from Nancy- How Indians in Jersey City fought back against the terror of 'Dotbusters' in the 1980s

Navroze Mody left Hoboken's Gold Coast Café around 11 the night of Sept. 27, 1987. It would be the last minutes of his life.

The Jersey City resident was walking back home with a friend when he heard the taunts of “Kojak” and “Baldy.” The teenagers pursuing yelled racial slurs, too, then beat Mody unconscious with bricks and other objects.

His white friend, William Crawford, was unharmed. Mody was taken to a nearby hospital. He died four days later.

His death came during a dangerous time for Indian immigrants and people of Indian descent who settled in Jersey City. But it also rallied those newcomers in a way that could be instructive today, as Asian Americans face a new wave of attacks sparked by racist rhetoric and the coronavirus pandemic. Three days before Mody was beaten, Kaushal Saran, a 30-year-old physician, was walking out of an office building in the Jersey City Heights when a group of men beat him with a baseball bat.

The previous month, two men beat Bhered Patel with a metal pipe while he was sleeping in his Jersey City apartment.

In the six months from June to December of 1987, a dozen incidents against Indians were reported to police in the state's second largest city.

And the attacks continued into the next year, including a New York City taxi driver killed on a Jersey City street and a 28-year-old man beaten after being chased by youths, both happening in June 1988.

Many of these attacks were carried out by the "Dotbusters," a group of assailants, primarily white, who announced themselves in a letter to the Jersey Journal in the summer of 1987. The letter detailed how they planned to terrorize the new residents.

Dr. Vijaya Desai speaks to NorthJersey.com about the violence that took place in the mid-late 1980's against Asian Indians in and around Jersey City. Wednesday, November 17, 2021

The fear prompted some Indians to change their daily habits.

"We would not go out after 6 p.m. ... We did not know how to handle the situation," said Dr. Vijaya Desai, a pediatrician who came to Jersey City with her husband in 1976. "We were new to this country and scared of what would happen to you or your family or your friends."

However, the recent immigrants — many of them spurred by Mody's death — soon banded together to protect each other, to protest for better protection from the police and to send a message that they would not be bullied.

The attacks subsided within a few years. Yet, they left a legacy of racist aggression that continues to be felt years later by Indians and other Asian immigrants.

A reference to the Dotbusters' campaign of terror was mentioned in coverage about racist signs that sprung up in protest of a Hindu temple proposed in an Atlanta suburb last year.

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In March, six women of Asian descent were killed by a white man, Robert Aaron Long, in shootings at three nail salons in the Atlanta area that claimed eight victims. Long pleaded guilty in four of the fatal shootings and is on trial for four others.

The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate reported more than 10,000 anti-Asian incidents nationwide from March 2020 to June 2021. Those incidents included attacks on an 84-year-old Thai immigrant in San Francisco who died after being shoved to the ground and a 61-year-old Filipino American who was slashed on a New York subway.

Amidst the latest wave of violence, some of the Indian leaders who fought to stop the Jersey City attacks are speaking about how those incidents transformed them from passive onlookers to vocal proponents for justice.

Under attack but fighting back

The reality was much different in 1987 than it is now for Indian Americans in Jersey City.

The population was half of what it is now as Indians had first settled into the city in small numbers in the previous two decades.

Many worked in New York City, taking the PATH train to and from their homes in the Jersey City Heights and Journal Square neighborhoods. Others found work in town.

Dr. Lalitha Masson still practices medicine in Jersey City, 54 years after she began her residency at the old Jersey City Medical Center.

Masson, an obstetrician-gynecologist, remembered how Indians and other Asians who worked in the hospital were treated when they first worked in those places.

"There was some curiosity, and at the same time because we were occupying top positions, there was a lot of jealousy," Masson said. "And I remember very well because when I first came, [Jersey City Medical Center] hosted a big dinner for us in Atlantic City. The chief of my program was a German American and I refused to eat the filet mignon which was served, and he commented that the Indians are so uncouth they don't know good food."

However, despite the negative attitudes, Masson and her peers had not been subject to physical attacks, she recalled.

She said the first time she knew of those attacks was when she read the Dotbusters manifesto in the Jersey Journal.

The letter, in part, stated: "We are an organization called the Dotbusters. We have been around for 2 [sic] years. We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I'm walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her."

Additionally, the letter reflected a long-simmering resentment against Indians for moving into white neighborhoods, which also was reported in an October 1987 article for The Record. One source told a reporter he knew kids who went "Hindu hunting at night."

That's when Masson mobilized other prominent Indians to get the attention of the police, political officials and other organizations who were in a position to stop the attacks.

More than 500 people marched through the Journal Square area that October, many carrying banners and shouting, ''We want justice" and "No more racism." Later, they rallied in front of the Hudson County Administration Building on a cold December day to demand that four teens charged in Mody's death be tried as adults.

Desai, who still has a medical practice in Jersey City, joined Masson's efforts.