“A lot of Indian Americans who are right-leaning and pro-BJP thought that Trump was their man because they thought he was anti-Muslim and pro-India,” says Salil Tripathi, a New York-based journalist, author and human rights expert, on the VIGILANT podcast. “But now they've suddenly realized that the immigration (crackdown) is really nasty to India and the tariffs that are imposed on India are terrible, and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) crowd really hates the H-1B visa issue and thinks that every Indian who has a job is at the expense of somebody.”
Tripathi, an award-winning journalist and a board member of the writers’ association PEN International, discusses what it means to be Indian in Trump’s United States today.
Speaking to The Quint’s editor-in-chief Raghav Bahl on this new episode of the podcast, Tripathi adds, “It is a period of churning but ultimately, this is a very materialistic transactional society and corporate America knows that bright, talented foreign students should be staying on rather than going back.”
This podcast is a part of VIGIL, an offering on The Quint that discusses and champions themes of pluralism and inclusivity in the Indian diaspora. VIGIL stands for Voice of India: Global, Inclusive, Liberal.
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