It was fake news all along, yet you believed it. Not only did you believe it, you shared it further, because it reaffirmed your belief that the other community is evil. You believed it so as to rationalize your support for the violence being committed against them, in your name.

You chose to believe it even though a part of you suspected that it might be exaggerated, because it let you come to peace with all the lynchings and the riots and the detention camps that occasionally prick your conscience - you convinced yourself that they deserve all this!

You believed it so that you could sleep peacefully thinking that you are right in hating them. You shared it so others may know why you hate them despite having studied at good colleges, lived in pluralist democracies, benefited from inclusive policies, worked in Gulf countries.

You chose to believe it because you weren't at the receiving end of hate this time, unlike that time when you were made to feel like an outsider by a White supremacist in a Western nation. Or, that other time when you felt that the Chinese are too rude to Indians, too racist!

You shared it because you wanted to convince your friends from abroad that your hate is justified since you're dealing with barbarians unlike the "model minority" that you were: never spitting on roads, chattering noisily, or going for pre-natal sex determination abroad!

You reaffirmed your bias, even though you weren't convinced of its truth value yourself. But I get it. Deep within our hearts, we believe what we want to believe despite what the facts say. I believe, quite irrationally, for example, that love will triumph and hate will lose out!