TUCUMCARI, New Mexico (Diya TV) — An Indian American cattle rancher from New Mexico has gone viral after videos of his ranch life drew racist comments online — and his decision to ignore the critics and launch a business fundraiser instead generated widespread public support.
Tesh Jennings, an Indian American cattle rancher and social media content creator based in Tucumcari, New Mexico, posted a video showing himself working on his ranch — handling cattle, riding horses, target shooting, and performing other ranch duties while wearing cowboy boots and Western attire. The video carried a simple message: “Not all Indians code. Some of us wear boots, work cattle, and grow your food.”
The post quickly gained traction online, attracting thousands of reactions and comments. While some users posted racist remarks, many others came to Jennings’ defense. One of the most-liked comments read, “If this isn’t integration, I don’t know what would be,” drawing more than 4,000 likes.
Rather than engaging with his critics, Jennings responded by doubling down on his ranching identity and turning the attention into an opportunity. He launched an online fundraiser to help finance the expansion of his ranch.
Supporters praised Jennings not only for his work ethic but also for challenging assumptions about what an Indian American — or a cowboy — is supposed to look like. For many viewers, the image of an Indian American rancher working cattle and living a traditional ranching lifestyle served as a reminder that Indian Americans are represented across a wide range of professions and communities, from technology and medicine to agriculture and ranching.
Jennings’ experience did not occur in a vacuum. His viral moment comes amid a documented surge in anti-Indian rhetoric across American social media platforms. Anti-Indian content on X tripled in 2025, with more than 24,000 posts viewed over 300 million times. The vitriol peaked in mid-December 2025, with slurs like “pajeet” and “dothead” often tied to H-1B visa debates following the Trump administration’s $100,000 fraud-curbing fee.
The increased scrutiny against the South Asian population seeking employment in America — specifically those applying for the H-1B visa program — has led to increased political hostility and racism against Indian people in the United States, according to experts. The uptick in discrimination and bigotry has been tracked across social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and X.
The scale of the problem is significant. A 2026 Carnegie Indian American Attitudes Survey found that 48 percent of Indian Americans had encountered racist posts targeting Indians or Indian Americans very or somewhat often since the start of 2025. One in four respondents reported having been called a slur since the start of 2025. Nine percent reported physical threats, and one in two respondents reported some form of personal discrimination in 2025, with skin color, country of origin, and religion among the most cited reasons.
January 2025 marked the highest number of online anti-Asian slurs recorded since monitoring began in August 2022, according to Stop AAPI Hate, with nearly 88,000 slurs tracked. The surge was mostly driven by anti-South Asian content, which increased 75 percent in January compared to November. Some online rhetoric centered around Indians “stealing jobs” and threatening “white livelihood.”
Analysts note that social media has created a dynamic of extremes: Indians are either stereotyped as successful and well-off in tech careers, or as doing low-wage work. “It impacts our community internalizing that,” one researcher told Newsweek, adding that South Asians already carry a level of “shame and reputation-based identity.”
Jennings’ pushback speaks directly to the “model minority” stereotype that has long flattened Indian American identity into a narrow set of expected professions. The assumption that Indian Americans belong exclusively in technology or medicine — the same assumption his critics applied online — limits how the community is perceived both by outsiders and from within. The most consistent anti-Indian bigotry online focuses on the H-1B visa program, of which Indian nationals are the biggest beneficiaries, researchers say. That association has helped fuel a broader conflation in online spaces between Indian identity and tech employment — the very stereotype Jennings’ ranch videos directly contradict.
His story resonated widely precisely because it defies expectations on multiple fronts: an Indian American not in tech, living in a rural state, working in one of the most culturally iconic American occupations. Rather than retreating from that space or engaging in online arguments, he used the attention to build his business. Jennings’ social media presence, operating under the handle @world_of_tesh, continues to document life on his New Mexico ranch.
