Fear Grips Indian Immigrants as America Returns to Cowboy Days

The widow of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, shot to death amid war cry to “Get Out of My Country” by a white extremist candidly asked herself whether they belonged to America and rued that despite her pleadings to return to India, her late husband refused saying “good things happen to good people.”

Not so when we recall the days of cowboy violence and shooting spree reigned the largely immigrant nation in the 17th and 18th centuries. This is not the first time an Indian was killed as many Sikhs mistaken to be Muslims were also killed after the 9/11 attacks and outraged the American common man with little knowledge of the world.

“We’ve read many times in newspapers of some kind of shooting happening,” said a teary Sunayana Dumala, wife of Kuchibotla addressing her husband’s colleagues at Garmin International gathering after the gory incident.

“I have a question in my mind: Do we belong here?” she said making it stop the beating of all Indian immigrants to the US for a second. Yes, Indians hardly raised their voice in the US and many wives of Indian Americans wished that they could return to their home country one day or the other.

The attacks on Indian are undoubtedly on the rise in US and no consolation can wipe out the tears of those who had lost their dear ones in their search for “An American Dream”. When US had business tangles with Japan, several Japanese nationals were targets of the American ire and lost their lives for their looks. And now that Indians are the target for similar miconception about Indians robbing the natives of their jobs.

While the reality is that minus Indians, other nationals will fill the gap and not necessarily Americans would get these jobs. Further, leaving the US may further strengthen the revival of cowboy mindset of white extremists a-la Ku Klux Klan in the 18th century of America. Unless this mindset is addressed, there is no end in sight to American wrath against foreign workers and engineers in the US.

Hyderabad Techie Shot Dead; Trump Regime Wakes up to First Racial Crime Against Indian?

In a bizarre incident of perpetuating racial crime in America against Indians, an IT engineer from Hyderabad was shot at in a bar after the white man identified as Adam Purinton, 51, a US Navy veteran, shouted at him “Get out of my country”.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was shot dead and his Indian colleague Alok Madasani from Warangal was wounded in the incident, first in Donald Trump administration that may have serious repercussions on Indian immigrants in the US.

So far, the ire against beaded and turbaned Sikh immigrants beginnging with mistaken killing of Balbir Singh Sandhu, after the 9/11 terror attacks has taken a new form with Indian IT engineers too becoming innocent victims to psychic killers in outrage and racial hatred in a country that was founded by immigrants.

Responding to the incident, Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted: “I am shocked at the shooting incident in Kansas in which Srinivas Kuchibhotla has been killed. My heartfelt condolences to bereaved family.”

Ironic but the US media is silent on the shooting incident at Olathe city. Kuchobotla’s employer GPS-maker Garmin International, in an internal e-mail to the staff said:

“Unfortunately, two associates on our aviation systems engineering team, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, were shot. We are devastated to inform you that Srinivas passed away and Alok is currently recovering in the hospital. We’re saddened that two Garmin associates were involved in last night’s incident, and we express our condolences to the family and friends of our co-workers involved. Garmin will have grievance counselors on-site and available for its associates today and tomorrow.”

Kuchibotla was in the helicopter OEM division of GI and he had studied in electrical and electronics engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2005-07. He graduated from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Hyderabad in 2005.