Editorial: MEA needs to do more for diaspora

The murder of a 28-year-old student, Chandrasekhar Pole, from Telangana during a robbery at a gas station in Denton, Texas, on October 3, brings to focus the growing vulnerability of the Indian diaspora in the United States. It is the latest case in a surge of violence targeting people of Indian origin, including students, professionals and small business owners in America this year. It follows the gruesome beheading last month of a Dallas motel manager Chandramouli Nagamallaiah, who had migrated from Andhra Pradesh five years ago. Also in September, a 49-year-old Gujarati woman named Kiran Patel was shot dead while fleeing from a robbery at her convenience store in South Carolina.

These were evidently not explicitly race-based crimes, but even nonpartisan sources confirm that there has been a sudden uptrend in 2025 not only of criminal assaults but also hate attacks against people of Indian extraction. Obviously hate-motivated cases include multiple incidents of vandalism at Hindu temples across several states, most notably at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in California back in March. Sikhs, in fact, are the third most-targeted religious group behind Jews and Muslims, according to FBI reports.

This surge must obviously be seen against the backdrop of the general anti-immigrant hysteria gripping America now, but also in relation to provocative statements by important aides of Donald Trump, such as Steven Miller, Peter Navarro and Howard Lutnick. The American President’s depiction of India as a ‘dead economy’ and a ‘tariff king’ too has provided a cue to White nationalist groups to weaponise the notion that H1B workers from India are stealing jobs from post-Columbian Americans. Such statements contribute to the formation of stereotypes and create a hostile social environment for South Asians, fostering hate that sometimes translates into physical violence.

The crime wave against Indians is paralleled by a spike in racist content on social media specifically targeting Indian-origin people. According to a study by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, anti-Indian racism on platforms like Twitter nearly doubled from July to September 2025, with slurs and conspiracy theories about “job stealing” gaining traction. Digital hate correlates strongly with everyday violence everywhere, including against Indians in American cities.

The situation presents a challenge to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). So far, its response has been muted, limited to offering consular assistance to victims and their families. However, stoicism is not an adequate reaction for a regime that revels in the adulation of the Indian diaspora and claims a vaunted relationship with Donald Trump. To start with, Indian families with loved ones living in the US need External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to be more assertive on this matter when meeting his American counterpart.

Furthermore, the Indian government must work at every level where social perception is shaped to promote the image of Indians as a hard-working, law-abiding, and peace-loving community in the US. For this, the MEA needs to use influential Indian Americans in business, politics, professions and arts as ambassadors for the country. There is a need to raise awareness of India in the American media.

And here in India, there is a need for the government to leverage its domestic clout over American social media companies, compelling them to act decisively against digital hate campaigns targeting Indians.