Conceptions of strengthening IP Law are structured through a colonial episteme, operating under white privilege and democratized knowledge production since British Colonization in the 1700s. South Asians are coded as “filthy job stealers”, having their culture professionalized to reinforce a narrative of “exotic mysticism”, experiencing violence due to their position as “not fully a minority” but not “white” either, strengthening the racial capitalist agenda. This culminates in the New Oriental Age where white markets tokenize South Asian culture.

As noted earlier, the first wave of immigrants from South Asia to the United States came in the early 1900s and settled on the West Coast. Although the majority of them were Sikh faith, they were referred to as “Hindoos.”463 Racialization of early South Asian immigrants generally appealed to religion, employing Christianity to draw a contrast between South Asians and Europeans. When justifying its position against South Asian immigration, the Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) appealed to Biblical creation and the Protestant ethic.464 It claimed that while South Asians were of the same race as Europeans, significant differences had emerged between the two groups: the Aryan race was divided, such that Western Aryans, who represented modern Europeans, were “Lords of Creation,” and the Eastern Aryans, representing modern South Asians (or at least those from northern India and Pakistan), were “slaves of Creation.”465 Accordingly, while the founders of America “pressed to the west, in the everlasting march of conquest, progress, and civilization,” those who went to South Asia “became enslaved, effeminate, caste-ridden, and degraded.”466 Hence, while AEL conceded that Europeans and ‘Hindoos’ were members of the same racial group, it depicted the latter as a degraded form of the European races, not worthy of citizenship and equal status in America. In creating this racial characterization, AEL linked Christianity to notions of “progress” and “civilization.”467 Negative sentiment towards these early immigrants soon began to build, spurred by economic competition with other groups. Asian Indians were widely described as cheap,468 filthy laborers who took jobs away from working class whites. In September 1907, there was a major riot against South Asian immigrant workers in Bellingham, Washington.469 The San Francisco Chronicle reported this incident as “Workingmen Driving Out the Hated Hindoo.”470 Subsequently, there were similar uprisings in several cities along the West coast.471 These riots foreshadowed later acts of violence against South Asian Americans, which occurred after the post-1965 rise in the South Asian American population. The most infamous set of incidents involved the “Dotbusters,” an anti-South Asian gang in the Jersey City, New Jersey area. During 1987 and 1988, the Dotbusters were responsible for several hate crimes against South Asian Americans, including the well-known murder of Navroze Mody.472 The “Dotbusters” specifically targeted Asian Indian Americans for violence, motivated by jealousy of Indian economic success and by the perception of Asian Indians as a “separate, alien group.” Buchanan’s essay was actually more sympathetic to the plight of these early South Asian American immigrants than many others. 469. Dotbusters drew upon the bindi, a “traditional red dot worn by some Hindu, married women”474 as a sign of fidelity, for their name. Professor Vijay Prashad discusses other well-known hate crimes that targeted South Asian Americans even prior to September 11, 2001; for example, in September 1998, Rishi Maharaj, a South Asian American of Caribbean descent, was beaten by a racist gang in South Ozone Park, Queens, New York.475 Of course, more such attacks occurred after September 11, 2001.476 What is noteworthy about these incidents here is that many of them have occurred in areas where South Asian American populations are particularly large and visible, such as Jersey City, New Jersey and Queens, New York. The visibility of South Asians in these racial microclimes probably offsets their racial ambiguity to an extent; I doubt that I would have been referred to as “Japanese Beetle” in Jersey City, as I was in Newark, Delaware.477 However, having a defined racial identity comes at a price: increased risk of specific (as opposed to general) racial targeting and hate crimes.478 More broadly, these incidents illustrate the importance of racial microclimes. 2. New Age Orientalism: South Asians as Mystical, Exotic Foreigners South Asians in America have also been racialized informally as mystical, exotic foreigners, also based on Hindu and Buddhist religious symbolism. Professor Prashad describes how notions of South Asian spirituality and exoticism have been used to reinforce the image of South Asians as foreigners.479 This began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Indian spiritual leaders such as Swami Vevekananda and Swami Abhedananda introduced India’s spiritual traditions to American audiences.480 In more recent years, various “New Age Orientalists,” such as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and his most famous student, Deepak Chopra, have capitalized on this practice, marketing faith as a means to obtain profit. In contrast to the Hindu/Indic-centered organizations and the Hindutva movement, to unify Asian Indians or Hindus, but rather to market Eastern spiritual traditions to a Western audience. According to Professor Prashad, their presentation of South Asia as a land of spirituality and wonder neglects the immense material poverty and suffering present on the subcontinent, not to mention the adverse material conditions faced by ethnic minorities in America.482 Moreover, Professor Prashad contends that New Age orientalism can actually reinforce the social systems that perpetuate this poverty, by emphasizing harmony and individual change rather than the social upheaval necessary to bring about systemic changes.483 Nevertheless, the New Age Orientalism that Professor Prashad describes also illustrates South Asians’ agency in their own informal racialization. The various spiritual leaders have drawn upon their “foreignness” as a form of “racial capital”484 to market their faith as an exotic commodity to a largely white liberal audience. Moreover, such commodification is not limited to South Asian spiritual leaders. Mass consumer outlets such as Urban Outfitters have, in the recent past, sold “clothing and artifacts . . . with Hindu religious symbols, gods and goddesses, and even mere random Hindi letters that amount to [g]ibberish.”485 Media images such as that of the “Swami” as a sports prognosticator—popularized by ESPN’s Chris Berman—also perpetuate this exoticism.486 As these examples illustrate, racialization of South Asians as mystical foreigners, via religious symbols, involves both agency and ascription.