Remembering Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani on the Anniversary of Their Murder

Flowers outside the restaurant where the shooting occurred. Source: The New York Times

In February of my sophomore year of college, five years ago, I was attending a theater conference in Denver, presenting a cringey one-act play I had written about Nikki Haley’s decision to take down the Confederate Flag in the wake of the Charleston church shooting, an Obama-era story with a nice “we can all come together to do the right thing” message at the end. On February 22nd, 2017, I presented my play in front of a panel of judges, and almost all the feedback was unenthusiastic. It did not fit the mood of the early days of the Trump administration.

That same day, when I returned to my hotel room depressed by the day’s events, I learned about Srinivas Kuchibhotla’s murder.  On February 22nd, 2017,  a white supremacist shot Kuchibhotla and his friend, Alok Madasani, allegedly believing them to be Iranians and calling them terrorists before firing. A young white man named Ian Grillot was also shot after coming to their aid. 

Reading about the shooting and Srinivas made me feel numb. Srinivas Kuchibhotla was Telugu and Hindu, the same as my family. He was working in the tech industry, as many of my cousins did. He was living in Olathe, Kansas, a place I didn’t really think of as dangerous or racist.  I had always been angry about Trump’s racist cries for Muslim bans and mass deportation and was scared for my friends from communities he targeted. But while my Indian American friends and I went to protests or tried to organize around certain issues, I always felt that I was acting on behalf of others, not for my own community, which I did not feel was a target. 

The Kuchibhotla killing made it clear that Indian Americans, as an immigrant community, were a target of the skyrocketing anti-immigrant violence sweeping the country. There could be no self-separation of identities if minorities were to successfully oppose the mass onslaught of oppression that swept brown people of all backgrounds and religions into its cascade, regardless of who it was aimed at. Murder is not the only fear. When Srinivas Kuchibhotla died, his wife’s dependent visa status ended and she faced deportation. 

But one thing we also take for granted is how so many people stood up to support Kuchibhotla’s family. Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed a proclamation honoring the three victims of the shooting and declaring March 16th Indian American Appreciation Day. President Trump was forced to condemn the shooting in his first address to Congress. Sunayana Dumala received significant assistance from congressional leaders and her employer in order to obtain an H-1B visa.  For the record, this is the model for how all victims of hate violence should be treated, with care and attention from those in authority to mitigate the disastrous effects on the families of survivors. 

Unfortunately, some people of other communities have not received the same attention. We are still seeing Black people murdered without consequence for the killers, and missing Indigenous women ignored by public officials. In India, Muslim and Dalit victims of violence and their families suffer daily without consequence to the harmdoers, with many imprisoned simply for speaking their mind or for vengeful rumors. The loss and cruelty of Kuchibhotla’s death is a function of white supremacy, but so was the treatment of Kuchibhotla’s family in the wake of it. He and his wife represented the false, mythical American notion of “ideal” immigrants—middle class, documented, and non-Muslim—and at the end of the day, even they were not safe from white supremacist violence. Government officials, whether in the U.S. or India, rarely take similar levels of action for the most marginalized communities. 

My play was written prior to President Trump even coming on the scene, and it had failed to take into account the new wave of white supremacist terror taking over the country. Ending racism would require much, much more than simply removing symbols like the Confederate Flag. It required Black and brown people of all ethnicities and religions to stand and fight together as one to defeat a tidal wave of hateful people and policies that sought to overwhelm us. Indian Americans are both victims of oppression and held up as model minorities, and it is up to us to fight violence against our communities and working to ensure other oppressed communities receive justice.