It’s the Religion, Stupid: Growing Anti-Indian Sentiment in the U.S. is Not About Trade and Tariffs. It’s About Hinduism

The endearing hero of the quintessential Indian-American childhood movie, “Growing Up Smith” (2017), learns from his proactive immigrant father that the way to get along with the Americans is to keep saying “How Doing?” (That, and of course, naming your Indian American kids “Smith” so that they can assimilate better, even while not knowing that “Smith” is a surname and not a first-name).

Now, sixty years after the immigration policy changes that brought Indian doctors and scientists to the United States, almost as many years since President Nixon ordered a naval fleet threateningly towards India even as a genocide unfolded in Bangladesh, less than a year after Indian Americans made news for almost becoming President, and most importantly, just days after much pain over Pahalgam, tariffs, and megalomaniacal tirades about “Brahmins” and war-profiteering, the dust between the “Comrades at Odds” seems to have settled a little, in the form of President Trump’s birthday greetings to Prime Minister Modi.

How Doing?

President Trump’s personal compliments, duly reciprocated by Prime Minister Modi, may or may not mean all is back to normal.  But in the minds of ordinary citizens who live at the intersection of two countries, a shout and a nod, a “How Doing?” of sorts between leaders, sounds pleasantly reassuring.

Like the slightly out of place and yet confident characters in “Growing Up Smith”who make their way around in small-town 1970s America, the truth is that the story of Indians and Americans together is an incredible one given how barely comprehensible we have been to each other. Officials and experts make their efforts generating frameworks of mutual comprehension, and presumably, benefit. Trade, exchange, health, tourism, education, technology, defense, the “verticals” and their value seem to grow. 

But in the end, as the most recent nosedive showed us, and not just in terms of official statements and policies, but also in the brazen explosion of online racism against Indians, there are things which are incredibly hard to swallow about our existence here for our sometimes pleasant, sometimes reluctant, neighbors and partners and hosts.

And the issue isn’t just Indians here as immigrants, but just India itself.

The “oldest democracy” pays lip-service to the “biggest democracy,” sure. But the real issue wasn’t that. In recent months, it’s been sharply clear that India is not just a “fellow democracy” to Americans but an increasingly (and perhaps uncomfortably) obvious reminder that it’s the oldest surviving pre-Christian civilization with its “pagan” or “heathen” traditions alive and kicking, still.

Little surprise then that when the semblance of “color-blind” meritocratic conservatism collapsed last December, the tone of the attack on Indians took not just a generic “racist” form, but a sharply directed “religious” one. Economic worries may have been one source of the anger. But the speed with which some anti-immigration advocates decided other immigrants were okay, but not Hindus, made the distinction unignorable.

The religious right complained about Hindu “Monkey God” statues. The supposedly anti-racist celebrity left made fun of Goddess Kali with gruesome TV skits channeling “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Left and Right, so divided these days, converged as one in their Hinduphobia.

The religious right complained about Hindu “Monkey God” statues. The supposedly anti-racist celebrity left made fun of Goddess Kali with gruesome TV skits channeling “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Left and Right, so divided these days, converged as one in their Hinduphobia.

And little wonder that when U.S. trade officials began ranting about “madness” and “Modi’s war,” they used a photograph of him with their favorite wolf-whistle, the “dot.”

More than social media stunts though, what demonstrated the bipartisan obduracy of heathen-paranoia most starkly in recent times was, once again, the American press. Neither liberal nor conservative news outlets published the fact that the Minneapolis school-shooter’s hate-graffiti slogans included the phrase “Nuke India” on one of the guns. Every other slogan, rant, and idea was discussed and condemned, but not a form of hate they are loath to admit even exists. As if denying this looming state of hate wasn’t enough, even the shocking act of an Indian-origin motel manager being beheaded in Texas by an employee hardly provoked a stream of outrage or commentary either outside the Indian press. 

The eyes to see the hate that falls on us do not seem ready to open. The reason, maybe, is that the eyes to see us fully as us, are not fully ready either.

Transactional Indian

American patriots accuse Indian immigrants of being transactional. Indian immigrants and especially students don’t say much, but know the only path they have is indeed a transactional one when America has its own dilemmas to sort out. As Bruce Willis’s character says to his young cynical protégé in one of the “Die Hard” movies, “it’s not a ‘system,’ but a country.” But the fact it needs saying is perhaps itself a gentle warning.

So, what is the American Dream, for the inscrutable pagan-heathen-Hindu-Indian, and for the others? Economic inequality is monstrous. The polarization between the “greed is good” and the “abolish everything” camps is pointless. They don’t know how to bring prosperity back, and while the Indians seem to be good at it, somehow, they are now seen as the scapegoat, rather than a possible solution.

Strange indeed. India talks about trade and technology. America talks about culture, religion, belonging, mental health, and values.

Who fits in where in whose scheme of things?

The old order has slipped away. India is not in the middle, in the idiom of an old Non-Aligned nation. But at the same time, it is not in a “My Way or Highway” game either.

Americans do not see Indians any more as quiet, grateful, “Third World” supplicants, nor can they see Indians as fellow or rival imperialists. Indians, for their part, will not seek to reshape the world into a vision, because they do not, frankly, have one beyond fitting in and doing well.

The powers that be know how to deal with powers that want to be like them, and rule in their place. But they can’t understand one like India, one who will not conquer but also obstinately refuse to surrender.

In the end, though, one grows up; Indian, or American, or both, together. And ironically enough, an Indian boy named “Smith” may find he belongs to an American girl who calls him “my Ganesh” instead. 

In the end, a happy ending is a happy ending. East, or West. That is all we can hope for. 

(Top image, a still from the film, “Growing Up Smith.”)

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Vamsee Juluri is Professor of Media Studies, University of San Francisco. He is the author of “Becoming a Global Audience: Longing and Belonging in Indian Music Television” (Peter Lang, 2003), “The Mythologist: A Novel” (Penguin India, 2010), and “Bollywood Nation: India through its Cinema (Penguin India,” 2013), “Rearming Hinduism: Nature, Hinduphobia and the Return of Indian Intelligence “ (BluOne Ink, 2024) and “The Guru Within” (in progress).