How did "Indian = scammer" become an acceptable stereotype?

One thing that's always confused me is how comfortable people have become calling every Indian a scammer. Yes, scam call centers exist in India, and they're a real problem. Nobody is denying that. But since when did the actions of criminals become enough to define an entire country of over 1.4 billion people?

If we used that same logic for everyone else, it would sound ridiculous. We don't assume every American is a school shooter because mass shootings happen there. We don't assume every Italian is in the mafia or every Mexican is part of a cartel. Most people understand that criminals don't represent millions of ordinary people. So why does that logic suddenly disappear when it's about Indians?

I honestly think social media has made this worse. Scam videos go viral because they're shocking and entertaining. An Indian doctor treating patients, an engineer building new technology, or a student graduating isn't going to get millions of views. People end up seeing the same type of content over and over until they start believing that's what Indians are actually like.

What bothers me the most isn't even the stereotype itself, it's how normal it's become. People who would never stereotype other ethnic groups will casually comment "scammer" the moment they see an Indian person online, and if you call it out they'll just say, "It's just a joke." But if you keep repeating the same joke about an entire group of people, eventually it stops being just a joke. It becomes the first thing people think of when they see someone from that group.

There's nothing wrong with criticizing scammers or wanting governments to crack down on them. They absolutely should. But judging an entire ethnicity because of the actions of a tiny minority isn't criticism.it's prejudice. At the end of the day, people deserve to be judged by their own actions, not by what someone they've never met happened to do on the other side of the world.