Indian-origin CEO racially abused by Trump supporters in US

An Indian-origin CEO in the US was racially abused on social media and told "to go back to India"after he wrote a piece for CNBC denouncing Trump.

The Indian-origin CEO was also told to take Nikki Haley -- who is also of Indian origin -- along with him.

The US-born Ravin Gandhi, founder and CEO of GMM Nonstick Coatings,a global supplier of coatings for cookware and bakeware, wrote in CNBC that:

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"But then I saw what happened last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia. I saw the president of the Unites States cowardly signal tacit support of white supremacists and Nazis. Every time Trump reworked his response in subsequent days, he dug a deeper hole that revealed more and more. I realized the deep wisdom in Maya Angelou's statement: Donald Trump has now shown us who he really is, and it's time to believe it.

The truth is, after Charlottesville and its aftermath, I will not defend Trump even if the Dow hits 50,000, unemployment goes to 1 percent, and GDP grows by 7 percent. Some issues transcend economics, and I will not in good conscience support a president who seems to hate Americans who don't look like him."

Gandhi had begun his piece on a softer note, saying he had been "flabbergasted" when Trump won but that he had wanted to give him the "benefit of the doubt" before building up to his point.

White supremacists and neo-Nazis had organised a rally in Charlottesville.

One woman had died in the violence at Charlottesville after counter-protesters clashed with the white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Trump had at the time blamed the violence on both sides.

This morning -- Tuesday evening in the US -- Trump defended his response to the violence at Charlottesville.

Gandhi was soon bombarded by hate comments on his piece, PTI reported, including a voicemail from a woman who said Gandhi should "get your (expletive) garbage and go back to India."

The woman, using abusive language, PTI added, told Gandhi that he should also take "that other half-(expletive) Bangladesh (expletive) with you, Nikki Haley," referring to the US envoy to the UN.

"She's (Haley) the one that started all this when she took down the Confederate flag. So don't tell us that you gave him a chance. We don't give an (expletive) who you gave a chance, OK? We're going to start taking down Buddhist statues and see how you and Nikki Haley like that," the woman said.

In the minute and a half voicemail, she said Gandhi should "go clean up your own (expletive) country, it's a filthy mess."

Gandhi posted the voicemail to YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook and shared some of the nastier emails he received as well.

"It was obvious that people thought my professional position somewhat protected me," he said. "I wanted to show people that racism is blind to socioeconomics. It just is."

"Even though my race is a complete non-issue in my day-to-day life, the sad reality is there's a group of racists in the USA that views me as a second-class citizen," he said in the report.

"I wanted my peers in the business community, the civic community, my friend community to see that this can happen to me. Because there's this delusion that racism is dead because Obama was elected."

Gandhi added that the fact that Trump "equated hate groups with those protesting hate lit me up" as he called Trump's moral leadership on the issue "reprehensible."

He said while his sharing a "bigoted" voicemail may not make a big difference, but he will speak out against such abuse as long as he has a platform to do so.

"My heroes are Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, people who stood up against insane odds. And let's be honest? I live in adoorman-protected building on the Gold Coast. For me to say that I'm suffering in any real sense is insane. But many people in this city who don't have resources really are suffering."

"I know I'm on the right side of history here," he said. "That's how I sleep at night."

(With inputs from PTI)