For decades, Indians were celebrated as the "model minority" abroad ; hardworking, educated, apolitical. They added value without threatening local culture. But in recent years, that perception has shifted. Viral videos of noisy Diwali firecrackers in New York or Ganesh Visarjan processions in Australian rivers have transformed the Indian immigrant's image from polite contributor to cultural nuisance. In an age of anxiety and economic contraction, borders harden and tolerance shrinks. In the 2022 New Jersey parade, a group of Indian Americans displayed a bulldozer float, a symbol of rising 'Hindu power' associated in India with demolishing homes of allegedly illegal Bangladeshi migrants. The irony was brutal: members of a traditionally vegetarian, nonviolent community proudly identifying with an instrument of destruction. When criticised, they defended it as an act of "dharmic" outrage against 1,000 years of slavery and colonisation. Now, the bulldozers of American White Christian Nationalist outrage are rolling towards them. Indians abroad are learning what Muslims and Jews long knew that in racialised nationalism, today's defender can become tomorrow's enemy.
