Diaspora’s Moral Unravelling

This is a textbook example of chickens coming home to roost. For decades, Indians were widely regarded in the West as “ideal immigrants.” In the United States, especially, Indian-origin communities were associated with education, professional success, political moderation, and social mobility. Doctors, engineers, professors, entrepreneurs—Indians were largely insulated from the racial and religious extremism that troubled other diasporas.

That image began to change after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, came to power in 2014. A visible segment of the Indian diaspora—particularly in the United States—underwent a radical transformation in its online behaviour. These West-based Indians, empowered by digital platforms and emboldened by a Hindu nationalist government back home, became some of the loudest global amplifiers of Islamophobia. Their targets were no longer limited to Indian Muslims. Muslims anywhere—Palestinians, Arabs, refugees, migrants—became fair game.

Nowhere was this shift more grotesquely visible than during Israel’s war on Gaza. As images of bombed hospitals, dead children, and mass displacement emerged, social media—especially X (formerly Twitter)—was filled with reactions that should have provoked universal horror. Instead, a significant number of Indian accounts treated the carnage as a spectacle.

Timelines were flooded with memes, jokes, celebratory posts, and outright endorsements of mass killing. Children dying under rubble were mocked. Women mourning their families were derided. Entire neighbourhoods being erased were framed as “deserved.”

One moment crystallised this moral collapse. On the occasion of Diwali, India’s festival of lights, bombs were raining down on Gaza. Instead of restraint or empathy, a famous Indian film director, Ram Gopal Varma, chose mockery. In October 2023, he tweeted: “In INDIA, only one day is DIWALI and in GAZA, every day is DIWALI.”

This was not an anonymous troll hiding behind an egg avatar. This was a public cultural figure, celebrated for decades, casually equating the mass killing of civilians with fireworks and celebration. The post was widely shared, applauded, and defended.

This was not an aberration. It was a symptom.

The Gaza war acted as an accelerant, but the fuel had been accumulating for years. Islamophobia among sections of India’s diaspora did not emerge overnight. It mirrors—and amplifies—domestic trends within India, where Muslims have increasingly been portrayed as demographic threats, internal enemies, or civilizational outsiders.

Indian-origin users in the US, Canada, and Europe aggressively inserted themselves into global conversations about Gaza, often using language indistinguishable from Western far-right extremists. Calls for ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and annihilation of Palestinians became common. Hashtags demonising Islam trended repeatedly. Graphic videos—often fake or misleading—were circulated with glee.

This alignment was not accidental. Many of these accounts openly admire Western right-wing figures, from Donald Trump to European ethno-nationalists, believing that shared hostility toward Muslims constitutes a political alliance.

But white supremacist ideology has never made room for Indians as equals.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House exposed this illusion. Indian right-wing supporters, both in the US and in India, initially celebrated what they saw as the victory of a “friend of India.” That celebration proved short-lived. Trump imposed steep tariffs on Indian products and openly accused Indians of “taking American jobs.”

From late 2024 through 2025, racist and xenophobic rhetoric targeting Indian-Americans surged within far-right and MAGA-aligned spaces. Even prominent Republican figures of Indian or South Asian origin—such as Kash Patel, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tulsi Gabbard—were inundated with hate messages on X after posting Diwali greetings.

Commenters wrote: “Reject this false religion’s Diwali nonsense. Hinduism is idolatry, not truth.” Others declared, “Jesus Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth. Your gods have no authority here.” Some pleaded, “Please don’t promote the festivals of foreign gods in America,” while others bluntly stated, “We are a Christian nation. Assimilate or leave.”

One comment, with nearly 3,000 likes, sneered: “Is that the festival where they all defecate in the street?” Another demanded, “Time to send the foreigners back home.”

Overnight, cheerleaders became punching bags.

If that was the trailer, the full picture emerged with the circulation of a compilation video titled India: The Worst Country on Earth. Beginning around April 2024, the video spread widely across Western far-right message boards and social media platforms. Edited in the style of a nature documentary—complete with narration mimicking David Attenborough—it presents India and Indians as a grotesque species to be studied, mocked, and despised.

The video splices together disturbing footage: people being run over by trains, decomposing corpses floating in the Ganges, scenes of animal abuse, and obsessive references to open defecation. The editing is deliberate. The intent is unmistakable. Shock, dehumanisation, and racial humiliation are the point.

The slur “Pajeet,” long used by white supremacists against South Asians, is central to the narrative. Indians are portrayed not as individuals but as a biological mass—dirty, chaotic, and subhuman.

The video spread rapidly on platforms like X and BitChute, circulating through neo-Nazi and ethno-nationalist networks. Clips were shared thousands of times. Some users began reenacting the documentary-style narration while harassing people of Indian descent in real life, shouting slurs lifted directly from the film.

What makes this moment especially bitter is that many of the same Indian online communities now being targeted had previously cheered similar dehumanisation of Muslims. The language is interchangeable. Only the subject has changed.

Some commentators argue that Indian right-wingers themselves helped provoke this backlash. For years, they gleefully shared videos promoting the “benefits” of drinking cow urine, eating cow dung, and celebrating the lynching of Muslims by Hindu mobs. These images circulated freely, often without shame, reinforcing the very caricatures now weaponised against them.

India today occupies a uniquely dangerous position in the global hate ecosystem. On one hand, Indian right-wing networks have become prolific exporters of Islamophobic content—especially during international crises like Gaza. On the other hand, Western far-right movements absorb, normalise, and extend this logic, ultimately redirecting it back toward Indians themselves.

This reputational collapse did not happen because of “Western bias.” It was manufactured, amplified, and exported. BJP-linked online networks openly called for economic and social boycotts of Muslims; even film stars and sportspersons were not spared. The world watched—and learned.

India is now experiencing what it helped normalise: being reduced to caricature, stripped of context, and dehumanised for mass consumption.

Indians were once seen as ideal immigrants because they were associated with pluralism, restraint, and civic responsibility. That image is being dismantled in real time—tweet by tweet, meme by meme, video by video.

Views expressed are personal. The writer has worked in senior editorial positions for many renowned international publications