Diaspora’s Moral Unravelling

Once respected as educated migrants, parts of the Indian diaspora now stand accused of amplifying hate, mocking suffering, fueling dehumanisation—and are targeted by forces they enabled

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The diaspora's moral collapse did not happen accidentally—it was manufactured, amplified and exported

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 anywherePalestinians, 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."