press trust of india
Charlottesville (US), August 14: A disquiet anxiety has gripped the residents of Charlottesville, many of whom are Indian Americans, after a rally of white supremacists ended in clashes with counter-protesters and claimed the life of a woman.
While normalcy seemed to have returned to the city by afternoon Sunday, residents grappled with shock and fear following a day of violence when a car rammed into a crowd peacefully protesting against the rally by white supremacists, killing the 32-year-old woman. The city in the US state of Virginia has a significant Indian and Indian-American population, but there was no report of anyone from the community being injured in the violence Saturday.
Two police officers monitoring the demonstration died after a helicopter crashed near the protest site and 19 others were injured, though, unofficial figures could be high.
“It’s still difficult for us to understand and grapple with the reality that such a thing has happened. This is not what the city is about,” said Sankaran Venkataraman, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, MasterCard, Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. Venkataraman has lived in Charlottesville, about 190 kilometres southwest of Washington DC, for nearly 20 years. His daughter’s friend had gone to the downtown area to take part in the counter protest to the white supremacist rally. She returned with a broken leg.
“(The violence) doesn’t represent any of the views or characters of the people here. We are progressive people who believe in diversity and inclusiveness. “For something like this to happen is a shock to us. The notions of racism, hatred, bigotry are completely antithetical to the views of most citizens of Charlottesville,” said Venkataraman, who recently returned from Tamil Nadu. The Virginia university, closed for summer, is set to open in two weeks and students, a sizable number from outside the US, including India, would start arriving next week.
“I am sure there’s a sense of anxiety among students here,” Venkataraman added. Vilas Annavarapu, an Indian-American and student of political science at the university, was among the few who stayed back at the campus to attend training classes.
Annavarapu is also an office-bearer of the Indian Student Association at the varsity which has about 300 active members. While he did not leave the campus Saturday, he had a scary encounter with white supremacists Friday night when hundreds of them had a surprise rally inside the campus. Meanwhile, a man accused of ramming a car into a crowd of activists protesting a white supremacist rally in the US state of Virginia, had long sympathised with the Nazis, his former school teacher said.
