Why Indians Pissed off With Racism and Police Brutality in the US Don’t Care About the Same Issues in Their Own Country – By Shamani Joshi

This outpouring of support resonating with a movement so geographically far away would have ordinarily been touching. Except, a lot of people are also kinda pissed off that some individuals who now claim to be infuriated by police brutality, systematic oppression and murder on the basis of arbitrary factors like skin colour, were the same ones practising blissful silence when similar shit went down in our own country.

They’re the ones who feigned ignorance and apathy when critics pointed out that police forces in India target university students and Dalit rights activists. They stand in solidarity with an American-born movement against oppression while choosing to overlook the all too frequent religion-based violence and riots that have taken place in India.

Enraged citizens were quick to call out this selective outrage and call the influencers and celebrities expressing outrage as being “performative woke” and “hypocritical”. These accusations were then immediately met with justifications that dismissively shrugged off the internalised issues by simply saying, “You can’t tell me what to care about”. But it begs the question: Why don’t we care about the same struggles so many of our countrymen are facing? Why do Indians who are infuriated with racism and police brutality in the US not feel that kind of rage for the same issues in their own country?