Dharun Ravi Case Raises Issue of Homophobia in Indian Community I suppose it was inevitable. These days South Asian faces are prevalent in every arena of all-American life - doctors, lawyers, actors, designers, politicians, rappers, activists, socialites, Little Leaguers, Girl Scouts. But now, thanks to former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi, it appears we have assumed a new mantle: the bully. Mr. Ravi, 20, was found guilty on Friday of 15 charges, including bias intimidation based on sexual orientation and invasion of privacy, connected to the 2010 death of his former roommate, Tyler Clementi. The counts against him stemmed from incidents in which Mr. Ravi set up a webcam to spy on Mr. Clementi during intimate encounters with another man, and encouraged his friends via text message, Twitter, and instant message to tune in and hold a "viewing party." Mr. Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge days later. The New Yorker ran an excellent, painstakingly reported piece on Mr. Ravi last month recreating text, instant-message and other conversations in the weeks leading up to the incident, and the article leaves readers with an impression of Mr. Ravi as an immature, insecure punk, rather than a raging homophobe. Having turned down a plea bargain that would have given him probation and 600 hours of community service and saved him from deportation, a convicted Mr. Ravi now faces up to 10 years of prison and the possibility being sent to India, where he was born. From my observations of the media circus surrounding the case and trial, Mr. Ravi's ethnicity has not been a factor in the coverage. But community members are speculating: if Mr. Ravi was, in fact, homophobic, was this a result of an Indian cultural bias against gays? After all, in one of the instant-message conversations gleaned by the New Yorker, days before moving in to his dorm and after discovering his future roommate was gay, Mr. Ravi told a friend, "I still don't really care, except what my parents are going to say. My dad is going to throw him out the window. Was this a hate crime potentially influenced by cultural anti-gay bias? Or was Mr. Ravi really, as his defense tried unsuccessfully to argue, just a "jerky kid"? Sarah Khan is an editor at Travel + Leisure in New York. You can read more of her work at www.bysarahkhan.com or follow her on Twitter @BySarahKhan.