Priyanka Chopra’s (now cancelled) Quantico invented the narrative of ‘Indian Nationalist terrorists’ attempting to give a bad name to our dear old, peaceful friend Pakistan by blowing up Americans in false flag terror operations in Manhattan. The imagined terrorists are depicted as visibly religious Hindus. Talk about a rich, famous Indian being of use to the nation and its immigrant population abroad in an atmosphere of general hostility and violence towards immigration from the third world!
A very important thing recommending Indians in the West is the overriding consensus that our majority Hindus do not engage in the wanton barbarism of the terrorist kind. What recommends them especially is their willingness to assimilate into respective cultures of the western world and not stick out like resentful anachronisms who throw the burden of acceptance entirely on to their liberal host nations by inordinately privileging and asserting their own religious, ethnic and cultural norms over those of their host nations. This partially might have reasons embedded in disparate economic profiles of the initial migrant cohorts from each ethnic and national group but it cannot be disputed on the whole that Indians as a whole actively blend in better in the West.
There’s a recent UK survey by YouGov shows that Britishers view Indian immigrant populations much more favourably compared to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the UK. This advantage must not be compromised in any manner since it benefits us as an emerging power with millions of skilled professionals seeking predictable and safe environments in western nations.
Now we have left-liberal politicians and actors injecting into popular consciousness in alien societies ludicrously imagined Hindu or Indian nationalist ‘terror’. We don’t need a rudraksha to be associated in any westerner’s head with terrorism just because a liberal Indian actor seemingly is fine with forcing an undesirable equality of outcome on Hindu Indians going through visa interviews and security checks at La Guardia or Heathrow. They probably do not care if Indians abroad have to endure suspicions just like Pakistanis on planes even though no Hindu nationalist is trying to blow up secular culture in France or dreaming of bathing the White House with Gangajal every day.
Radical Islamist terror actually has proud fanatics braying from the rooftops claiming responsibility for its beheadings and bombings and issuing threats against white liberal societies. We Indians, on the contrary, have famous, influential liberals talking about imagined ‘Hindu terror’ from political pulpits and tv screens for easy political and monetary gain and signaling virtue to a liberal elite (the Ben Afflecks and George Clooneys who guard a certain type of gate in Hollywood; some actors and editors in India) hell-bent on creating and enforcing their own values on everyone by policing economic opportunities available to junior peers and aspirants in their respective industries.
Priyanka Chopra is seen as representing India in Hollywood – a status she milks often for visibility and minority achiever accolades in national media in India and liberal media in the USA. She should also use that status responsibly to ensure her fellow Indians trying to find work abroad do not get tarred and suspected the same way Pakistanis and Yemenis, unfortunately, are.
