In an interview, immigration scholar and author Suketu Mehta discusses the escalating targeting of Indian immigrants in the US, attributing it to white supremacist groups and economic insecurity amplified by factors like H-1B visa debates. He notes a global backlash to migration, but argues that the US, particularly under the Trump administration, exhibits a more severe and open hostility, exemplified by policies favoring white South African asylum seekers. Mehta advocates for increased political engagement and the accumulation of power by Indian Americans, drawing parallels to historical immigrant groups who faced discrimination and fought for their place. He links the current backlash to a reaction against the redefinition of colonialism and emphasizes that the anger directed at immigrants is misdirected, stemming from vast economic inequality and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, rather than from immigrants themselves. Mehta urges a "muscular response" to prejudice, encouraging immigrants to be proud of their culture and to challenge negative narratives by telling true stories that expose the role of the super-rich in global inequality, thereby reframing the immigration debate.

In an interview, immigration scholar and author Suketu Mehta discusses the escalating targeting of Indian immigrants in the US, attributing it to white supremacist groups and economic insecurity amplified by factors like H-1B visa debates. He notes a global backlash to migration, but argues that the US, particularly under the Trump administration, exhibits a more severe and open hostility, exemplified by policies favoring white South African asylum seekers. Mehta advocates for increased political engagement and the accumulation of power by Indian Americans, drawing parallels to historical immigrant groups who faced discrimination and fought for their place. He links the current backlash to a reaction against the redefinition of colonialism and emphasizes that the anger directed at immigrants is misdirected, stemming from vast economic inequality and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, rather than from immigrants themselves. Mehta urges a "muscular response" to prejudice, encouraging immigrants to be proud of their culture and to challenge negative narratives by telling true stories that expose the role of the super-rich in global inequality, thereby reframing the immigration debate.

In an interview, immigration scholar and author Suketu Mehta discusses the escalating targeting of Indian immigrants in the US, attributing it to white supremacist groups and economic insecurity amplified by factors like H-1B visa debates. He notes a global backlash to migration, but argues that the US, particularly under the Trump administration, exhibits a more severe and open hostility, exemplified by policies favoring white South African asylum seekers. Mehta advocates for increased political engagement and the accumulation of power by Indian Americans, drawing parallels to historical immigrant groups who faced discrimination and fought for their place. He links the current backlash to a reaction against the redefinition of colonialism and emphasizes that the anger directed at immigrants is misdirected, stemming from vast economic inequality and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, rather than from immigrants themselves. Mehta urges a "muscular response" to prejudice, encouraging immigrants to be proud of their culture and to challenge negative narratives by telling true stories that expose the role of the super-rich in global inequality, thereby reframing the immigration debate.

Interview/ Suketu Mehta, author

Suketu Mehta is one of the finest thinkers on the subject of immigration, though he is better known in India for his Pulitzer prize-nominated bestseller Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2004). A professor at New York University, Mehta released This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto in 2019 and is currently working on a book on the immigrant history of New York City. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:

Q/ Indians abroad are being targeted.

In the US right now, Indian immigrants are under attack like never before. I haven’t seen this in my 50 years of living here. For the first time, we are really on the radar, particularly of MAGA people, the white supremacists and the hardcore Trump supporters, who see us as a threat.

Now they see the Latinos coming across the border and the Africans as a threat from below, they see us as a threat from above. We are the richest, best educated community in the United States and I have been noticing on the internet just incredible racist hate directed at us.

The way you fight this is by accumulating power—political power, narrative power—and not by apologising, not by cutting back. We have every right to put up a giant statue of Hanuman, just as there are giant crosses all over the country.

They call us street shitters. A lot of this was directed at me after my last book, so I have seen it coming. But now it is almost entering the mainstream, and I think that is because of this kind of enormous economic insecurity that the US faces. And it is most directly felt as an attack on the H-1B visa category, which is majority Indian.

Q/ Prejudice has always been there. But it wasn’t cool to express it publicly, but that has changed now all over the world, including in India. Is what is happening in America different?

There is a global backlash to migration. We are not much better—the horrible things that our leaders say about Bangladeshis, for example, Muslims and Christians, it is appalling.

But I think in the US, in the second Trump administration, it is coming from the president. There are no guardrails any more. It is much worse in the US than in any European country. It is significant that the only people who can now get asylum in the United States are white South Africans. And this is by official American policy!

Where does that leave Indians? We have to engage politically in the countries that we go to. We have to fight for it. Every other ethnic group that came to the US—the Italians, the Jews, the Catholics—all of them faced discrimination, and all of them had to fight and attain power.

I am hoping that more of the current generation of Indian Americans here engages in politics, journalism, media and activism.

Q/ In this last 10-15 years, we saw this explosion of social media-fuelled activism towards political correctness, the woke-ism that happened. Your book came out right in the middle of it, where you established a reverse take on colonialism—how the west owed us. Is what is happening right now a reaction to that?

Sure, there is absolutely a backlash to that. There are people in England saying colonialism was great, how they improved these countries, gave them railways, English language, all that. You see this unapologetic definition of imperialism and colonialism. Like [Stephen] Miller (US homeland security adviser) saying, ‘We are going to take Venezuela, we are going to take their oil.’ It is refreshing they are open about it. Might is right. Thank you for not disguising your true intentions in liberal theories!

We see this happen all over the world. But the real question isn’t why Stephen Miller would say and get away with it, or why there would be this backlash to migration in Europe. The question is, why are ordinary people buying it?

Standing tall: The Hanuman statue in Sugar Land, Texas | Getty Images

Immigration is undoubtedly an economic good for the United States. So after Covid-19, the American economy did better than Europe because of the surge in migration, both legal and illegal. And economists almost universally agree on very little else, but they agree on this. Now, the problem is that while it is happening, there is also an enormous rise in inequality. Today, six white men own more wealth than half of all the people on the planet. So the amount of money going to the billionaires has been rising exponentially.

And it is not going to get any better. As we see AI coming in, more and more of this money will go from not just the poor, but also the middle class to a very small group of rich people around the world. And this causes mass popular anger, right?

So the easiest thing to do when you find that your job has been taken away by AI is not blaming Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. It is easier to blame the Mexican gardener or the H-1B engineer from Hyderabad. He may be working on dirt wages but he becomes this visible face of why you, as a white person in rural Kentucky, can’t get a job. Because the billionaires are too far above. They are untouchable. And so, a politician comes along and says, ‘If you only stop the H-1Bs, then you, too, will be able to get a job coding.’ (Laughs) There are no jobs left in coding!

So I think that the issue [for] people like us—storytellers, journalists, filmmakers, even politicians—is to reframe that narrative. Our money isn’t being taken by each other. It is being taken by this incredibly unequal class structure and the fact that a small group of predominantly white men are getting exponentially richer. And as long as this continues, immigrants, outsiders, will always be the easiest to blame.

Q/ We have seen this happening whenever an immigrant group does well. With more Indians going out, they are being targeted more and more for behaviour and culture. Not just in politics, but across social media. How do you look at it?

I have seen these videos, too, of Indians dancing in desi garb or things like that. It used to be considered a harmless eccentricity, and now it is seen as threatening. So what is the response? Do you stop wearing saris and celebrating on the street? No, hell no! You do it and you say, ‘If you don’t like it, f**k you!’

There has to be a muscular response to this, which is what every other ethnic group did—the Irish still celebrate St Patrick’s Day; the Italians were considered Mafiosi, and they actually celebrated the idea of the Mafiosi in their movies and TV shows!

I think that we have to be less apologetic. And going back to what I was saying, the way you fight this is by accumulating power—political power, narrative power—and not by apologising, not by cutting back. We have every right to put up a giant statue of Hanuman, just as there are giant crosses all over the country.

The constitution guarantees us freedom of religion. We really don’t need to be apologetic about anything.

Q/ The other allegation thrown at Indians, maybe more at the students and the newcomers, is that not only are they not culturally adjusting, they also lack civic sense.

I am very happy that my desi students at NYU are not listening to country music; they are doing bhangra, and they are very out and proud about their culture. They will dance however the hell they want, and dress how they want, and sing and dance on the streets, or in the clubs.

And it is not just Indians. The Super Bowl this year had a Puerto Rican singer (Bad Bunny) who sang in Spanish. This is American culture—it is a mix of all other cultures.

I see absolutely no need for us to adjust our behaviour, unless it is a matter of civic sense, or, you know, not spitting paan on the streets.

Q/ And how do we change the larger narrative?

We are engaged in a global war of narrative about immigration, and the populists like Trump, Modi and Putin, are winning.

A populist is someone who can tell a false story well—about other people, whether they are Muslims or Mexicans or Ukrainians, about how the ‘other’ is a danger to you. And the only way the populist can be fought is by telling a true story better—get the stories of the migrants and say, ‘No, it is not true. Your problems, the fact that you cannot get a job is not the fault of the person coming in over the border to make a better life for her family. It is the people who have stolen both our futures, it is the super-rich, the elites of the world, who now own more of a share of global wealth than at any time in recorded history.’

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