Producing negative and derogatory news and films about India is a well-accepted practice in western countries these days. This also goes for the so-called left-leaning liberal media like The Guardian, New York Times and BBC news. Even in remote northern European countries, for example Sweden, Arundhati Roy’s description of India shapes the image of India among the common man. Writers like Pankaj Mishra, Arundhati Roy and Amartya Sen have long dominated the narrative on India. As the saying goes, the media should be pluralistic, so there is nothing wrong in giving a platform to people who are critical of India and its trajectory. The problem is that they are almost solely shaping the description of India, or to be more precise, they are the ones who dominate the debate and descriptions of the political and social changes taking place in India. Nobody knows who Chetan Bhagat is, but most post-graduates in Scandinavia know who Arundhati Roy is.

Their writings have unintentionally and indirectly facilitated a kind of Hinduphobia and Indophobia. If India is a country of Hindu fanatics, why bother to do business with them at all? Professor Vamsee Juluri, expert in media studies at San Fransisco University, is absolutely right when he says that there is a growing anti-India sentiment in America, edging up to a kind of xenophobia against India, but no one wants to talk about it. Unfortunately, this Indophobia is fostered by the way we have accepted the colonial way of describing ourselves. So if you cannot say racist things about India and Indians in general, request that writers of Indian origin to do it themselves. Why be surprised when America passes a law making it mandatory for Indian IT companies to pay up to $10,000 per H-1B visa starting from April 2016? Anti-India propaganda finally resulted in a law, right?

It was not a right-wing Republican front-runner Donald Trump who proposed this anti-Indian law, this is a proposal made by Barack Obama. While Democrats are more than willing to take up the issue of Islamophobia, no one seems enthusiastic in the defense of Indians coming to the United States because they are a dissipated and unorganized force. They might be the richest immigrant group, but they are busy in their individual careers and least bothered about the discriminatory practice imposed on their community or country of origin. Why should they care? Once you have made it to the West, you do not want to concern yourself with a billion Indians who may, unfortunately, never get a fair chance to come and study and later find a lucrative job in the USA.

Professor Vamsi Juluri hits the nail on the head when he claims that we are, ourselves, to blame for this. India needs to develop its own narrative and should not succumb to the Indophobic and Hinduphobic inflammatory description of our country.

It is not that the Indian IT industry is not paying taxes in USA. They contributed 22.5 billion dollars in taxes to the US economy during the last five years. They created thousands of jobs in USA, pushed its IT industry up a notch, compared to the rest of the world, yet the Obama administration has passed a law making it economically unsustainable for the IT companies in USA to sponsor a H-1B visa.

Is it because Indians do not integrate or assimilate well into the American society? Almost all recent studies on immigration have shown that Indians tend to move directly into the higher middle class. They are not a burden to the American society, so why this move?

In my view, there are two main reasons. I believe that it is our own fault for having allowed and have also accepted a negative description of India, promoted mainly by writers who are seeking acceptance among the academia of the western countries. In order to write a piece for the newspapers and magazines, many writers of Indian origin have indulged in India-bashing, which has promoted their career but not done anything to improve the relationship with western countries. While prominent writers like Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy allow themselves to be used for producing an anti-India sentiment abroad, the second generation of Indians is writing cookbooks on how to make chicken tikka masala, as if that is all India has to offer.

Much of the tremendous economic growth and the smooth social development of India, where caste has become redundant in urban societies, is left untold. If Indians do not wake up, they will soon see that they will be subjected to further discrimination in western countries.

India needs to develop a strong media force and foster some talents who would also promote the country’s interests and not just feed the western media with writings that promote their individual freaking agenda.

Did you notice that when Donald Trump announces his hypothetical plan to ban Muslims from entering America, there is a huge outcry. But when an anti-Indian discriminatory law is passed in the US, no one even mentions that in the news. It’s time to ask ourselves, “Why?”