India’s foreign ministry on Thursday called remarks referring to Indians as living in a “hellhole” — carried in a post shared by US President Donald Trump on his Truth Social account — “obviously uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste”.
“They certainly do not reflect the reality of the India-US relationship, which has long been based on mutual respect and shared interests,” ministry of external affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
The disparaging remarks were contained in the full transcript of conservative political talk show Savage Nation, which Trump had shared on his account. The transcript was a broadside against birthright citizenship, the American legal principle that automatically confers citizenship on anyone born on US soil. “A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet,” it read.
Jaiswal’s sharper statement came after an initial response earlier in the day — “We have seen some reports. That is where I leave it”. He said the ministry had also seen the subsequent statement issued by the US Embassy in New Delhi, which, responding to queries, did not address the content of the post but pointed to earlier remarks by the president. “The President has said ‘India is a great country with a very good friend of mine at the top’,” a US Embassy spokesperson said.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge criticised both the post and what he characterised as the government’s silence. “Modi ji’s dear friend, ‘Namaste Trump’ has shared a note abusing India and using an extremely disparaging term. Modi ji remains absolutely mum on these ridiculous utterances,” he wrote on X, before the stronger MEA response.
The Truth Social post comes as the Trump administration pursues a legal challenge to birthright citizenship in the Supreme Court, seeking a narrower interpretation of a constitutional right long held to be absolute.
The controversy also surfaces at a moment of increasing vulnerability for the Indian-American community, which has been concerned at rising instances of racial rhetoric on social media platforms like X. A 2026 Carnegie Endowment report found that roughly half of Indian-Americans surveyed said they had encountered racist posts targeting Indians or Indian-Americans “very or somewhat often since the start of 2025”.
“Racist social media content elicits strong negative emotional responses from Indian Americans,” the report noted. “Half of all respondents report feeling angry when encountering such posts, while one-third report feeling anxious (33%) or fearful (31%). One in five (26%) report feeling hopeless.”
Separately, 40% of respondents said they had considered leaving the United States “occasionally” or “frequently”.
