I am scared of going back to Trump's America

I knew it was coming. The Kansas shooting and many other recent incidents are just the beginning. We will witness more such incidents.

When a candidate's poll campaign is based on division, social disruption and fury against a certain group of people, except the white male, what else do you expect? America had it coming. People were bound to get influenced by Trump’s narrative of White victimhood and the dangerous anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies.

The recent US presdential elections represented something deeply disturbing for me — fall of business ethics, decline of merit-based system and encouraging the most brash form of privilege. There is an exclusion of all people benefitted by social progress since the end of slavery. This includes immigrants.

What rules now is discrimination, division and impossibility for women to have meaningful positions of power. Let us not forget, the elections were also about selection of male control over female empowerment. Is it not disheartening, especially in a country that tends to present itself as leading the rest of the world?

We saw all this post 9/11 too. A time when propaganda machinery made terrorism synonymous with Islam. It would take a long time to reverse all this.

Immigrants, including Indians and people from other countries, who have been living in America for a long time are suddenly living under the shadow of a constant threat to their lives. They are suddenly vulnerable to the invisible fear of the other.

I came to India for a few days, but now am scared of going back to Trump's America.

(As told to Sukant Deepak)

Also read: Hindu American Trump supporters have only themselves to blame for racist attacks