Author, 'Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found' &'This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto'. NYU Journalism Prof. Father of
@mehta_gautama
and
@akashvmehta
For India's 75th. Independence Anniversary, 113 of its best writers came together in a powerful, polyphonic document of dissent. We wrote it out of love for India and fear for its democracy.
My NYT op-ed argues for immigration as reparations, for people whose future has been stolen by colonialism, war, inequality, and climate change
#immigrationasreparations
Today, shows are scoured, re-edited to cut scenes of praying or god names. Greenlit projects like Suketu Mehta's Maximum City are quietly dropped. The RSS told us they don't want negative portrayals of India and Hinduism. "It's invisible censorship," said Anurag Kashyap
@AnnCoulter
@oliverdarcy
If you had 3 functioning brain cells, you wouldn't be mentioning my New Yorker article about asylum to support your racist positions. It's not about child actors, it's about narratives demanded of adults by a broken asylum system
It amazes me how many people want to be writers without actually writing. If you're an athelte, you go to the gym every day. If you're a singer, you do scales every day. if you're a writer, you WRITE EVERY DAY.
It's one thing when the English-language media turns on Modi. It's something else altogether when the Hindi papers do so, like this righteous, angry piece by the editor of
@DainikBhaskar
. The night has been long, but the dawn is in sight.
Immigrants are 14% of the US population but founded a quarter of all new businesses, and 43% of the Fortune 500. We create jobs, not take them. Miller’s hatred of immigrants isn’t about economics. It’s about race.
If you had 3 functioning brain cells,
@AnnCoulter
, you wouldn't be mentioning my New Yorker article about asylum to support your racist positions. It's not about child actors, it's about narratives demanded of adults by a broken asylum system
@oliverdarcy
Salil Tripathi is one of our most important human rights activists. Absolutely unacceptable for
@TwitterIndia
to suspend his account. India need's Salil's voice!
"India shows signs of sliding at some speed towards totalitarianism��� it’s enormously saddening", says
@SalmanRushdie
in this fascinating conversation with
@holdengraber
. Also: how medieval India was much more liberal and tolerant than today's India.
India keeps going after journalists like me. As Modi visits the U.S, it’s time to hold him accountable. The world cannot ignore the state enabled Islamophobia and attack on free speech and dissent in India
Angelina Jolie sells Churchill painting of Morocco, 1943, for $11.5 million - the same year that 3 million Indians died of famine, for which Churchill was responsible. Indians deserved the famine, he said, because "they were breeding like rabbits".
'This Land is Our Land' is on
@time
's Top 10 Books of 2019 list: "In firm and lucid prose, Mehta calls for us to rethink both the roots and implications of immigration. A stirring case for the benefits to societies that embrace migrants"
Outrageous travesty of justice in India: a comedian is jailed for a routine he might have delivered in the future; then denied bail to appease the mob. India's judiciary seems to have a separate set of standards for Muslims via
@scroll_in
An excerpt from my book in
@gdnlongread
about the roots of the anti-immigrant panic sweeping the West. Fear of migrants is doing incalculably more damage than migrants ever could. More immigration is good for everybody, and a matter of simple moral justice
Supreme Court judges “are not bound by the same ethics code that applies to the rest.” Damning
@nytimes
expose of Alito’s ties to the Christian right.
Dear
@AnnCoulter
, may I suggest our excellent ESL classes at NYU, since you clearly are incapable of comprehending my
@NewYorker
piece, which has NO child actors, and NO liberals reading scripts to them. If you're unable to read, you can listen
Thrilled that 'This Land is Our Land' is on Time's Best Books of 2019. "In a time when festering anti-immigrant animus is finding its way into official government policy, Suketu Mehta offers a proclamation on behalf of migration."
During these bleak times, read the ending of Italo Calvino's masterpiece, 'Invisible Cities': “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together... (1/4)
"In his 8 years in power, Mr. Modi’s government has profaned Indian democracy, espousing an intolerant Hindu supremacist majoritarianism over the ideals of secularism, pluralism, religious tolerance and equal citizenship upon which the country was founded"
South Asians experience 60% of all heart attacks, though we're only a quarter of the global population. Our diabetes rates are 4 to 6 times higher than others. If you're desi, reading this article could save your life.
This is utter madness. Does he not realize that a quarter of all American doctors are immigrants? And we desperately need all the doctors and nurses we can get? And we are lucky that anybody still wants to come to this failed state?
In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!
The great
#IrfanKhan
on the sets of 'New York I Love You', (which I co-wrote) with my sons who were playing his sons. Irfan's advice to them: don't live your lives chasing after money and fame. The most un-star-like star I've ever met, and the best Indian actor of his generation.
To the people who’re tweeting hatred at me, my response is James Baldwin’s: “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
Come for a walk with me and
@kimmelman
around Jackson Heights, Queens, where I grew up - as did Trump. But our visions of NYC couldn't be more different. Note to the President: DON'T DUMP ON NEW YORK!
For India to survive as a democracy, Rahul Gandhi must step aside, notes
@kapskom
. "The greatest service India’s well-wishers in Washington could perform is to urge the Gandhi dynasty to make way for democratic leadership."
Nothing in this story about the state of the ship’s crew, held hostage by Egypt - because they’re Indian. Would be a whole different story if they were Westerners
I like to eat Indian food with my fingers, because I know where my fingers have been. To those who look askance, I ask: Do you know where that fork has been?
Astonishingly racist diatribe by
@SethBarronNYC
of
@CityJournal
on
@TuckerCarlson
against people like me from
@AOC
's district in Jackson Heights, which he calls "one of the least American districts" with immigrants "pouring pig grease into the gutters"
Devastated to hear about the passing of Sonny Mehta, who edited Maximum City. He believed in me very early on, made it possible for me to be a writer. Thank you Sonny, and sat sri akal
Tomorrow at 7PM EST - Please join Salman Rushdie and me in a conversation about global migration: why, in the aftermath of Covid-19, the world needs more migration, not less; and the role immigration will play in the 2020 elections.
There’s no ‘Islam exception’ for free speech. Islam is not a monolith, and it’s history is rich, complex, and worthy of debate. Shame on those who would seek to stifle it - particularly at a university!
An adjunct professor at Hamline University showed a painting of the Prophet Muhammad for an art history class. It was followed by an outcry from Muslim students. University officials said it was Islamophobic, but many scholars say the work is a masterpiece.
An excerpt from my book about Friendship Park, where immigrants meet their families through a fence. The most heartbreaking reporting I have ever done.
I like to eat Indian food with my fingers, because I know where my fingers have been. To those who look askance, I ask: Do you know where that fork has been?
Last night's racist rally was not representative of all of
#northcarolinians
. My brother-in-law
@jay_chaudhuri
was elected by a landslide to the State Senate, against a white opponent. 70% of whites voted for the brown-skinned candidate. Fight the good fight; run for office!
1 /
#SendHerBack
? Send them home? My family has heard that before. My immigrant father is the greatest American patriot I know. He's healed thousands of patients, given back to community, & loves this country more than anyone I know.
Thrilled by the amazing
@feministabulous
Liz Plank's visit in my NYU journalism class with her incredibly insightful new book. Everybody should read it, particularly men.
Net migration to the US plunged from 1,046,709 in 2016 to 595,348 last year. Meanwhile, US population is growing at the slowest rate in history. To avoid becoming another Japan, we need to let more immigrants in.
Oh how the flighty have fallen. Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld, husband of
@amychua
threatened to assault me at a NYT party in 2014 - because I called out their racist book in
@TIME
. Now he's been suspended for sexual harassment.
Never met
#VSNaipaul
, never particularly wanted to, but read him like a textbook. My single greatest influence for Maximum City. Thank you, Vidia, for showing the way. And for your fierce integrity.
Last year,
@AnnCoulter
, you retweeted abuse of my article in
@ForeignPolicy
about immigration, so you obviously know where I stand. It is nowhere on the same planet you do
What happened in Beirut? It wasn’t an ‘attack’. The ingredients of the blast were corruption, gross bureaucratic incompetence, and a complete absence of safety standards.
I am in the US due to ‘family reunification’, or what Trump calls ‘chain migration’. We never took a dime in welfare. For immigrants, the family chain is a safety net
Gorgeous, moving piece on Tagore's Kabuliwala by
@lfrayer
on
@NPR
@MorningEdition
. Listen to it with your family this Thanksgiving; be grateful for what we have, and spare a thought for the refugees who miss their families every single day
Left-wing author Suketu Mehta and I debate his claim that illegal immigration is justifiable as a form of reparations owed by rich countries to poor countries.
@suketumehta
For the full podcast:
WATCH:
LISTEN:
“This Land is Our Land” offers a meticulously researched and deeply felt corrective to the public narrative of who today’s migrants are, why they are coming, and what economic and historical forces have propelled them from their homes into faraway lands