Let’s talk about America. Trump, in particular, spent a lot of time courting Indian American voters. But then in the second Trump term, there’s been a swing. And it isn’t just a swing where Trump is imposing tariffs on Europe. It’s also a swing where there is this kind of anti-indian backlash on the right. How do you think Americans see India? Or see Indians? I think that’s the better way to put it. First of all, Americans don’t know much about India. I mean, I’m sorry to say this, but it’s not — so India doesn’t strike American imagination the way the Chinese do and also in some ways, actually, the Soviet Union did, because it was a threat for a different reason. There are many more universities with centers for China studies, Americans going to study in China, getting trained in the language. This goes back to the Cold War period. There’s nothing like that. As a professor, I can tell you that India studies is nothing comparable. So American students and American academic institutions and, to some extent, think tanks too, that are catching up now, but nothing like China. As you know, the United States is not a country where there’s a lot of interest in foreign cultures. That’s part of the problem. Americans don’t go to India as large numbers of tourists. So because of that, we have had this relative ignorance about India, neglect of India. We talk about democracy, but the U.S. and India are largest democracies in the world. That’s, like, rhetoric. I mean, it doesn’t really translate into endearment of India in the American public imagination. Now, you did mention about the Indian diaspora, which is quite influential politically, although smaller than China but more successful economically. Well, yeah, that’s part of my perception about the place of India in the U.S. is that there’s this way in which Indian immigrants have been more successful at attaining positions of elite influence. And this is most obvious, maybe, in Silicon Valley. But you can also see it in U.S. politics and in both political parties. It’s Vivek Ramaswamy and Usha Vance, as well as Indian Americans in the Democratic Party, but there’s a flipping back and forth, where at certain moments, Indian success drives a kind of admiration, where it’s like: This is the successful minority. But then you have, especially just in the last couple of years on the right, a flip against a sense of Indian Americans: There’s abuse of H-1B visas. People forming ethnic mafias inside Silicon Valley. That kind of narrative takes hold. How do you see that? I think it’s a real problem. And it’s partly — well, I’m not going to fault anybody, but partly the way the Indian diaspora, especially the tech elite in the U.S., conducts itself. I have heard this story about Indian dominance of Silicon Valley as a factor, why many non-Indians, especially from Southeast Asia, have left Silicon Valley. So I think maybe they don’t realize it, but that perception remains. And also — maybe getting into some controversial issues here — but H-1B visa, it’s partly how American companies recruited them. You have over 60 percent, until recently, of H-1B visas. This obviously creates a perception — Sixty percent of them were for Indians. For Indians. I mean, that’s a huge number. And even though they’re all qualified, that number when it gets into the public domain — people probably did not know about it. Now it’s out in the open. They think: Why should any particular ethnic group have dominated a hugely disproportionate share of the visas? So this was partly a kind of expected reaction, especially at a time when populism is growing. In the U.S. You have the base. People are thinking that — I mean, I can tell you that the Indian diaspora that gets H-1B visa is not taking any jobs from the kind of support base of President Trump. I think these are completely different levels of skill. But certainly it creates the perception of one ethnic group benefiting from the American largesse, at the expense of Americans.
