The Great Indian American Dream

You thought you were smart. You navigated the labyrinth of Indian bureaucracy and the soul-crushing competition. You aced your entrance exams, and you landed on Western shores with a shiny new H-1B visa. You were the golden child, the escapee, the one who made it.

And then, in a elegant new turn of the screw, they just added a $100,000 fee to your visa. Not for you, of course. For your employer. The same employer who told you they were family, who said they were bringing you in because of your "unique talent." The same company that’s now weighing the cost of your existence against the salary of a newly graduated American kid. They're telling you not to travel, not to leave the country. You're a high-tech prisoner, and now your jailer has to pay a new fee to keep you.

Suddenly, you're a liability. A cost-benefit analysis. A number on a ledger that just got a lot bigger. They've just raised the price on your head, and they've made it perfectly clear whose head it is.

The rules changed. The game got harder. But you're still playing, because what's the alternative?

Your politicians? They want their kids in Harvard and Stanford, not IIT Delhi. Your bureaucrats? They're already shopping for condos in Vancouver. Your industrialists? Their real business isn't making things in India—it's getting their money out of India.

The people running your country are designing systems specifically engineered to fail you. Under-funded universities. Innovation-killing bureaucracy. They made sure you'd have no choice but to leave. But the con didn't start with your politicians. It was perfected by the British.

They were the master architects. They didn't just want to rule you; they wanted to engineer you. They dismantled the ancient, indigenous Gurukul system of education and replaced it with something far more insidious: a factory to produce clerks. Rote memorization. Obedience training. Macaulay said it himself, they wanted a class of people who would be “Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.”

They didn't want innovators. They wanted cheap, loyal clerks to run their empire. So they built an education system designed to produce exactly that: people smart enough to follow complex instructions, but trained never to question who's giving the instructions.

Then, for good measure, they invented the caste system, codified it into a rigid, bureaucratic tool of control. They made it official. Put it on census forms. Turned social flexibility into rigid hierarchy. Why? Because divided people don't unite against their colonizers. They fight each other instead.

Eventually this birthed reservations—caste-based remedies. Which created new resentments. Which required new reservations. Which created new resentments. This was not done out of a sense of social justice, but as another brilliant way to induce division and ensure a constant supply of cheap labor for the west - angry people who would feel no allegiance to their own country. The system was never broken. It was working exactly as designed, from the very beginning.

It's genius, really. A self-perpetuating system of division that guarantees the most capable people will always be frustrated enough to leave.

Then America comes dangling the carrot. H-1B visas. Green card promises. The chance to work for big name companies. Salaries that sound like lottery winnings compared to what you'd make in Bangalore.

You take the bait because what's the alternative? Stay in a country whose own leaders have given up on it?

So you go there. You work for 40% of what your American colleague makes, but it's still more than what you'd make back home. You tell yourself it's temporary. You tell yourself you're climbing the ladder.

But you're not climbing anything. You're a cost-cutting measure with a Social Security number.

You can't go home, because now you've got American student loans and a lifestyle to maintain. You can't demand better treatment because there are fifty other desperate immigrants willing to take your job for 10% less. You can't even complain when they make jokes about your accent or your religion because guess what? You need them more than they need you.

You're trapped. Professionally, geographically, psychologically trapped.

And the best part? They've convinced you it's your fault. You should be grateful. You should work harder. You should integrate better. You should stop being so... Indian.

And then, the American racism gets really creative. They can't attack you for being too successful—that would expose the con. Instead, they attack you for being successful in the wrong way.

You're taking jobs from Americans. You're driving down wages. You're changing the culture. You're not assimilating properly. Never mind that American companies literally imported you to do exactly those things. Never mind that the same politicians complaining about H-1B visas are taking campaign donations from the companies that lobby for more H-1B visas.

You're the perfect patsy because you can't fight back without risking everything you've slaved for. You can't even defend your own culture and religion without being labeled as ungrateful or un-American.

The tragic part of this whole setup is that everybody wins except you. American companies get cheap labor that's too desperate to unionize or make demands. American politicians get to score points with voters by blaming you for problems they created.

Oh, and the Indian government? They're getting their cut too. Every dollar you send back home to your parents, every rupee you wire for your sister's wedding, every time you build that house you'll never live in—that's foreign currency flowing straight into their coffers.

The government doesn't want to fix the brain drain. They want to monetize it. And you? You get to be permanently temporary. Forever foreign. A third-class citizen in the country you fled to, from a country that doesn't want you back.

You're not building a better life. You're maintaining someone else's. You're a revenue stream with an engineering degree.

But you still think you can make it work. You still think if you just try hard enough, integrate deep enough, donate to the right causes and say the right things, they'll accept you. The modern Indian American identity is built around one desperate fantasy: getting a seat at the wealthy white liberal table.

You vote Democrat because Republicans are too honest about not wanting you here. You donate to progressive causes because maybe if you care about Black Lives Matter and climate change and transgender rights, they'll forget you're Hindu. You learn to make the right jokes about your own culture, laugh along when they mock arranged marriages and "caste systems", nod thoughtfully when they explain how problematic your festivals are.

You think if you just distance yourself far enough from anything authentically Indian, if you become the right kind of model minority, they'll finally see you as American.

Except, they will never see you as American.

You can spend forty years here. You can have kids who sound like they're from Ohio. You can donate millions to Democratic candidates and progressive nonprofits. You can write essays about the complexities of your hyphenated identity and the beauty of American diversity.

And you'll still be the Indian guy at the dinner party. The diversity hire, the exotic colleague who "brings such interesting perspectives."

They don't want you at their table. They want you grateful to be allowed to serve at their table. And the acceptance you're chasing? It's not coming. It was never coming. The whole pursuit is designed to keep you running in circles, spending your energy on chasing validation instead of building power.

Eventually, being a permanent outsider eventually breaks your brain. You wake up every morning in a country that feels like wearing clothes that are too tight. The rhythms are wrong. The holidays feel hollow. The social cues land somewhere between confusing and exhausting. You're fluent in English but you'll never be fluent in American.

This isn't your grandfather's village where everyone knows your family going back six generations. This isn't even your modern Indian city where at least the chaos makes sense to you. This is Protestant America, built on a foundation of guilt, soul-crushing individualism, and the arrogant confidence that comes from never having to explain yourself.

You don't have that confidence. You can't have that confidence. Because you're always one conversation away from having to justify your existence here.

You develop this weird psychological split. At work, you're the competent engineer, the reliable manager, the guy who gets things done. But underneath, you're constantly calculating—is this joke okay? Is this opinion safe? Will defending my culture make me look ungrateful? Will not defending it make me look weak? You second-guess every interaction.

Your kids grow up watching you perform this exhausting dance, and they either internalize your anxiety or they reject everything about where they came from. Either way, something essential gets lost. You're not just geographically displaced. You're psychologically colonized.

You even start to believe it's your fault. You're not adaptive enough. You're not grateful enough. You're not American enough. You carry the failure of your assimilation like a personal defect instead of recognizing it as a feature of a system designed to keep you permanently insecure.

Twenty years in, and you still feel like you're visiting. Thirty years in, and you still don't quite know how to be at a PTA meeting. Forty years in, and you're still explaining your religion to people who think 'tantric sex' is the extent of 'Hindoo spirituality'.

You're homesick for a home that doesn't exist anymore and you can't belong to a place that doesn't want you. So you float in this psychological limbo, successful enough to stay, foreign enough to never rest.

But the moment you start talking about how this system really works, how it's designed to extract maximum value from your desperation while giving you just enough hope to keep you compliant, well, then you become a problem.

Even when you finally figure out the game, even when you realize the wealthy white liberals who pat you on the head at fundraisers will never actually respect you, even when you understand that your kids will grow up being asked where they're "really from"—you still can't leave.

Because guess what? India still has the reservation system. The same people are still in charge. The same systems are still corrupt.

You're not just trapped between two countries. You're the load-bearing wall holding up a scam that spans two continents. And nothing will change. Because the system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed.

The Indian government will keep failing its people because failure is profitable for the people in charge. American corporations will keep using desperate talent because desperation is the most valuable commodity in the global economy. And you'll keep taking it because what's the alternative?

Welcome to America. Population: You, and everyone else stupid enough to think merit matters more than leverage. The American Dream has been dead for a long time. But hey, at least you can afford the new iPhone now.

But all is not lost. Because there is something they didn't count on: Indian ingenuity to learn the rules and bend them in their favor.

The good thing about being permanently foreign is that you can stop caring about their approval. And once you stop that, you can start building your own power. Stop playing their game. Stop trying to get invited to their dinner parties. Start hosting your own.

Build Indian American venture capital firms that fund companies their old boys' club would never touch. Fund politicians who actually represent your interests instead of just cashing your checks while voting to restrict your visa renewals.

You've spent decades learning how American power really works—the backroom deals, the unspoken hierarchies, the networks that matter more than merit. What if you used that knowledge to build competing power structures instead of begging for inclusion in theirs?

And your kids. Raise them knowing they're not American-minus-something. They're Indian-plus-American. Don't raise them to fit in. Raise them to take over.

The system is designed to extract your talent while keeping you insecure. The counter-game is using your talent to build systems they can't control.

Every successful Indian American startup. Every venture fund. Every political candidate who wins without apologizing for their name. Every temple built. Every festival celebrated without white approval. Every time you choose your culture over their comfort.

That... is a victory.

But this isn't going to happen overnight, and it sure as hell isn't going to be easy. You think they're just going to watch you build parallel power structures and politely step aside? You think venture capital firms run by people named Patel and Sharma are going to get the same deal flow as the ones run by people named Peterson and Smith?

They'll fight back. They'll make it harder to get permits for your temples. They'll scrutinize your political donations. They'll create new regulations that mysteriously target exactly the kind of businesses you're trying to build. They'll smile at your networking events while making sure you never get invited to the ones that actually matter.

And some of your own people will work against you. The second-generation cousin who thinks your "ethnic" approach is embarrassing. The successful Indian American uncle who's finally gotten comfortable sitting by the white liberal table and doesn't want to risk losing his seat.

Building real power takes generations. Your kids might see the results. Your grandkids definitely will. But you? You're going to spend the rest of your career being the difficult one, the ungrateful one, the one who doesn't understand how good he has it.

That's the price of revolution. And it's still cheaper than the price of perpetual submission.

The American Dream was always a scam. But the Indian American Dream? That's whatever you're smart enough to build when you stop asking for permission.