In the latest edition of The Wire Talks, Salil Tripathi spoke to The Wire’s founding editor Sidharth Bhatia on the growing scrutiny and backlash faced by Indians and Indian Americans in the US amid rising visibility, shifting politics, and resurgent white Christian nationalism. Tripathi said that while Indians remain respected in urban, professional spaces, resentment has grown due to economic success, cultural assertiveness, immigration debates, and US policy shifts under Donald Trump. The “model minority” self-image is fraying, he said.The following is the full text of their discussion, transcribed by Ritvi Jain, an editorial intern at The Wire. Sidharth Bhatia: Hello and welcome to The Wire Talks. I’m Sidharth Bhatia. For a community that used to be known as the model minority, there is a sudden rise in anti-Indian sentiment in the US. Not just that, India itself is facing unprecedented criticism from President Trump and senior members of his administration. From increased tariffs to the changes in the H-1B visa policies, which will impact Indians the most, to protests from Christian groups against Indians, such as the 90-foot tall statue of Hanuman in Texas, there is pressure on the country as well as on the community. How and why has this happened? Is this a new phenomenon or something that was always hidden that has now burst out into the open? Was the self-image of the prosperous Indian community a myth? And how are Indian Americans reacting? I am joined today by journalist, human rights researcher, and author, Salil Tripathi, who grew up in Mumbai and who now lives in New York City and is a long-time observer of the Indian community in the United States. His latest book, The Gujarati is a Portrait of a Community, was long listed for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF prize for non-fiction. His previous works include Offence, The Hindu Case and The Colonel Who Would Not Repent, which is on Bangladesh. Salil Tripathi, welcome to The Wire Talks.Salil Tripathi: Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.Sidharth Bhatia: First of all, we need to start with a basic question. Is there really any growing animosity towards Indians in the US?Salil Tripathi: So with like all complicated questions Siddharth, the answer is yes and no. And that’s partly because US is not a monolith. It’s a multi-everything country, which is very vast, several time zones. Urban US is very different from rural US. And so you do find a situation where in many parts of the US, Indians are still highly regarded in the academic community, in the finance sector and in the tech sector. So they are very well regarded. But at the same time, the backlash that you referred to in your introduction is also happening partly in the tech sector and it’s happening elsewhere too. And this has a lot to do for a complex range of reasons. One is that Indians are now more visible in one sense, because Indians run some of the most prominent companies. Google and Alphabet is one. Satya Nadella is another example of running a very large company, which is a very successful tech company. Parag Agarwal used to run Twitter before Elon Musk got rid of him. In the past also, Indians have run companies like Pepsi and companies like US Air and so on. So Indians have become more visible on one level, but Indians have also become visible politically. In last year’s presidential elections, three of the candidates had an Indian connection. One was Nikki Haley, who was running for the Republican office, challenging Trump. Vivek Ramaswamy was another one who was also part of the Republican Party. And on the Democratic side, Kamala Harris, who was the ultimate nominee, she is half Indian. So you have Indians becoming more prominent. They’re more visible even in terms of local elections. Not yet in the House, though you can see them. I mean, there are prominent candidates and so on. And of course, as we know, Zohran Mamdani is a very good example of someone of Indian heritage leading the richest or one of the most important cities in the world as a mayor. So that visibility means both positive and negative thing, because there are people who rejoice over that. And there are people who then feel afraid of that. And I think there’s a combination of all and this is a global thing. You know, London has Sadiq Khan, who is of Asian origin, I mean, he’s not Indian origin, as a mayor. And so I think that visibility attracts its own kind of audience and own kind of reaction. And in that also, you do find a certain amount of resentment over the economic success, because Indians have always called themselves as a model minority, integrating well-paying taxes, very high levels of income and so on. But when they are in a relatively isolated region and in a minority and visible minority, which of course, you know, a 90 foot statue of Hanuman in a small part of Texas would obviously attract a lot of attention. Then the evangelistic Christians get very annoyed about that. And then you have the backlash emerging from that.Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah, so okay. So you handle the community part of it, and maybe the tech and the political part of it, but you can’t get away from the fact and there is no yes and no there, that the Trump administration has been particularly hostile towards India. We got to look at that too.Salil Tripathi: Yeah, no, no, it was not expected to be, right? I mean, the whole idea was that, you know, there was a Howdy Modi event at one point and Namaste Trump in India. And the assumption was that when Trump came to power, Modi and Trump will become very good friends and everything will be fine. But a series of things have happened there. One is, of course, Indian companies refining Russian oil, which was one problem. Second is, you know, the Operation Sindoor and its aftermath. And Modi insisting that, you know, the end of hostilities was because it’s entirely self-generated and the US had nothing to do with it. And Trump keeps demanding and insisting that he brought about peace. Now, we don’t know. I mean, we are not in privy to those conversations. But clearly, there was some American diplomacy that was involved at that time. Whether that was the single largest and deciding factor in ending that conflict, we will never know until somebody declassifies papers and we get to hear more about it. So that was another one. And then because India has historically been a closed market, a lot of US companies that want to invest in India, basically are in the services sector, insurance, law, banking, finance, and stocks. And in those areas, India has tended to have high barriers. And India also has not, you know, things like Washington Apple, Washington State Apples and, you know, Harley Davidson motorbikes and products like that. India tends to have very high tariffs on those things. So that also creates a problem of its own kind.And India does tend to market and sell both software services and garments and diamonds to the US, where again, there is always a fear that India is dumping some of the products and so on. And H1B is a classic example that, you know, the assumption is that India is gaming the system to get more and more people from India entering the US and working there and taking our jobs from America. Now, whether or not there is truth in it is a different question, because it requires a statistical analysis that are the Indians who are taking those jobs definitely better than the Americans who are available, or are they driving down the wages in the tech sector, we simply don’t have the time to get into that. But, but those are the kind of reasons why there is a problem with the perception of what India is and what it represents. And that’s why Trump has, and you know, Trump likes to, you know, make a blusterful announcement. So he will announce a 200% tariff, then he’ll probably settle for a 30% tariff in the end, which would look like a victory for the other party. But the fact is from zero, it has gone up to 30. So in the end, the US does benefit. And I think there is a lot of that going on. I think the exception they’ve made, like pharmaceuticals are done also from a very cynical and personal perspective, that those are the industries where the US does need Indian, cheap Indian drugs for the prescription drugs, which are, you know, available relatively easily.Sidharth Bhatia: Okay, can we, is it, would it be correct to conflate what is happening at the policy level and say the constant barrage of statements from Trump administration officials apart from him? And can we conflate that with the upsurge, let’s say at the local level, let’s say in the Hanuman statue, for example, that was thing. Let me explain that, you know, the president is saying this, the others are saying this, and we’ve been noticing that the Indians are, you know, getting more and more wealthy, they’re living in our better neighbourhoods. And now look, look what they’re doing. So does this release that inner feeling, inner prejudice, that we can now say whatever we want to and get away with it?Salil Tripathi: So for a long time, India used to, you know, keep things under the radar. I mean, it was not visible and manifest in terms of showing the Indianness openly. But when you put up a 90 foot statue in a temple on one hand, or when you celebrate Diwali, and you, you know, go to a car park, and you know, you leave a lot of detritus there. And you know, you take some of those bad Indian habits, or you know, Indian tendency which are not, which are frowned upon in the US, that creates a certain amount of resentment. And then when you see more than Trump, it’s Stephen Miller, who’s his senior advisor in the White House, when they start talking against it. And then you know, even when the vice president doesn’t have an Indian American wife, but he keeps saying that, you know, he wishes she were to, she were a Christian and not a Hindu. I mean, he didn’t say not a Hindu, but he did say that he hopes that one day she will become Christian. All of that leads to the feeling that among the Christian evangelists will become the Christian nationalism is a big thing. There are some very horrible racist books that were written in the 30s and 20s. With people like Steve Bannon, who was a friend of Donald Trump, and who was part of his earlier administration are championing it, you know, Elon Musk also champion some of these ideas, you know, the Trump administration genuinely believes that if you’re a white African or South African, you are more likely to be subject to genocidal violence and most other people and therefore, they are being given easier access and that’s because of Elon Musk influence in the in the White House.So all of that is also contributing to this white solidarity, white nationalism, and things that were not said openly are being said much more openly and publicly. And on the social media, they are getting much more plainer. And even whether it is Facebook, or whether it is Meta’s properties, or whether it is Twitter, they have increasingly started to drop their safeguards. So the restrictions that people used to put through their trust and safety policies, or you know, content moderation policies have gone out of window within the US, they still continue to have some of those practices outside the US. But within the US, under the under the excuse of free speech, you can now say a lot more than you were able to do so before. And all of that contributes to this climate of you know, going after minorities. I mean, whether it is Indian, I mean, the same is with the Hispanics are getting it much worse. There are there is a backlash against the black community, the whole affirmative action and its rollback are all part of a larger scheme of things. But the assumption is that, you know, if you’re white and American, you have been cheated, you’re being ripped off, you’re being robbed of your rights, and we have to fight to get them back. And India have become part of the bigger story, where there is a backlash against minorities of any hue. I mean, it affects and you know, the Christian nationalists are, you know, they are also against the Jewish community. It’s not just that they are only against people of colour. I mean, they’ve gone after them too.And so Indians have become part of that larger narrative of the other and therefore, their success is resented. And it seems that you know, they are there for no and it’s not just I don’t know whether you’ve seen some of the Homeland Security means that are going out there. These are actually illustrations made by the Department of Homeland Security, which showed a clean beach, and blue skies and blue water and bright sunshine. And he said, this is what US will look like, when 100 million migrants have been sent out. You know, this is open call for you know, a racist attack. And this, if it came from, you know, some random dude or some pastor in Alabama, or Tennessee, that would be one thing. But these are the kind of thing being put up by the government itself. As illustration, they also had another set of illustrations of Norman Rockwell, who, as you know, was a very famous artist, who did many covers of Saturday Evening Post. And he painted an America that was not frozen in time, but he was painting at that time. And even built with his art included wonderful images of you know, racial integration, for example. And but there were also his illustration, which basically showed the middle class America of white families having a turkey together Thanksgiving, and issues like that. And they were putting those, those images up. And they started using that and Daisy Rockwell was translated Gitanjali Shree in the fiction, and she’s a descendant of Norman Rockwell’s family. She and her family actually had to write to the government, not to use his imagery in this manner. So there’s a lot of in your face nationalism that you see in America now.Sidharth Bhatia: That’s the wider picture of what’s happening in the United States. But coming back to let us say, because we know the Indians better than we know the other communities. Do you think that that the Indians are not at the level of Satyanarayana or Sundar Pichai and all that, not at that level, not even at the level of, let’s say, top academics, because those are kind of remote from a daily experience. But let’s say, the doctor, the bank manager, and more importantly, the man who drives a cab, or is, you know, the blue collar Indians who are there. And the assumption, of course, is straightforward that he’s an illegal migrant. But more than that, are they not turning out to be the daily experience of the Maga crowd? So, you mentioned in passing, you mentioned that, you know, the manner in which parking lots were dirtied, or I mean, that’s not an everyday thing that is happening. But now there is this talk of religious festivities, in your face. And so, do you think all that, you know, brings out the latent feeling that saying your food smells, you don’t shower, you look dirty, all those things, those prejudices, are they using those to bash the common Indian, not the Indian at the highest level?Salil Tripathi: No, no, sure. No, no. So yeah, that is happening. I’m not saying it’s not. But at the same time, to be fair, it’s very, it’s almost marginal and non-existent in a big city. Now, I live in New York, I travel in the US, but it’s mainly to places like San Francisco, Boston and Washington, you don’t see it there. I mean, certainly not in the urban area that, where you know, I mean, it’s very, it’s that melting pot imagery still survives. But when you do hear these stories, they often happen in the smaller towns or, you know, where they are genuinely a minority, like, you know, you go to Jackson Heights in Queens, for example, I mean, that’s truly a melting pot, you go to certain other parts, which are actually called little India’s or little Pakistan and little Italy’s of the world, there it is not a problem at all. And in fact, Indian food is very well liked. I mean, a lot of people like yoga, but there’s a backlash against yoga too. Because, because yoga has spiritual and philosophical connection, there are some Christians who say this is devil worship, and we should not do that. So I think that Christian nationalism is a bigger threat than pure racism. They’re interlinked. I’m not saying they’re not.Sidharth Bhatia: You know, the few months ago, soon after Donald Trump took office, there was this sudden burst, outburst of, sudden kind of this burst of sending migrants back home, illegal migrants. Now, this must be happening with other communities also. It’s not that it’s happening only with Indians, but to the Indians, the sight of seeing 150 or 200 people landing in a plane, their hands cuffed was quite humiliating. Thing was dead at the official level, as you probably realize, and we never say anything. But those things also play right into this narrative that the Indians try to get in from Mexico, Indians are among those who try to get in from Canada and Mexico.Salil Tripathi: And it’s a very large number, let’s put it that way. If you look at and I don’t have the latest statistics to show you. But Indians are significant in terms of the number of people who try to get into the US undocumented. And there was also the terrible story about you know, Gujarati family, which was trying to cross the border from Canada. And they died frozen in a car because you know, they run out of petrol, they had no heating in the car. And it was one of the bitterest winters of all time. And they were trying to enter from the Canadian side at Manitoba, I think they were trying to enter into the US in the Midwest, yeah.Sidharth Bhatia: So all this put together. But I have a controversial question, Salil. And being a journalist, I think asking controversial question is part of the job description. Do you think that somewhere along the way, because of high levels of education, higher levels of income, and perhaps positions that they occupied, Indians, by and large, had become a little too self-satisfied?Salil Tripathi: Absolutely, I completely agree. I think, you know, you refer to the Hanuman statue. And that was a brilliant, brilliant piece by Lydia Paul Greene, to which you’re referring in that Suketu Mehta has been quoted. And he makes the same point that Indians thought, Indian Americans thought that they were immune from this, because they earn well, they pay taxes. And you know, they contribute to the PACs of both parties increasingly. I mean, marginally, they’re shifting from Democrats to Republicans, but by and large, Indians still vote Democrat and not Republican. I think Kamala Harris won 61% of the support from the Indian community. But that was lower than what you know, Biden and Clinton and Obama had got, for example. So you do have a level of complacency, that you know, we are fine. And also the myth, you know, the myth is that, you know, all Indians are prosperous and doctors and earning a lot of money. And which is certainly true. But there are Indian, struggling Indians who are cab drivers, you know, struggling Indians are working in supermarkets, struggling Indians who are, you know, doing odd jobs and all that. And that reality was missed. Because see, when the first wave of Indian immigrants came in a big way in America was after the race based quotas were removed in the mid 60s, right? And President Johnson’s time. And once that happened, after that, because of the family unification policy, a lot of those who came at the first and started getting their families into the US.There’s a very good book called Suburban Sahibs by S Mitra Kalita, who used to work with Mint, and now she’s back in America, and she was with the Wall Street Journal, and so on. And in that book, she actually goes into it. And the phrase that has been used to describe those Indians are chain migration that you know, the bright kid who goes to MIT stays, and then he brings the grandparents and cousins and uncles and aunts and it becomes a, and not everybody in that coterie or cohort is not necessarily a Harvard or MIT or Stanford graduate. And they tend to blend into other kinds of jobs. And that means Indians are becoming more like other Americans and not the exception that but as the mythology has always been that you know, we are the doctors, lawyers and engineers and accountants and bankers and therefore, but the Indian community today and it’s not just Indian Indians from India, there are Indians from East Africa, Indians from the Caribbean, and they represent a very different kind of a cohort than what used to happen. And I think that nuance is often lacking in Indian Americans own understanding of who we are.Sidharth Bhatia: This, that’s, that’s actually a very good point, because, you know, it segues into what I’m going to say and what my perception has been while traveling in the US several times is the sectarianism in the community, that the one community tends to stick with each other and never, never tries to blend in with even other Indians. The Gujaratis of a particular, and even there is segmentation even there, the Gujaratis of a particular area in Gujarat will stick with each other, etc. I remember hearing in Chicago, that when the time came to ask for permission to take out a march in during Diwali or some such, there were 70 Indian associations that had applied, 70. And I remember the number because it was said by somebody in the mayor’s office. So, and certainly there is hardly any unity among castes and class. So, in the absence of this, there is there something called the Indian community at all?Salil Tripathi: Very, very good question. And I would dare say, and I would argue that it’s very much class related. So people of a certain class and people of certain professions mix with each other all the time. And then the intersectionality comes in. So you’re an upper caste Telugu IT person, and all of them will be very, very much together or Marathis of a particular caste will tend to congregate together. And they’re all in Silicon Valley and they tend to know each other very well. So you do have those sub, and there’s nothing frankly wrong with it. I’m Gujarati and if there is a Gujarati association that gets formed and calls me and if it is not going to exclude Muslim, Parsi and Jain and other Gujaratis, then I’ll be very happy to go there occasionally for Diwali celebration. I have no problem with that. So, there’s nothing fundamentally flawed or wrong with that model. But it is definitely the case that there are, I mean, a classic example is Zohran Mamdani, it’s a matter that should be a matter of pride for the Indian community in America, that the biggest and most important city in the US is now a mayor of Indian origin was half Muslim, half Gujarati, half Punjabi and all that. But you haven’t seen a vast amount, I mean, you have a group called Hindus for Zoran, but a lot of Hindus, a lot of Hindu New Yorker, many of them were supporting Cuomo because they were taken in by the rhetoric that, you know, he’s anti-Semite or he’s pro-Muslim and because he was so such an articulate defender of Palestinian rights. And I think some BJP politician, a woman who’s one of the sadhvis was in America and she gave a very incendiary speech against Mamdani. Now, of course, US has the First Amendment, so she can say what she wants, but her speech was very, very incendiary about Zoran Mamdani. And even the, there are two organizers, the Hindu American Foundation and there is a, there’s another Hindus for Human Rights. So, the Hindu American Foundation was very sceptical of Mamdani, whereas the Hindus for Human Rights was taking a very pro Mamdani line.Sidharth Bhatia: So, therefore, and this must be cutting across class too. And you remember when talking of caste, you remember what happened in California, where there was a landmark case to say that, you know, there is caste prejudice in all the top tech offices.Salil Tripathi: And you know that, you know, the local, the Californian Senate and Californian House of Representatives actually passed a resolution calling caste a protected category. But the governor, Gavin Newsom, who’s otherwise a brilliant governor who’s been, you know, baiting Trump every day with his tweets, he refused to sign it.Sidharth Bhatia: Is there a reflection?Salil Tripathi: There’s one particular activist who goes, who calls herself Dalit Diva is her Twitter name, Twitter handle. She was going to speak and she was invited at Google, but there was a backlash from the Indian community, which is working in Google. And a lot of them are upper caste. They said, this is not a problem. And her invitation was resigned. She was not able to speak there.Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah. Well, the, so therefore-Salil Tripathi: Thenmozhi Soundararajan, that was her name.Sidharth Bhatia: Yes. In fact, we had something on her in the wire. Do you think, Salil, you’ve been following India very closely also. Do you think that much of this aggressive emphasis on religion is a recent phenomenon reflecting what’s happening in India?Salil Tripathi: I mean, in India, you mean, or the Indian community in America?Sidharth Bhatia: No, what is happening in India has begun to reflect in the United States.Salil Tripathi: So you do find that in the sense that I remember when the Ayodhya temple was consecrated, I think, a couple of years ago, Times Square had major displays there, you know, as something to very aggressively celebrate that. And they did that at that time. Diwali, of course, I mean, historically, you know, even Empire State Building turns saffron white and green on Indian Independence Day. And on Diwali also, they do celebratory colours on the building and all that. But I think manifestation has certainly become more visible. And I think what is likely to happen is that in the past, you had celebration of only things like Diwali. But increasingly, there are other festivals which will start getting Janmashtami and all those things also will get more. And I expect that to get more visibility as we go forward…go to the temples and, you know, and start doing that. I mean, you went to all the temples to, woe the, you know, the Hindu vote.Sidharth Bhatia: I specifically am referring to the march in New Jersey, Edison, New Jersey with bulldozers.Salil Tripathi: Correct. Yeah.Sidharth Bhatia: That is certainly, Salil, a reflection of what’s happening here.Salil Tripathi: Absolutely.Sidharth Bhatia: An aggressive show, aggressive show.Salil Tripathi: But to be fair, you know, once it was pointed out and the local New Jersey, once they realized what this was about, they admonished and complained. And then the community, I believe, issued either an apology or they will say they will not do it again.Sidharth Bhatia: So now we’ve been talking about the United States. Why is this, in quotes, anti-Indian immigrant sentiment increasing in Canada, Australia and other places?Salil Tripathi: I think what’s happened is two or three things have happened. Indians have become wealthier. So more Indians are going and traveling as tourists. And they carry some of the Indian habits. Now, I don’t want to say that good habits or bad habit, but whether it’s, you know, simple things like you are in a train and you might be in a quiet car, but you will carry on a conversation on your mobile phone without headphones and keeping it on speakerphone. And, you know, annoying and disturbing other passengers, which routinely happens in India. I’ve travelled on Vande Bharat trains and, you know, it becomes like a bazaar. I mean, there’s so much noise in every compartment. And you see that happening in certain trains.Sidharth Bhatia: To be fair, sorry to interrupt you. To be fair, every community has quirks. It’s not as if the Indians have their own quirks or something like that.Salil Tripathi: But it’s become more visible and it’s more audible. Let’s put it that way.Sidharth Bhatia: No, my sense is the anti in Australia and in Canada, that’s been because there has been a massive influx of Indian migrants, legal, legal migrant in the last few years for whatever economic reasons or policy reasons they may be. And they become a little more in your face. But to see that these things have begun to happen in Japan and Australia, Canada is quite, you know, why is this happening? I just can’t make it.Salil Tripathi: I think it’s the visibility. One is the greater visibility and the other is exactly the word you use in your face that, you know, it’s not a quiet community which keeps its head down and, you know, does things by itself. I mean, it wants and why should they not? I mean, frankly, you know, I mean, what is the harm in Indian communities, you know, revealing their best aspect abroad and being more visible? And India always had the soft power, right? I mean, Ravi Shankar was very popular. Bollywood songs are also getting known more and more. And Indian food is very popular. Yoga is very popular. So it’s not as if that the soft power has been invisible but along with that some of the other traits which are not very well liked such as noisy celebration and weddings and you know you take away the entire street and then after the after the wedding is over you have a lot of garbage on the street or something like all of those things are attracting unwanted and untoward attentionSidharth Bhatia: How is, again a very generalised question, but how do you, how do people in the Indian community among people that you know and you meet, uh let’s say not necessarily in New York but elsewhere too. How are they reacting to this? Are they saying in the more metropolitan areas, you know not our problem it’s happening far away in Texas or what?Salil Tripathi: Uh no it doesn’t get talked about much except in the context of H1B visa that you know if you are on a, if you’re an Indian citizen on a green card and or trying to get a green card from H1B then people suddenly realize that it’s not that simple anymore. But you don’t see people think okay therefore let’s move to Canada or Britain that hasn’t happened yet.Sidharth Bhatia: Um, so therefore it has not reached scale yet. Are you saying that?Salil Tripathi: Yeah. So the communities that I mean the, the people I know tend to be you know professional class and so on. There you don’t hear people getting very worried and worked up about it yet. And also partly because I live in a bubble and I go to big cities and I meet people who are you know journalists and writers and academics and professionals and so on and they haven’t articulated it as much as uh one would think but the fact that there is a risk that is certainly true.Sidharth Bhatia: But even in New York when you get into a yellow cab the driver may be an Indian and he may be precariously placed. So, so surely there could be some recognition of his uh his uh worries.Salil Tripathi: No. So, I mean, I don’t, I mean whenever I do take cabs when I whenever I do have an Indian driver usually I’m not seen them expressing are you worried or not and a lot of them happen to be these days Bangladesh rather than Indians but they are not that worried about it. I mean in fact I had a Sikh driver the day of the mayoral election because I just come back from somewhere and he was just going to say he’s going to vote Mamdani is the best option we have and it’s going to be wonderful the for the Asian and and minority communities of the US. Another guy who was a Palestinian cab driver and he also said that he’s winning because he’s so articulate on Palestine. So I mean so that kind of working class solidarity is a very real thing and you know we have to remember that the taxi union of New York is basically run again by again Gujarati lady, Bhairavi Desai.Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah. Who hardly gets who hardly gets the publicity she ought to according to me.Salil Tripathi: Yeah. But she also likes to keep a low profile. You know when I was working on my book and I did try to reach out uh as a as you know and because I had a chapter called the good, the bad, the ugly about Gujarati in America. Several three chapters about Gujarati in America. One was called the good, the bad and ugly. And in that I was of course she was going to be part of my good of the community. But she just said that no, you know everything you need to write about me and you can write about my um, uh, campaign to you know preventthe debt that taxi drivers were living with. But she didn’t really want to be profiled at all in greater detail.Sidharth Bhatia: Tell me, I’m, you know kind of to wind up, you know when you, when I read that story in the New York Times as you must have, the doctor who was behind this project said I have lived here for 50 years. I have done, I’ve become American I pay my taxes etc. He was sounding wounded and hurt, I felt.Salil Tripathi: Yeah no there is that sense that you know we’ve been we’ve been the model minority and why are we being picked upon that that feeling is very much there.Sidharth Bhatia: So basically, I mean we, we’ve drifted into this but, I just you must have read this morning’s papers, or yesterday about Mr. Trump saying uh Modi wants to keep me happy. I need to be kept happy or something along those lines and said, he came to me and said sir may I have a word with you or something like that. So that barrage is not perhaps going to stop.Salil Tripathi: It’s not going to stop. And you know he, I mean Trump expects, I mean it’s almost like the Godfather film you know that he expects people to you know show gratitude and solidarity and show him respect and he’s going to keep demanding that and I think that’s where Pakistan in a way played the game very well after Sindoor you know by immediately nominating him for Nobel prize and therefore Asif Munin kept getting invited to the white house and he went once to Mara Lago I think and he’s been to the White House at least twice.Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s a shame in that sense. I mean, Mr. Modi is after all the prime minister of a large countrySalil Tripathi: and a democracySidharth Bhatia: and a democracy and you know to constantly and this threat of more duties and more tariffs etc. So you know combining these two things um I wonder whether uh from the Indian point of view sitting in Bombay point of view I wonder whether it’s going to uh because Indian students are not getting appointments they may not go there. So I think uh there may be a kind of a frostiness coming up in the next few years.Salil Tripathi: Absolutely. And I think more and more Indian students will now look at Europe, Singapore, Australia and Britain as a places to go to study because even if they make – I don’t know the current levels of tuition fees but you know a good university is $60,000 to $70,000. I mean it may even be more, and a degree programme is a 4-year program. So do you really want to spend that much with no guarantee that you’ll get a job after that? Even if you get a you know professional training after that there’s no guarantee that you’ll your company is going to sponsor you for a green card. So you invest all that money and you go there and then if you have to come back to India after that I mean, uh, that’s a huge amount of, I mean it’s a great life-changing experience. I mean undergrad education in the US is amazing. I mean your mind just expands because you know you are uh the methodology is very good the teaching is excellent and so on but uh and it’s probably worth it every dollar if you can afford it and if you’re not going to get that if you’re not going to be able to reclaim that investment at the end you know through a job then people will increasingly wonder whether it’s worth going there or to go elsewhere or go to the liberal arts universities that are opening now in India.Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah, maybe there’s an opportunity here somewhere. But thank you Salil. You’ve given us a wide perspective on not just what’s happening at the policy level in the United States vis a vis India but also about how uh other Americans are reacting to the Indian community. That was Salil Tripathi, author and journalist who was talking to me about whether the Indians of, in the United States, are facing prejudice, a growing prejudice in recent times. We’ll be back again soon next week with another edition of The Wire Talks. Till then from me, Sidharth Bhatia and the rest of The Wire Talks team, goodbye.