Priyanka Chopra didn’t see it coming, clearly. Our desi diva in Hollywood, who has been used to bouquets for long, was in for some brick bats. And it was Quantico, her claim to western fame, that landed her in the soup. And rightly so! With a plotline that depicted nationalist Indians triggering a bomb blast in Manhattan with the sole purpose of blaming it on Pakistan was an outlandish frame-up idea indeed. With a large and robust community of Indians in New York, a great many of them plying trade in Manhattan, the instance of engineering an onscreen blast doesn’t stand to logic as they wouldn’t want to hurt their interests.
The twist, many argue, is likely to cause a lot of harm to a community which has assiduously crafted its positive image as a contributor to rather than the destroyer of Uncle Sam. It was like an assault on the diaspora’s lobbying and intention, cultivated over years and one that peaked with the Modi regime. No Indian nationalist is a terrorist. PC’s Indian identity clearly doesn’t speak well for having been a part of the story. But as an actor chasing Hollywood credibility, she probably had no say. Nothing suggests that she was uncomfortable with the idea either. Producers of the episode should not have been adamant about the script knowing that PC would draw in the ratings from the diaspora itself. Anyway it’s curtain call for Quantico and this dramatic turn certainly doesn’t bode well for anybody. Indians have been stereotyped enough in Hollywood and while PC was attempting a crossover of sorts, she has just been stereotyped further.