"Hindus have been recently affected and victimised (in the US) as a result of Islamophobia. It does affect our community as well," Vindhya Adapa, 27, a Virginia-based corporate lawyer, told PTI outside the White House yesterday.
Adapa along with a few dozen Indian-Americans representing various Indian-American groups from in and around the Greater Washington Area held a peaceful demonstration in view of the recent surge in hate crimes against the community.
"We are here today to raise awareness against hate crimes particularly against people of Indian origin. This is not necessarily a protest against the Trump Administration. We are here to seek bipartisan support against the hate crimes that has been happening recently against Indian-Americans," Adapa said, urging the President to acknowledge and condemn what is happening.
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"A lot of Sikh people and Hindu people are mistaken for being Muslim, for being Middle eastern," she said, adding that the way to tackle that is to spread awareness about these different communities.
In a petition memorandum submitted to President Trump, the recently established Coalition of Indian American organisations of the USA, which organised the event, urged him to intervene in the matter and take steps to punish the culprits under federal hate crimes law.
"A message should go out to the people of this country from the administration that no citizen should take the law into their hands and it will not be tolerated by the government," said the petition.
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Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed and his colleague Alok Madasani and an American, Ian Grillot, were injured in a shooting by a Navy veteran who told them "Get out of my country!" at a bar in Olathe City, Kansas last month.
A day later a 39-year-old Sikh was injured by a partially masked gunman, who shouted "Go back to your own country!" and shot him outside his home in Kent, Washington.
An Indian-origin girl was racially abused on a train by an African-American in New York on February 23. He reportedly called her inappropriate names and yelled "Get out of here!" when she was travelling in a commuter train.
On March 10, a 64-year-old Florida man tried to set an Indian-owned convenience store on fire because he thought the owners were Muslim.
"We have assembled here together to register our protest against recent hate crimes against Indian-Americans. The White House and the new President should acknowledge that the contribution of the Indian-American community," said Shreekanta Nayak, a community leader from Maryland.
Puneet Ahluwalia,who was a member of the Trump Campaign's Asian-American Pacific Islanders Advisory community, said that it is time to show solidarity with the Indian-Americans in the country.