New Delhi loves to spin a good yarn, doesn’t it? The narrative pumped out of the capital is always polished to within an inch of its life: India as the supposed “Mother of Democracy,” the endless factory of IT geniuses, and the self-appointed moral compass for the Global South. It is a splendid story, really. But facts—stubborn, nasty little things—have a funny way of ruining a perfect script. The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has recently published a dossier that frankly doesn’t fit in New Delhi’s glossy diplomatic brochures. It is a registry of “criminal aliens”—individuals the American government classifies as the absolute “worst of the worst” regarding public safety threats. And prominently featured on that ghastly list? 89 Indian nationals.
Let’s be brutally clear: we aren’t talking about a spot of bother with an expired visa, a broken taillight, or a forgotten parking ticket. The charges detailed alongside these names are positively stomach-churning. We are looking at sexual assault, kidnapping, domestic savagery, hit-and-run fatalities, industrial-scale money laundering, and narcotics smuggling. These aren’t innocent bureaucratic slip-ups; they are felonies that ruin lives and tear communities apart.
So, one has to ask the rather uncomfortable question: How does a nation that aggressively markets itself as a civilization of supreme moral values end up with nearly ninety citizens on a specialized American watchlist for violent and predatory crimes?
It forces a jarring reality check, doesn’t it? For years, the world has swallowed the “model minority” myth hook, line, and sinker—the notion that the Indian diaspora is comprised solely of doctors and engineers. But this DHS revelation exposes a significant, sordid underbelly to the diaspora that nobody seems keen to discuss. These are individuals who travelled to the “land of opportunity” and allegedly used it to peddle drugs, commit fraud, and abuse their partners.
And where, pray tell, is the accountability? When Indian nationals scale the heights of corporate ladders or enter politics, the government is quick as a flash to claim them as “one of their own.” But when they land on a federal list for sexual predation and robbery? The silence from the usually vocal foreign ministry is deafening. Does the concept of Vishwaguru—Teacher to the World—include tutorials on running a fraud ring or fleeing the scene of a violent crash?
This list of 89 implies that the claim of “global civilized behaviour” is, in many instances, nothing more than a thin diplomatic veneer. When one strips away the PR and looks at the hard data from U.S. law enforcement, one finds a disturbing pattern of criminality that simply cannot be swept under the carpet. Is it perhaps time the world stopped gawping at the shiny surface and started paying attention to the rap sheets? The DHS certainly seems to think the jig is up.
