US-INDIA GLOBAL REVIEW JUL-SEP 2020

country's path to equality and jus- tice for hundreds of years -- Amy Cooper, the white woman in Central Park who called 911 with pretended panic that she felt threatened by a black man All that, and Floyd's death has already smeared the moral high ground America has held around the globe in protecting the human rights of people imprisoned or killed elsewhere. Widespread Condemnation Indian-American individuals who have achieved great heights in the U.S., -- from Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and parent com- pany Alphabet, and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, to Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the largest civil rights organization in the country, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, have condemned Floyd's killing in so many words, and called for soli- darity with African Americans in their struggle for social justice. So have other advocacy organi- zations like SAALT (South Asian Americans Leading Together), and South Asians for America, or reli- gion-based advocacy groups like Hindu American Foundation. As have Indian-American elected leaders at all levels, local to national, professional organiza- tions like the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, AAPI, the largest ethnic medical organization in the country. Community Organizations Anil Bansal, president of the Federation of Indian Associations in the tri-state area, said the rest of the Indian- American community cannot use their leaders as proxy for holding up the cause of civil rights. "A wider section of our commu- nity must speak out. We cannot just be happy that Indian (American) leaders are speaking as if on our behalf," Bansal said, adding, "This is a minority issue and we are a minority, so we are part of it," said Bansal, adding that FIA was holding an Executive Committee meeting June 4, to dis- cuss how to show support for African Americans. "In order to improve the quality and future of minorities like us, we must support African Americans in a peaceful way to bring the change about," Bansal said. "We may forget the past when we were discriminated against more than 100 years ago, but we should not forget that the latest wave of Indian immigrants (in the 1960s and 1970s). We are here because of the African American struggle for civil liberties." The Hindu American Foundation in its statement directly addressed law enforce- ment and lawmakers. "The Hindu American Foundation stands in solidarity with peaceful protestors across the nation condemning the horrific killing of George Floyd and calling out systemic racism and exces- sive violence against African Americans by our nation’s police," said the June 1, 2020 statement. Suhag Shukla, executive direc- tor of HAF, said, “As Americans, we must wrestle with two disso- nant truths: that the founders of the United States created a nation philosophically promising freedom and equality for all people, and that this nation was built on the backs of enslaved Africans and the spilled blood of Native Americans. "The collective negative karma of our nation's past and centuries of subjugation has yet to be resolved," Shukla added. The HAF announced it has joined the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights , Gupta's organization, to ask Congress for "swift and deci- sive legislative action in response to ongoing fatal police killings and other violence against Black peo- ple across our country." The American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), in a statement, “con- demned racial discrimination and violence.” Several executive committee members of AAPI system discrim- ination and use of force was a health and equity issue, some- Leaders in the Indian-American community are urging greater engagement with the political process to bring an end systemic racism. Vanita Gupta Photo: Twitter@vanitaguptaCR 19 US-INDIA GLOBAL REVIEW JULY-SEPTEMBER 2020