today to call genocide by its name or even to deplore the havoc being wreaked on the Palestinian people. 

EYES FINALLY OPENING? 

As I type these lines, a fresh and massive Israeli attack on Gaza City, this time inclusive of artillery and ground troops, has YET AGAIN blasted homes and buildings, forced once more the sale of jewelry for food and water, compelled tens of thousands to escape on feeble bicycles and other available vehicles to distant locations, and in these and other ways devastated countless lives. 

For what may be the first time, the German foreign minister has spoken up strongly against the Israeli action. The UK foreign secretary too has strongly criticized it. But Rubio, the American secretary of state, still blames “Hamas savages.”

Believe it or not, official India is unable to utter a word of sympathy for Gaza City’s whipped and traumatized people! As for Netanyahu and his band, as one observer commented, the only human beings in Gaza they seem to recognize are the Israeli hostages still in Hamas’s captivity. The others, even if they are infants or great-grandparents, are animals or less.

Israel’s current rulers have invited unprecedented shame upon themselves and, sadly, on their state and nation. And the rest of the world, for all its size and strength, lacks the spine to rescue Palestinian lives or Israel’s sinking honor.