But I always thought the way the predominant Indian leadership, Sundar included, completely ignored the matter was weird. That spoke louder than anything else they could have said.
It's not that complicated. White people have been fighting this type of discrimination far more than any other ethnic group in the US. (I am Iranian, and this is completely evident to me).
Nearly every other ethnic group has its own weird culture of discrimination. As these ethnic groups take hold in the US, those forms of discrimination are not, and should not be tolerated.
One thing to consider is, many of the Indians that _are able to make it to the US_, are the ones who have benefited from the high class of their caste. Even if they're against it in theory, in practice that's going to take a much more nuanced PoV - so you're going to be seeing a lot of selection bias.
And what was the nuance of the Indian approach you saw? E.g. you can say "racism is bad and racial discrimination in employment and housing and services should be illegal" and you don't really need a whole lot of nuance. Is there something about Indian caste discrimination that requires nuance here, in the setting of the US?
White people were against caste discrimination.
From Indians I heard several responses, from against castes to indifferent. But I never heard someone defending it.
Eg: Some said it wasn't an issue, some said it was a big issue that hardly affect Indians in America. Some said India is too big and diverse and that castes only matter in the more undeveloped regions of India.