Why a Brutal Beheading of a Brown Man Was Met With Media Silence While Brutal Stabbing of a Blonde Woman Became a Cause Célèbre?

Imagine a mundane disagreement at work. A motel manager asked an employee not to use a broken washing machine. What followed was a scene of unimaginable horror. 

In a Dallas parking lot, a father, and a husband, a 50-year-old, Chandra Nagamallaiah was violently ambushed by employee Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, 37, with a machete. Chandra’s wife, Nisha cried out, rushing toward him, begging for the blows to stop. His son, Gaurav clung to the mom, terrified she too would be cut down. Between them was a nightmare they could not interrupt. The attack stretched on, not in seconds but in minutes. Four minutes. Long enough for pleas to fade into sobs, for shock to harden into helplessness. Long enough for cruelty to become a spectacle.

The CCTV footage, so gruesome it has been removed from many platforms, shows the attacker raining strike after strike. Again and again, even after Chandra’s body collapsed. Even after he no longer moved. The weapon still found his neck, again and again, as if the absence of life was not enough. Chandra’s head was severed.

The final act was so barbaric it’s difficult to even write: Chandra’s severed head was kicked by his killer and then picked up and thrown into a dumpster!

A murder not only of a man, but of his dignity itself.

The Unspoken Disparity

And yet, for the most part, America met this horror with a telling silence. Local Dallas outlets reported the case in detail. Hindu American advocacy groups and some Indo-American activists and commentators on social media amplified the story. But beyond that? A collective shrug.

There was no national eruption of concern. No primetime vigils broadcast on cable news. No wall-to-wall coverage or high-profile tributes. Even a brutal beheading in broad daylight did not break through the ceiling of local tragedy to become a national reckoning.

The omission from mainstream media across the U.S. and the West, is a kind of silence that speaks volumes about whose lives are considered worthy of collective mourning.

Now, consider another recent tragedy, one that received a vastly different reception in the national consciousness: the murder of Iryna Zarutska. Quite rightfully, the story of a young Ukrainian refugee, also a victim of a senseless, random act of violence got the attention it deserved. It became a national firestorm. CNN ran multiple pieces, and billionaires pledged millions for murals honoring her. Her story became a rallying cry and a symbol of systemic failures- a just and dignified way to honor Iryna’s memory and trauma..

Both stories were brutal. Both left grieving families. But only one became a national headline.

Why?

Why the difference? Why was one brutal beheading met with silence while another brutal stabbing became a cause célèbre?

The unsettling truth is that our media and culture are built on a selective empathy machine. Chandra was a brown-skinned Indian-American father with no backstory or ability to fit into popular prevailing narratives. His death did not fuel a pre-packaged debate, so he is being erased.

The omission from mainstream media across the U.S. and the West, is a kind of silence that speaks volumes about whose lives are considered worthy of collective mourning.

Not an Anomaly, But a Pattern 

This pattern of erasure is not a coincidence. It is part of a disturbing and rising climate of prejudice.  In the very same metro region where Chandra was killed, a 15-year-old Hindu American student named Ankur Dhar was stabbed while walking his dog around his neighborhood. The attacker approached him and chillingly asked for his name before the assault, a clear sign that the motive was not random but targeted hate. 

In another incident, a man posted a viral rant about his neighbors, complaining that his Texas neighborhood was being “overrun by Indians,” stating that he wanted his children to grow up in “America, not India.” 

This pervasive climate of prejudice has also taken a deadly toll in Canada. In a horrific act of Hinduphobia this spring, a young Hindu man named Dharmesh Kathireeya was brutally murdered in his own home near Canada’s capital. His killer — a neighbor with a history of racist and Hinduphobic rants against the victim. The tragic incident, which also saw Dharmesh heroically take a blow to protect his wife, was followed by a flood of dehumanizing hate online. 

Yet, like Chandra Nagamallaiah’s case, the murder of Dharmesh Kathireeya was largely downplayed by law enforcement and mainstream media. After a flurry of brief reports on the crime, the press moved on with no analysis on WHY the attack happened or even how his family members were faring; the underlying message we see is that violence against Hindu individuals and communities is acceptable. 

A Global Phenom

This indifference is not limited to North America. In recent months, Indian-origin families in Ireland have also been targeted in brutal street assaults and mob violence, their ethnicity and faith collapsed into a single target for resentment. Even a 6-year-old girl was not spared, as a group of boys assaulted the little girl in Ireland for her skin color and country of origin.  This chilling pattern shows that the selective empathy machine is not a U.S. or Canadian anomaly, but a phenomenon across vast swaths of the West that consider themselves to be very progressive.

To be clear, investigators have not identified a religious motive in Chandra Nagamallaiah’s murder. But to separate his killing entirely from the broader climate of anti-Indian and anti-Hindu prejudice would be naïve. In 2022, academic research uncovered alarming levels of online hate against Hindus and Indians, and warned that online hate can lead to real life violence. Since then we have seen that online hate grow exponentially and migrate into the real world, even as the institutions involved largely ignore the issue.

For many, Indian ethnicity, Hindu identity, and foreignness blur together. These acts are often part of the same hateful tapestry. And regardless of the killer’s specific motive, the societal and media reaction to the crime is a clear product of the indifference to tragedy if the victim is Hindu or Indian.

The Call to Dharma of Civic Engagement 

To confront this crisis, the community must embrace a Dharma of Engagement. The true teaching of the Bhagavad Gita is not to retreat from the battlefield but to act righteously without attachment to the outcome. 

Chandra was a father, a husband, a human being whose life mattered. The fact that the family of a man beheaded in Dallas has to resort to a public fundraiser for basic expenses is telling and should give us all pause.

The silence around his murder is a choice. It validates prejudice. It tells the next attacker that Hindu lives are expendable.

And so, we ourselves must step up to change the game. Because until we break the silence, the cycle of invisibility will continue. The selective empathy machine will keep grinding on, turning some tragedies into symbols while casting others, like Chandra’s, into oblivion. It is a brutal calculation that concludes the life of a brown-skinned father in Texas simply matters less.

That is the true obscenity. And it is one we can no longer afford to meet with silence.

Image of Iryna Zarutska: X

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Rishabh Sarswat is an Environmental Scientist and the President of CoHNA Canada, a grassroots-level advocacy organization representing the Hindu community of Canada.