Shadow Warrior | Caught in gun vs butter debate, Hindus are easy political target abroad

Chandra Mouli Nagamalliah, a 50-year-old motel manager in Dallas, Texas, was brutally hacked to death and beheaded in front of his wife and son by a Cuban criminal illegal alien. The murderer kicked Chandra’s head around in the parking lot before picking it up and dropping it in a garbage bin. All this because of an argument about a washing machine.

The 4:23 video shows the sheer helplessness- his family begging, pleading, and still that horrible execution.

Humanity failed #ChandraNagamallaiah.

Justice must be swift and absolute. pic.twitter.com/jMWymGuahm

— Monica Jasuja (@jasuja) September 12, 2025

This extraordinary incident got no airplay in the US, partly because it coincided with the murder of a conservative broadcaster, Charlie Kirk. There have been other acts of extreme brutality in the US: Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was stabbed to death by a psychotic killer on a train. In December, Debrina Kawam was burnt alive in a New York subway.

Violence is not unusual, but it hits home when a ‘model minority’ Hindu is killed in such a dramatic manner. There was also the unexplained death of Suchir Balaji, a whistleblower who used to work for OpenAI, who may have been silenced. 633 Indian students have died abroad in 5 years, including 172 in Canada and 108 in the US, according to India Today.

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I worry about what all this means for the 2-3 million Hindu-Americans. I specifically speak of Hindu-Americans for good reason. Non-Hindus from India have other networks; Muslims and Christians join existing mosque and church groups; some Sikhs project Khalistani memes, falsely alleging religious discrimination in India, seek asylum, and shun Indian connections. Zohran Mamdani, a person of Indian origin, has strong Islamist support in his run for NYC Mayor.

Second, anti-Hindu noise in the US has gone up substantially, especially the allegation that Hindus practise caste-based discrimination. There was the California Bill SB 403, sponsored by Afghan-American State Senator Aisha Wahab, which the governor vetoed. Now there is a new bill, SB 509, that also targets Hindus and which has also passed the California Senate and Assembly. It was co-authored by State Assembly Member Jasmeet Bains.

Then there are the lawsuits. There was the infamous suit against Cisco Systems alleging caste bias by two Hindu ‘upper-caste’ managers against a ‘lower-caste’ employee. After years of acrimonious hearings, the Federal Court penalised the California Civil Rights Department for faulty prosecution; CRD withdrew the case against the two managers; the case against Cisco continues in arbitration. But this has led to copycat suits and a malign narrative against Hindus.

Another major lawsuit was against the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Temple in Robbinsville, NJ, the largest Hindu temple in the Western Hemisphere, again with accusations of caste-based discrimination against it. After years of wrangling and accusations that an immigration lawyer had coerced some complainants, the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the US Attorney’s Office for New Jersey closed the criminal case on September 19, finding no violations of federal law or worker exploitation. The civil case continues; the narrative against Hindus has been strengthened.

There are leftists with Hindu names aplenty who are actively campaigning against Hindus and supporting people like the academic Audrey Truschke, a known anti-Hindu activist. This is true even among some people in India: for instance, Annapurna Roy won Best Director at the Venice Film Festival and dedicated her win to women and “the children of Gaza”, never mind the Hindu women, children and men being severely oppressed in Bangladesh right next door.

There has been a massive spike in the anti-Hindu narrative online in the recent past because of their ‘model-minority’ nature: they work hard, obey the law, pay taxes, and get ahead in life. Hindu-Americans likely have the highest per capita income of any ethno-religious group in the US (Indian-Americans at large do). This leads to envy, especially as the economy struggles and you need scapegoats.

That is reflected in attacks on the H1-B visa programme, of which Indians are the biggest beneficiaries. There is the sudden imposition of a $100,000 “tax” on H1-B visas by President Trump. The net result of this is going to be an exodus to India and third countries, an echo of Idi Amin expelling Indians from Uganda.

On the one hand, a good bit of America’s competency in technology is supported by Indian engineers on H1-B visas. On the other hand, US engineers don’t have much bargaining power (compared to, say, US doctors), so they have been complaining about foreign-born engineers for decades.

The murdered Charlie Kirk himself had explicitly called for reducing visas for “people from India”.

But there is a bigger, more general problem: Hindus generally seek wealth and prosperity, not political power, ie, the old guns vs butter debate. The problem is that if you don’t have guns, the folks with the guns will take your butter. Hindus focused historically on wealth creation and then were left flabbergasted when wave after wave of invaders came over the Khyber Pass or across the oceans and just took the wealth.

It is the same in the US now: Hindus seek material advancement, not political power. Even the Hindu elected representatives said very little about Chandra’s tragic death. Vivek Ramaswamy, who had earlier emphasised his Hindu roots, was silent until prodded by online critics. Other prominent politicians were also quiet.

But other immigrant groups have made substantial progress in capturing political power. As an example, the entire city council in Hamtramck, Michigan, is Muslim. In the UK, Pakistani-origin people are in positions of power. In Dearborn, Michigan, the Muslim mayor, on September 9, told a Christian priest that he was an Islamophobe and effectively urged him to leave the city.

Without political power, Hindus will be vulnerable. There will be sorry exodus from various countries, and India should become the “nation of last resort” for PIOs. India should treat this as a version of the ‘1000 Talents’ programme that China used to attract its diaspora and create ways to utilise their skills to support economic growth. That needs a lot of planning and can be a win for the country, however traumatic it is for individuals.

The writer has been a conservative columnist for over 25 years. His academic interest is innovation. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.