Days before Zohran Kwame Mamdani, New York City’s first Indian-origin mayor, was elected to office, a video of him eating biryani with his hand went viral. Republican Congressman from Texas Rep. Brandon Gill led the charge in a post on X: “Civilized people in America don’t eat like this,” he wrote. “If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World.” In a political discourse where the demonization of minorities has become background noise, we have grown numb to digital vitriol. But this attack broke through, perhaps because it targeted one of the most prominent immigrant politicians of our time.

Friends and family in India asked me, “Is racism against Indians getting worse?” I would tell them that in my personal experience, racism was more prevalent online than in the real, physical world. But social media racism can and does eventually boil over into the real world ― it is a matter of when, not if, was my view at the time. 

A few months later, my friend and I were spending a weekend in Orlando, Florida. We were waiting in line at an establishment that was checking IDs at the door. When we got to the front of the line, my friend pulled out his Indian passport. The security person looked at his ID and asked us to wait a few moments. Not really expecting anything to go wrong, we just patiently waited our turn. A few minutes later, after we had seen everyone ahead of us enter, my friend asked politely, “Can we enter now?” And he security man started behaving as if we had offended him, somehow. He told us we could not enter and must step aside. I was baffled because I could not figure out what we had done to deserve being singled out for rejection. No other persons, men or women, or any other race or ethnicity, were being denied entry. 

We felt angry and humiliated. My friend kept asking, “On what grounds are you denying us entry? We will walk away, but you need to tell us what the grounds for denial are.” An executive from inside the bar walked out hearing the commotion, and asked security what was going on. The guard shouted, pointing at us, “These guys pushed me from the back. They’re not going in.” Needless to say, he was lying to cook up a basis for denial. Unwilling to risk a confrontation in a state where we felt like outsiders on precarious ground, we walked away. It was a pragmatic choice, but it left us with the hollow ache of dignity signed away for the sake of a quiet night. It is impossible to prove we were denied entry because of my friend’s Indian passport or the color of our skin, but if I had to guess, I would say there is a good chance that was the reason. 

We got over the encounter, but I stopped viewing my X timeline as a separate reality. It became clear that the platform’s shift toward unmoderated, monetized content had opened the floodgates for the racism I experienced in person. For two years, I have watched a rising tide of posts designed to dehumanize Indians. I looked into the research on this subject, and what I found confirmed that I was not alone in feeling like this.

According to the Carnegie Endowment’s 2026 Survey, nearly half of the Indian diaspora in the US frequently encounters online racism, a surge that has left 50% of respondents feeling a deep sense of anger and nearly a third living in persistent fear. This digital vitriol, fueled by what the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) identifies as a rising tide of ethno-nationalism and the dismantling of platform guardrails, has weaponized everyday cultural markers like eating biryani by hand to frame Indian Americans as “uncivilized” invaders rather than contributors. 

Eventually, the American political cycle will reset, and the blatant racism currently being peddled will likely face the democratic blowout it deserves. But while we wait for the U.S. to clean up its digital town square, a more immediate question comes to mind: Why hasn’t the Indian government used its considerable regulatory muscle to demand a higher standard of dignity for its people living abroad?

The Indian government has some of the strictest social media regulations in the world, which it has already begun using to pressure X into adding filters specifically concerning “unlawful” and “objectionable” content. The Information Technology Rules give the government direct power to mandate content filters: Rule 3(1)(b)(ii) requires platforms to make “reasonable efforts” to ensure users do not host content that is “racially or ethnically objectionable”. In early 2026, the government sent formal notices to X regarding its AI, Grok, demanding stricter filters to prevent the generation of degrading or unlawful content. X responded by blocking 3,500 pieces of content and deleting over 600 accounts to avoid further legal action.

But more importantly, the government also has the ability to totally throttle the platform or restrict its ability to operate successfully in the country. India is X’s third-largest market by user base, with over 26 million monthly active users. I am generally wary of state-mandated censorship, but there is a clear distinction between stifling dissent and demanding dignity. Surely the systemic dehumanization of a seventh of the world’s population warrants more than a formal notice; it demands a strategic escalation of pressure. Yet, for a government that has never hesitated to flex its regulatory muscle elsewhere, protecting the diaspora from digital vitriol remains a strangely low priority. 

I have lived in the US for more than five years, primarily in blue cities like New York, Boston and Pittsburgh. I have been fortunate to be relatively sheltered from more real world discrimination and persecution that others in the community might have faced. But the online environment does make me look over my shoulder a lot more often than earlier. Feeling insecure about your place in society is an unpleasant feeling ― something I am aware has been felt by countless immigrant communities that have come to the US over the past century. Arguably, several other communities have been much worse off than Indians. To me, these experiences serve as a reminder about the universal nature of anti-racist movements. 

Justification and support of racism provides a ‘permission structure’ for other forms of racism. The same 2026 Carnegie Endowment Survey found that 7% of Indian Americans reported experiencing caste-based discrimination, a slight increase from 5% in 2020. There is a documented rise in ‘metastasized’ polarization among the Indian American community. A 2024 report by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) found that 70% of Indian American Muslims reported biased treatment or Islamophobic remarks from Hindu colleagues or peers in social and professional settings. Within the community, bias based on skin tone remains the most common form of internal prejudice. The Carnegie data shows that even within the diaspora, lighter skin is often socially privileged, mirroring traditional ‘fairness’ biases in South Asia. Historically, the model minority myth has sometimes led to anti-Blackness within Asian communities, as they sought to gain proximity to white social structures. 

The “Third World” taunts directed at Mayor Zohran Mamdani act as a permission slip for everyday acts of exclusion. When a Congressman tells a public official to “go back”, he is signaling to a security guard in Orlando that an Indian passport is a valid reason for harassment. But we must also ask: if we justify the dehumanization of others, whether based on religion, caste, or race, are we not signing that same permission slip ourselves? True security in the diaspora will not come from government filters or model minority status, but from a universal commitment against racism that should begin within our own social circles.

We are currently witnessing the unfortunate psychological retreat of yet another minority community in the US. The Carnegie data shows Indian Americans are already preemptively altering their speech, their behavior, and their public participation to avoid becoming the next viral target. We are looking over our shoulders in a society we once viewed as a stable home. To stop this retreat, we must engage our leaders and each other with a new clarity: we must refuse to be ‘civilized’ according to someone else’s narrow definition, and we must refuse to let internal biases weaken our stand against external hate. Our dignity will likely not be negotiated by a platform algorithm or signed away on a Florida sidewalk. It will have to be something we reclaim, together.