Free Republic

A visa programme intended to attract top talent to the United States has become a lightning rod for controversy and an unexpected battleground in America's culture wars, with racial tensions against Indians at its core. The H1B work visa debate has drawn in figures like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Bernie Sanders, capturing the attention of over 200 million people online and affecting 1.7 billion people across the US and India. The controversy ignited when Sriram Krishnan's nomination as Trump's senior White House policy advisor on AI sparked outrage among the far-Right Republican faction. An old tweet about...

The head of India's most powerful Hindu group vowed to press ahead with a campaign to convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism, stoking a sensitive debate that has stalled parliament and threatened the prime minister's economic reform agenda. Mohan Bhagwat of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which is also the ideological wing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party, said India was a "Hindu nation" where many Hindus had been forcibly converted to other religions. "We will bring back those who have lost their way. They did not go on their own," Bhagwat said in a speech late on Saturday. "They...