Columbia PhD student Ranjani Srinivasan was branded a terrorist sympathizer and forced to leave the US — no trial, no proof. Trump’s crackdown is hitting brown immigrants hard, but some Indian right-wingers are actually cheering.
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00:00It's not every day that the US administration rules out a high-tech deportation drive and
00:16gets applause from the very people it looks down on.
00:19But here we are, this time it's Ranjini Srinivasan, an Indian PhD student at Columbia University,
00:25branded a terrorist sympathizer for taking part in pro-Palestine protests.
00:30No trial, no evidence, just another young brown woman crushed under Trump's paranoia
00:35while clueless cheerleaders nod along.
00:41Afraid of legal trouble, she left voluntarily using a self-deportation feature in a US government
00:46app.
00:47Sounds dystopian?
00:48It is.
00:49But MAGA calls it national security.
00:51Now let's be clear, this is not about security, it's about control.
00:55MAGA's anti-immigrant hysteria has always been about race, and Srinivasan was an easy
00:59target.
01:00She wasn't some undocumented worker.
01:02She was an Ivy League PhD candidate studying urban planning.
01:06Before that, she had studied at CEPT Ahmedabad and Harvard on a Fulbright, Nehru and Inlax
01:11scholarship.
01:12But none of that mattered.
01:13The moment she crossed the ideological line, she became a problem.
01:17And now, her airport footage is being paraded like a Homeland Security victory.
01:20But what's truly bizarre, there are sections of the Indian right-wing that is loving this.
01:25These are the same people who rage when the West criticises India, who lose it when an
01:30Indian visa is rejected for looking unqualified.
01:33But here, they're laughing.
01:35Serves her right.
01:36These woke liberals deserve this.
01:38If she loves Palestine so much, she should move there.
01:41Here's a reality check.
01:42MAGA does not care if you're a proud Hindu or a woke liberal.
01:46MAGA sees brown.
01:48And it sees a problem.
01:49Trump's America doesn't love India so much, it doesn't even like India.
01:53It tolerates India when it needs a China counterweight or visa money from Indian engineers.
01:57But the moment an Indian student or worker stops being useful, they're just another foreigner
02:01taking up space.
02:03And yet, Indian right-wingers are clapping for their own team losing.
02:06Srinivasan spoke to the Hindu from an undisclosed location in Canada.
02:09She said she doesn't even know the charges against her.
02:12She just knows she was, you know, erased overnight.
02:15Her first red flag, her fellow student, Mahmood Khalil, disappeared, detained, gone.
02:20She panicked, left her university housing and hid.
02:23Days later, Columbia fired her as a teaching assistant, revoked her visa and gave her 15
02:28days to leave.
02:29She says she hasn't slept in a week.
02:31She's still scared of retaliation.
02:32And now she's asking for help from India to get her visa back, to finish her PhD, to reclaim
02:37years of work.
02:38Should India help out or should we stay out of this?
02:40Tell us what you think.