At a Funeral Pyre in India, Anger Over a Shooting in Kansas
HYDERABAD, India — Just after 2 p.m. Indian Standard Time on Tuesday, the body of Srinivas Kuchibhotla,
an Indian immigrant fatally shot in a bar outside Kansas City, Kan., was placed on a pyre made of logs.
Down with hatred!" Here in Hyderabad, a city so immigration-minded
that a particular temple deity is believed to help grant United States visas, Mr. Kuchibhotla’s violent death is seen by many as a harbinger of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States.
Venu Madhav reached that I want him and his family to return to Hyderabad for good.
His mother, Parvatha Vardhini, said she had once been "happy
that one of the Kuchibhotla family went to the U.S. for a better future." But this week, after her older son’s death, she demanded that her younger son, who is also employed in the United States, give up his job and stay in India.
"How much has America lost, too, for this single act of hatred?" After the ceremony, Mr. Dattatreya publicly recommended
that Indian students speak only in English for the duration of their time in the United States, as a safety measure.
India’s minister of labor, Bandaru Dattatreya, attended, as did a major movie star in the Telugu language,
and Chukka Ramaiah, a 91-year-old mathematics teacher who is celebrated for sending students to top-ranked Indian institutions and onward to the United States.