By Areena Arora, Managing Editor
Little did we know what scarce Onesidential candidate Donald Trump declared at a rally in Edison, New Jersey that he âis a big fan of Hindu, and a big fan of India.â
Flash back to April 2016, he mocked Indians for our accent when discussing call centers and outsourcing at a rally in Harrington, Delaware.
Thank you, sir. Your transformation has been unreal; impressive even.
As a Hindu Indian, I should feel relieved now. But I do not. Maybe because I am a woman, too, and in 2013 he tweeted sexual assault in the military is to be expected âwhen they put men and women together.â Or, maybe because more recently, Trump claimed that âgrabbing a woman by the p***y is only locker room talk.â But I get it. As his wife Melania Trump said in an interview to News 18 on Oct. 18, he was âled on,â and âit was only boy talk.â
Maybe I should look past that. But as a foreigner here to study, this presidential election has been an especially peculiar experience. I had been looking forward to when I came here two years ago, but little about this election has lived up to my expectations.
With candidatesâ emails being leaked, personal taxes being discussed and policies being sidelined, Iâm not sure if this is really what I was looking forward to.
I grew up in a democratic country, the largest one by seats in fact, I understand politics can be a mad jungle, and baseless allegations about opponents is not new. However, Trumpâs transformative approach toward Indians is unreal.
As an outsider, I was hoping to hear about actual working policies and not how high the wall will be, or who will pay for it. As an economics major, I thought Trump would talk about the labor force, employment and you know, other smart-sounding things, but instead he chose to spew hate on immigrant labor-force.
Two weeks ago, my parents feared for my safety if he is elected – you know, he seems to dislike women, and immigrants. But theyâre at peace now. For 48 hours, as of writing this, he has declared us to be best friends, and you might wonder why the sudden change?
According to a 2014 Pew study, 65 percent of Indian Americans were democrats or leaned toward voting democratic. Since thereâs about 3.5 million Indian Americans, it seems that Trumpâs transformation is merely a product of vote mongering.
I wonder, though, if this 240-year-old democracy is barely dependent on vote and popularity hunger.