Jack,
There is merit in criticizing lack of diversity, yet your stance isn't helping anyone. I will begin with the obscure observation of inaccurate male representation. Catfight, titfight and sexfight stories, unless the latter is mixed, are camera obscura type of stories. Since that trend never caught on in British India until actual cinemas arrived, it's a process where people paid a nickel to look into a device where figures were dancing or horses were galloping almost as if they were truly moving. The male readers want to imagine themselves being the guy who watches and a well described, actively participating male character is a hindrance.
When it comes to writers, especially to content written in free time, it is up to the writer how comfortably knowledgeable they feel about characters, how well they know them. That brings me to what I call a cultural hemisphere. On the Indian subcontinent, East, Central and West Asians are just as uncommon as black people, as are white people. A lot of it has to do with the fact that once colonization ended, those people left, plus only those may tolerate the largely subtropical subcontinental climate who were born into it, and also speak the language and know the culture. You have mentioned religious harmony, which let's be frank I don't buy since many of us are very aware of the bloody relations between Hindus and Muslims. Your mother personally may be tolerant, but even though the Christians and Muslims are also brown skinned, on a large scale such tolerance does not exist. Not a good look to use anecdotal evidence in trying to discredit things that keeps scholars busy since centuries.
That brings me to my last point, the alleged lack of mistreatment of women on subcontinent. Major yikes. Getting men convicted for multiple accounts of rape is such a big issue, that in one case 200 women murdered a man a few years ago because the court found him not guilty over his history of rape spanning 3 decades. Victim blaming is quite common. A sensible person would say it is a problem everywhere else, except volume matters. We don't struggle with such problems because victim blaming happens more often by individuals, no longer by law enforcement.
A writer can get out of their comfort zone, heck, I do it myself. When I'm not familiar with a culture or language I interview locals, even for a free story to give accurate representation. That said, it needs certain anchors of realism. South Asians in North America live mostly in cities, not suburbs, where most writers live. Just like how an Indian writer barely if ever ventures into the slums populated by the lower castes and undocumented migrants (I recall it being just or 3 years ago when the government tried to denaturalize Indians of Muslim denomination) and writes what they perceive to be accurate.
Our planet is massive. It is not impossible to depict South Asian characters, but it's easier to write about those who are present in our cultural sphere, like Lily Singh, Priyanka Chopra or Aishwara Rai. I am an admitted niche writer who knows there is a small audience for stories which generate interest beyond fighting. This is because once capitalism discovered that trying to ban the forbidden fruit, that is the active ban of sexual content in the 1950s, only generates a thriving black market. Once black marketing (or underground marketing if it's more pleasant) discovered it can be packaged like every other thing men like, the need to provide anything beyond titillation died out. In Italy, the Golden Age of porn in the 70s was followed by giallo movies until the 1980s, which blended mainstream mystery, horror, or crime fiction with sex scenes. Even actors like Donald Sutherland played in them.
Where that did not happen, one can expect to have a high number of male readers interested in something they can deposit in the spank bank. Through their suburban and college life, the majority of women they meet are white. Sexual preference, especially before the internet was shaped by the community they live in. My personal preference is a redhead with emerald green eyes. I do find beauty attractive, so I'm not discriminatory, but in my case it needs to be understood I spent decades behind a physical and later mental Iron Curtain where people to this day resist change in culture, so it's more a curiosity first, then actual knowledge, being greatly helped by the fact that I live in the West now.
Bookmarks