u/Commercial_Floor3735

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I'm not against India being criticized, but whether knowingly or unknowingly to the critic, when Indians criticize their own country/people in spaces that are not predominantly populated by us, it allows racist people to go mask off. If you check the comments on the post, only a few are focused on sympathizing with the individual venting while most are fixated on attacking Indian immigrants collectively. They mostly consisted of purporting the usual anti-Indian drivel such as "the majority of Indians are unhygienic" and that "they can't integrate into Western societies". One commenter even laughably said that Canadian subreddits are "too liberal" and are "scared of being called racist", claiming that they are in support of mass migration from India, when obviously if you visit any Canadian subreddit and type the word "Indian" into the search bar, you'll see that the opposite is true. Like I said, I'm not opposed to India/Indians being criticized, some of these points do have a level of truth to them (but all of them are clearly exaggerated due to the OP literally venting and being in a negative emotional state), however, engaging in this criticism in primarily non-Indian spaces just opens the floodgates for racism rather than forming a constructive environment to foster genuine discussion about these issues that affect our community. These rants do nothing to actually solve the issues mentioned and solely work to validate the negative predispositions people have towards Indians.

I have Christian friends that I personally view to be very intelligent. They excel academically and have a vast amount of religious/scriptural knowledge. Despite this, they espouse views like non-believers burning in hell for eternity and believe that the Bible is at least mostly literally true. I get that being intelligent doesn't necessarily mean a person is rational or possesses strong critical thinking skills, however, it is quite concerning that they believe in these things. And as irrational as this may be, it honestly slightly reinvigorates the fear of hell within me, knowing that people far more intelligent than I am believe that it's real.

I have some Christian friends who are very intelligent people yet believe in concepts such as non-believers suffering in hell for eternity. I've also seen Muslim apologists who have been educated at some of the most prestigious universities on earth espousing similar ideas. For example, there is an American Muslim apologist named Daniel Haqiqatjou who attended Harvard yet believes that the Qur'an is inerrant and 100% literal truth. He also supports the death penalty for apostates. Subramanian Swamy also attended Harvard and we all know how much of a nut job he is. How can these people be so intelligent and/or well-educated yet hold such irrational and vindictive beliefs? I get that intelligence doesn't necessarily override indoctrination and that top-tier education doesn't guarantee rationality being instilled in a person, but it's still crazy and honestly quite worrying.

I'm so damn tired of hearing sepoys say that we deserve racism. Somehow, a certain subset of Indians being racist justifies the entire group experiencing racism according to them. It also absolutely boils my blood when the self-haters say that racism has risen due to "the world realizing how messed up India is" or "the world experiencing how terrible Indians act when they migrate abroad". These people are privileged enough to have not experienced how shitty racism is, and then they have the audacity to talk down to their own people. They'll also justify racist travel vloggers who purposefully visit the worst parts of India with a low budget and then complain about how bad their experience was by saying "but they just exposed the truth about how terrible our country is". Do these idiots not understand that these travel vloggers aren't engaging in constructive criticism but are trying to feed a narrative and farm engagement? It's sooooo unbearable.

Our online communities are often inundated with negativity. Racism, family problems, and self-hate are pervasive but we do have some things working in our favor right now. I'll start by mentioning our food which is a no brainer, even some racist people are forced to concede that it's absolutely delicious. What are some other things that we have going for us, either things right now or latent things that will likely develop in the future?

At least for other groups, people will be like, "It's not all of them, but...." or "I know some really nice people of X group, but...", however, for Indians they just go mask off as soon as we are mentioned. I get that it's better to have a known enemy than a fake friend, but you can't deny that it's absolutely ludicrous that anti-Indian racists are so confidently open about it because they know they'll get practically zero pushback. Dog whistles or coded language isn't need, they face no issue implying or openly saying that every single one of us is inherently terrible.