Dear Vivek: You're Ruining It For Indians
An open letter from one TamBrahm to another
Once upon a time, there were two Tamilian Brahmins.
And they were Americans, or so they’d been told.
Both were second-generation immigrants, having been thrust into a world that would never feel anything but liminal—particularly because they were Indian, which has a funny way of making every room they enter also feel sort of liminal to everyone else.
One reason for this is that, like all Millennials back then, each was raised to be both a fervent patriot and devout Hindu, and neither, being socialized earnestly into postwar liberal pluralism, viewed those impulses as contradictory.
Still, when that ideological fever dream finally shattered in the 2010s, both of them would, in their own ways, end up making waves in The Land Of The Free.
This is the story of the younger one taking his elder out in the alley for some straight talk, because frankly, his asinine “civil libertarian” charade has gone on long enough.
Dearest Mr. Scammy Swami,
Before I take you to task, I’ll endeavor to establish some common credentials with you so my readers understand that when I tear you a new asshole—and not in the fun kind of way like during my occasional Grindr pickups—they understand that I’m not secretly jockeying for some status boost through rhetorical counter-positioning.
I have no interest in a formal political career, nor one as a “public intellectual,” as many of my friends and family can vouch. Of course, if I had spare time, I might endeavor to write a novella on how the pearly white glow of your vampire teeth on the Republican debate stage makes me feel nauseous every time you open your mouth.
However, as a general rule, I’ve found it better to focus on substance over appearances, which seems to be the exact opposite of the philosophy you’ve chosen to live by in your lusterless 40 years on Planet Earth.
You see, I’m quite sure that when you were an insecure adolescent, you were the butt of occasional jokes from hormonal caucasian males, both in the classroom and on the playing field.
I certainly was.
Surely it didn’t help that I was a lead singer within my community’s Lutheran choir in Southern Arizona, and that as a Tenor I with an angelic head voice my vocal range was not quite yet resonant enough to automatically command respect, as it became several years later during my burgeoning IT career.
One time in high school, a particularly smelly specimen told me that I’m a faggot (accurate) because I splashed around Olympic-sized chlorinated puddles, which is apparently less than manly (inaccurate) than wearing compression girdles and ramming crotch-first into other sweaty, sticky men—an activity which I’m quite fond of, to be clear; just that the size and shape of the balls tends to be different.
Now, as a fellow TamBrahm, you probably grew up eating gobs of curd rice, and similarly to me, it’s probably one of your favorite foods. Occasionally, my loving mother would pack my lunch box with a huge bowl of curd rice and lemon pickle.
Well, one fine day, said wonderbread specimen decided to tell a bitterly raucous cafeteria audience of jocks and their sidepieces—many of whom were objectively cool and attractive—that my lunch looked like a bowl of crusty, rehydrated splooge.
I’ll admit I was miffed. Contrary to the bravado one is obliged to wear during internet forums discussing skull measurements, real-life racism is hurtful, and I’m not above copping to the fact that at certain times it gets under my skin.
But herein, Vivek, lies a stark difference between you and me:
Rather than letting it congeal into resentment that later makes me jeopardize what should be an easy gubernatorial race by attempting to turn all of American society into a giant A.P. US History exam, I decided to take a much more meretricious route.
One afternoon later that week, I took this chud’s girlfriend aside and convinced her that thayyir sadam was actually an exotic form of cottage cheese that was invented by South Indians (a not-entirely-made-up fact) and exported to the West, during which they removed the spicy emollients that upset the European gastric tract. You ought to have seen the look on his face when he saw me spoon-feeding her some bites of my curry-leaf garnished ‘jizz’ in the cafeteria.
As you may not know, Vivek, since no white woman has ever expressed the slightest desire to touch you, Millennial white chicks have this insatiably psychotic desire to seem cultured by appropriating foreign cuisines (many of whose dishes they never quite manage to pronounce) into their general vibe; it’s pretty rare you’ll come across a classy lady like the Walt Right’s darling Aunty Lirpa Strike who actually takes the time to immerse herself in Eastern orthopraxy without reducing it to some absurd orientalism for tech nerds to later turn into a multi-billion-dollar mobile app, further immiserating both their wage slaves and consumers.
Now, lucky for Mr. Offensive Lineman, I’m not heterosexual, and wasn’t actually fixing to make a pass at his knife-assed 105 IQ trophy—nor am I the type of homosexual who hides behind a veneer of frailty to earn moral points in the public square.
Unlucky for him, I happen to have the physique of a linebacker that rivals even the most celebrated Bantu athletes, so it’s not exactly easy to pick a fight with me.
And so the ending to this saga was more wholesome. We became solid acquaintances; I helped him pass sophomore honors chemistry, and later that year, he invited me to a house party where I smoked my first bong (and also my last, because weed is disgusting).
Crucially, it never once crossed my mind to run to the internet and write some pissant screed about the laziness of the Zack Morrises of the world, in a feeble bid to pollinate the minds of freckly white boys with the disease called striver-ism.
Because, here’s the thing, Vivek: when someone calls you a “street-shitter” with “cumin-breath,” the only dignified options are to ignore him, or respond by fucking breaking his nose—not to run to the editorial board of the New York Times to put out some flaccid Boomerish op-ed about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Absolutely no one, except maybe Presbyterian grandmas in northern Indiana who own an iPhone 8, is buying your slimy elocutions on putting creed before parentage.
For someone with as keen a mind as yours, Vivek, with such immense verbal perspicacity, to become the public face of such a retrograde anti-identitarian frame at your level of prominence is beyond malicious—not just to Trump and the MAGA movement, but also to wider national discourse norms, and most foolishly, to your fellow American compatriots of Indian origin.
I’m sure you understand perfectly well what happens when an elite minority becomes the face of speech codes in a tenuous coalition. You were a doctrinaire libertarian during the Ron Paul era; you directly witnessed how neoconservative intransigence on Israel and ADL blacklists were, from the very beginning, the single biggest rallying point for young, conservative white men.
Out of either laziness, short-sightedness, greed, or forgetfulness, you’ve decided to throw away, maybe permanently, your position as the premier ambassador to white identitarian elements among the American right-wing.
Now, most of the time, I consider myself sufficiently well-adjusted to not feel any need to boast about my intellectual credentials1—but I’m also a pretty arrogant guy, and this seems as good a time as any to puff out my chest about my own interracial délicatesse.
Thus, if you actually read this, Mr. Scammy Swami, I sincerely implore you to take this opportunity to learn some lessons about how to be gracious to people who are different from you while preserving your own dignity under duress.
Two years ago, while I was in the middle of an unbelievable depression, I made a timely comment that catalyzed my best friendship with a spergy white boy named Walt Bismarck, who’d been a central figure of the 2015-2017 Alt-Right, only to leave white nationalism after realizing he hated Nebraskans even more than minorities.
Since then, we’ve taken the world by storm, together spearheading one of the premier professional fraternities to grace the network age. Not only have several among our 200-member organization become multinational-plundering job-stackers, but we’ve also recently launched a publishing endeavor that’s sure to revive the prospects of the talented right-wing white male author in literary annals.
Additionally, all of this was accomplished without securing billions from a pharmaceutical rug-pull worthy of admiration from even the most conniving Wall Street tribesman.
No, my Substack presence and innate cleverness alone were enough to help create a thriving small business that actually delivers value, parasitizing on parasites. For that, I’m genuinely quite proud of myself, as it’s not every day a Queer Brownoid rises to a leadership position in a dynamic and dissident creative enterprise designed for Heritage Americans without threatening their place or sense of voice.
Which isn’t to say it’s been a walk in the park, mind you—but at this point Walt and current Tortuga Captain Theon Ultima are effectively my männerbund, and while I can’t speak for the rest of the guys, I am quite certain I’ve managed to earn their trust at least to a sufficient degree that they treat me as a genuine associate and collaborator (which Walt claims is like Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai if he were gay and brown).
Because perhaps I ought to remind you, Vivek—though I shouldn’t have to—that the job of a Brahmin in the West is not to audition for the role of wheatish Bernie Madoff.
If you’re interested in making bags off hapless crackpots to live a libertine lifestyle, I can set you up for a coaching call with my friend Ancient Problemz—who prosecutes salesmanship with far more elegance than you possess in your bare feet. Though I will warn you, he may require you to bench 225 before receiving any help, seeing as neither of us is in the business of elevating the public image of twinky pricks.
No doubt it burns you up inside that a hillbilly Appalachian managed to secure a gorgeous Andhra princess, and that their beautiful family is all but next in line to occupy the most prestigious office in the modern world. If you had any presence of mind, you could take solace in the fact that J.D.’s wife is Telugu, and that we Tamilians have a colorful history of kicking their asses and taking what is rightfully ours.
Kind of ironic, though, that it’s Vance’s son who seems like the Vivek best situated to become a member of the First Family, no? From what I see, too, he’s continued to enthusiastically pursue his hobby of securing the affections of coffee-cake broads; most recently, a nubile rapper queen from Trinidad & Tobago; while you grovel at the feet of voters who increasingly hate the public figure you’ve become.
Perhaps to achieve parity, you should have spent more of your childhood like your Ohioan counterpart picking fist-fights in preparation for the Marines, instead of mouthing off to assorted DNC shaniquas in town halls.
Even better, you could demonstrate a little humility toward the historic citizenry of the country you call home and actually engage with them as peers.
This is a difficult task, sometimes, no doubt—holding your own against low-IQ digs that resist even one’s best effort at charm and diplomacy.
I’d also be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about being groomed into becoming a useful idiot for my own people’s demise, because I’ve gone on the record multiple times now proclaiming the need for a multiple-decade-long immigration moratorium of all sub-continentals to the sandy shores of the New World.
Obviously, I grasp that this stance risks feeding into blood-and-soil bombast that could eventually leave me out to dry. As much as I hope my own assimilation into Anglo-Protestant civil norms will spare me from the revanchist chopping block, I know as well as you do that when war breaks out, nuance flies out the window, and undeserved casualties begin piling up left and right.
I want to make something clear, though: under no circumstance does this give you or me or anyone else license to run to harpy-eyed, under-fucked journalists while appealing to their better nature (they don’t have one) about the cruelty of being labeled a scrawny pajeet in your Twitter comment section.
Please believe me when I say that I was aghast—even offended—on your behalf, when Ann Coulter said she wouldn’t vote for you because “you are not black enough”.
Much like antisemitism, human biodiversity is only worthwhile when it’s entertaining and sophisticated, and as a rule should be reserved only to those capable of authoring both quippy green-text and compelling long-form.
Sadly, as I’ve thoroughly demonstrated in this post, your actions since that interview have only fed into the increasingly justified complaints that many of your would-be constituents hold against you.
Now, where does this leave you, Mr. Scammy Swami?
When you’re in the striking ring during a Sunday afternoon spar, and you accidentally hook your friend’s face so hard that he falls down, etiquette dictates that you help him back up before you continue on. After all, it’s no fun to sweep your opponent onto the mat and leave him there looking like a dazed idiot.
I do not expect that this essay will ever reach you, and if I’m wrong about that, I have even less faith that you’ll meaningfully internalize anything being said.
There are those—such as the benevolent guncle of the center-right, Jeff Giesea—who are willing to criticize you while remaining polite. Alas, I myself am not ex-Mormon, and don’t possess any innate instinct to treat my adversaries with decorum—especially when they deserve much less.
That said, it’s time to get constructive—and I’ll make this short, because if my own industry experience has taught me anything, it’s that your average biotech executive has about as much attention span as a Zoomette scrolling TikTok.
You need someone in your life who can properly explain semiotics and rhetorical aesthetics to you.
My dear friend Walt, whose platform is where I’m publishing this and who has always believed in me, has for a long time said it should be me.
At this point, I legitimately struggle to think of a poorer use of my time.
Because seeing you at last with eyes not clouded by aspiration or projection, I’ve come to realize your entire campaign strategy, your public life—and quite frankly, Vivek, your entire career—was built by splicing together what reads like a series of middling college admissions essays in hopes of one day joining the cool kids’ club.
On some level, you must recognize the naïve worldview of post-war Boomer liberals—one that treats radical egalitarianism and leftist NGO patronage state-funded global “charity” as sacrosanct idols—is quickly fading away.
I suspect your economic views are similar to mine and those of my friends at the Tortuga Society, and at the risk of upsetting my rightoid friends more generally, I must reluctantly concede that global neoliberalism has proved effective bar none at reducing material poverty across the board.
Yet, there remain vital questions pursuant to national sovereignty, free association, and cultural production that should and need to be addressed substantively—which, yes, requires you to unequivocally acknowledge the adverse impact Indian H1Bs have had on both legal and economic liberties in America.
Instead of picking on Drake & Josh, who have been locked out of life for at least a decade, from the comfort of your venture capital bubble, start explicitly calling out the several missteps that Indians have made by e.g., allying with neurotic credentialists, especially over the last decade.
Stop tying your tongue up in facile religious scrimmages.
It is embarrassing.
I have no idea what possessed you to claim that Hinduism is “monotheistic”, as if some random midwestern Evangelical is supposed to look at Krishna’s or Rama’s iconography and come to the conclusion that there is a clandestine similarity between Sanātana Dharma and his thousand-year-old Abrahamic genealogy.
At most, you can claim there are large similarities among the various Indo-European pantheons. To be more effective, you could have just credibly claimed that many branches of Hinduism correspond tightly to the Protestant Deism espoused by Thomas Jefferson, among other Founding Fathers.
The goal of this type of speech is not to earn moral points among intransigent Puritans secretly; it’s to present a case for how Hinduism can interface with the decentralized and federalist religious infrastructure that underpins American society, which folks like Vishal Ganesan and Anang Mittal are already accomplishing to great success.
The practical implications of moving beyond “Hinduism” as a framework would be significant. Rather than Hindu American organizations claiming to represent a unified religious community, we might see the emergence of more specific forms of organization based on particular traditions, practices, or philosophical orientations.
…
What might this rejection look like in practice? It means moving beyond both defensive apologetics and uncritical celebration of “Hinduism” in favor of more specific engagements with particular traditions, texts, and practices. It means being willing to acknowledge that different Hindu traditions may have fundamentally different metaphysical and ethical commitments, rather than papering over these differences in the name of unity. Most importantly, it means embracing the creative tension between tradition and modernity, rather than trying to resolve it through oversimplified appeals to Hindu inclusivism or universalism.
Your assignment is to encourage these digilent attempts at cultural synthesis.
Consider posting a picture of you eating a juicy Brisket.
Well, actually, I would first suggest you just go to Sonic and scarf down a double cheeseburger—a truly underrated pleasure—on camera, but I understand that as a pretentious professional, you need to maintain a certain level of cosmopolitan chic. I have innovated a whole list of recipes that would allow you to maintain a semblance of culinary patrimony while indulging in America’s finest low-brow chow.
For example, this was my first pass at grilling a Sirloin steak just a few months ago, which, as you can see, looks quite masterful and was also fucking delicious.
If you consider yourself above roughing your hands up with dirty kitchen work, then at least skedaddle to the nearest Colton’s or Longhorn and order a juicy T-Bone.
There is a larger discussion to be had about dissolving the inane dietary restrictions that orthodox Iyers place on their priestly class, but you can let me take that fight up, as I’m well-versed enough in both endocrinology and bro-science nutrition to make the case for this change to my fellow Dravidians over the course of the rest of my life.
Mr. Scammy Swami,
I have to conclude this piece by expressing how furious I am personally at the abject pig-headedness with which you’ve conducted your public life in the past two years alone.
Aside from the literal survival stake my family and I have as American citizens, many second-generation Tamilians like me have a strong desire to integrate into the larger American mythos without clumsily stepping on the inheritance so painstakingly built up for a quarter-millennium before our kind even stepped foot in this hemisphere.
Each step I take is geared toward the reconciliation of those tensions.
Every move you make these days drags us three steps backward.
I’ll continue doing my part by interrogating the many developmental difficulties that fill up the volume of my life as lived. Somehow, with ample grace, I’ve found a proper home among the arms of talented and fearless wyteboi artists and autists with whom I’ve established a genuine brotherhood across weighty differences that can’t just be paved over with quippy AmFest one-liners.
This is the only type of homework that matters at the end of the day.
You, on the other hand, have not done your homework.
Whether my American compatriots ultimately include me in their fold—in a larger civilizational sense—is up to them, but your refusal to recognize, let alone properly navigate such pressures beyond the most superficial levels, demonstrates why they ought not to give you any benefit of doubt. At every turn, you’ve chosen to play the role of a vulgar and deracinated vaishya, betraying that deep down you exist at a level beneath even the mediocrity of Nietzsche’s Last Man.
No words can sufficiently capture the denigration your behavior deserves, so I’ll simply repeat what my uncle used to say to me when I spoke out of turn as a child.
வாய்ல சுடுகாடு. நாய்க்கு கூட ஓரளவுக்கு மரியாதை தெரியும்.
Your mouth is a cremation ground. Even a dog shows more decency than you.
If anyone actually cares, because I really don’t, I graduated from UChicago on the Dean’s List, and worked at Google doing Infrastructure/Compute SRE for a couple of years.
Extremely good article.
“Whether my American compatriots ultimately include me in their fold—in a larger civilizational sense—is up to them” .
True. The idea of getting pushed out of a culture and community we were raised in is scary for us of Indian origin, but ultimately, it’s not our decision to make. We are not the custodians of American culture and identity (Vivek fails to realize). If we do get deported to India or stay in America, we ought to make the most of it with dignity and respect.