The Pluralism Project at Harvard University
Dot Busters in New Jersey
The Indian immigrant community is about 15,000 strong in Jersey City, part of a much larger Indian community in northern New Jersey generally. But in 1987, a thirty-year-old Indian immigrant bank manager, Navroze Mody, was beaten to death by a gang chanting "Hindu, Hindu!" A group which called itself the "Dot Busters," which included local teenagers, had been targeting the hard-working community of Indian immigrants with low-level harassment for months. The "dot" referred to the bindi Hindu women wear on their foreheads.
In July of 1987, a month before Mody's death, a local newspaper called attention to the rising number of harassment incidents. In response, it received a letter, signed "Jersey City Dot Busters:"
"I'm writing about your article during July about the abuse of Indian People. Well I'm here to state the other side. I hate them, if you had to live near them you would also. We are an organization called dot busters. We have been around for 2 years. We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I'm walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her. We plan some of our most extreme attacks such as breaking windows, breaking car windows, and crashing family parties. We use the phone books and look up the name Patel. Have you seen how many of them there are? Do you even live in Jersey City? Do you walk down Central avenue and experience what its like to be near them: we have and we just don't want it anymore. You said that they will have to start protecting themselves because the police cannot always be there. They will never do anything. They are a week race Physically and mentally. We are going to continue our way. We will never be stopped."
In Jersey City, a few weeks after Mody's death, a young resident in medicine, Dr. Sharan, was assaulted by three young men with baseball bats as he walked home late one night. One of the young people yelled, "There's a dothead! Let's get him!" as they set out with their bats. Sharan was beaten severely and left unconscious with a fractured skull. He was in a coma for a week, in the hospital for three weeks, and suffered permanent neurological damage.
These incidents were a severe blow to the Indian immigrant community and jarred it into taking political action seriously. While the violence seemed to be aimed at the Hindu community, where the wearing of the bindi is most common, it is clear that the animosity felt by the Dot Busters was primarily racial, aimed indiscriminately at South Asian immigrants. A group called Indian Youth Against Racism (IYAR) based at Columbia University documented instances of violence against Indians in New Jersey and helped implement a series of educational programs on South Asian cultures for students and faculty at a Jersey City high school. The group also helped get a bill passed in the New Jersey legislature that raised the mandatory penalties for "bias crimes."
The perpetrators have been brought to trial for these assaults. The tough new anti-bias crime law was passed by the New Jersey legislature in 1990. But the attacks did not cease. 1991 saw 58 cases of hate crimes against Indians in New Jersey. In 1992, an Indian physician was hit on the head and sprayed with mace, and an Indian businessman was struck on the head with a bat.
Glossary: Hindu
Reprinted by permission from our CD-ROM On Common Ground: World Religions in America, published by Columbia University Press (1-800-944-8648).