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‘I wonder who they voted for’: Indians facing identity crisis in US under Trump
Despite support within neighbourhoods, the sense of being different and standing out from the crowd has heightened for Indian students since Trump assumed office.
LONG READS Updated: Jun 14, 2017 18:58 IST
People at a vigil in honour of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian engineer killed in Kansas in a possible hate crime. (Reuters File )
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india...under-trump/story-YM3yGRow8pNazHwDLYyx6K.html
Despite support within neighbourhoods, the sense of being different and standing out from the crowd has heightened for Indian students since Trump assumed office.
LONG READS Updated: Jun 14, 2017 18:58 IST
People at a vigil in honour of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian engineer killed in Kansas in a possible hate crime. (Reuters File )
- three violent attacks against people of Indian origin in Kansas city, Kent and South Carolina, which resulted in two deaths. I didn’t want to stand out any more than I already do, and my family back home has been worried too. So I shaved off my beard, and the absurdity of this fear is saddening,” he adds.
Read more
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Sikh man shot at in US, masked attacker shouted ‘go back to your country’
“The most notable change for me is that, anyone new I meet or make eye contact with, at parties, in the street, on the subway, I wonder who they voted for. I wonder if they think I don’t belong, that I should ‘go back to where I came from’,” says Guhathakurta, who moved to the US with her family at the age of 6.
At work, she says she and her colleagues watched in distress as Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, who had run a campaign built largely on anti-immigrant, anti-outsourcing rhetoric.
“The most notable change for me is that, anyone new I meet or make eye contact with, at parties, in the street, on the subway, I wonder who they voted for.”
“After the results, our entire organisation mourned,” says Guhathakurta, who works in the field of public health, with a special focus on women and girls. “We already had indications of how our work would be affected. We also mourned for the pure misogynistic, nationalistic, and manipulative way he won the election.”
Not on campus
A recent survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) has indicated that 40% of US colleges are seeing a decline in applications from international students. The largest drop reported was from India and China, who together made up 47% of the international students in the country in 2016.
Among the students already there, many say they feel it’s time to take a stand. Some are participating in protest marches for the first time ever, others are taking every opportunity to confront extreme views on issues like immigration.
“Most people I come across at the university are very liberal. There are Republicans in the university space but their politics of conservatism is more economic than social,” says Shourjya Deb, 27, a student of public policy and administration at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “In the university space, the way of life is such that people are kind of afraid of being called out as racists or fascists. But even here, when I ask Republicans if they want me to leave the country, they are embarrassed and don’t know how to handle the question.”
IN TRUMP’S AMERICA
Since February, three Indians have been killed in racially motivated attacks in the US.- February 22: Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed and friend Alok Madasani injured when a man opened fire at them in a Kansas bar. The alleged shooter, a US Navy veteran named Adam Purinton, apparently thought the two were from the Middle East and was heard calling them "terrorists" before telling them to "get out of my country".Incidentally, Ian Grillot, a 24-year-old Caucasian American construction worker was injured while trying to stop the assailant.
- March 2: Harnish Patel, a 43-year-old store owner in South Carolina, was shot dead outside his home. It is not yet clear if this was a hate crime.
- March 4: Deep Rai, a 39-year-old Sikh, was shot outside his home in Kent, Washington, by a masked gunman who allegedly shouted to him to "go back to your own country".
- Trump took office on January 20, winning the Oval Office on the back of an 18-month-long campaign that hinged on the idea that he would Make America Great Again by wresting it back from ‘outsiders’, and by demanding that American jobs be given to ‘American people’.
- Entire communities have marched against his exclusionist ideas in cities across the US, declaring that all Americans are immigrants, and that its melting-pot culture is among its greatest strengths.
- In universities too, there have been efforts to stress that the culture of inclusion is important to the academic community.
Both Guhathakurta and the now-clean-shaven Sircar have been on their first political rallies ever, since the election results.
“I joined the women’s march in January and it was electric,” Guhathakurta says.
Sircar walked in three separate protest marches on January 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration.
“I felt it was my moral duty to do so,” he says, adding with a laugh that even growing up in Kolkata he never protested, but he does now.
Perhaps most troubled are the job-seekers with H1B visas — the employment-based visa category for temporary workers.
“Job-hunting has become much more difficult for us,” says Susmit Sen, 35, an IT engineer from Nebraska who has been in the US for three years. “Indians who have already got a green card are in a safe spot, at least professionally, but there is a sense that those without one are now in for trouble. People like me, without a green card, have openly been told, No H1B candidates, please.”
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india...under-trump/story-YM3yGRow8pNazHwDLYyx6K.html
