I'm unclear which specific indicators suggest India will soon match Chinese capabilities; productivity, creative industries, advanced manufacturing, and patent generation don't seem to support that trajectory.
As for the racism charge, there's a distinction between racial prejudice and uncomfortable truths. If criticism is factually grounded, calling it racism may be a category error.
China's incredible success outshines India, and makes it look way behind, when outside China and East Asian developing countries, India has done pretty well for itself. And given demographic changes, India can probably sustain a medium growth level (6-8%) for longer duration of time.
Only time will tell, but if we are talking about events on the scale of a 15-20 years, India will matter if they do even modestly good. It's already the 4th/5th largest economy.
So you understand automation?
Automation has existed since the industrial revolution, it makes labor more productive, however labor is still able to find its way out if it has any competitive advantage over machines.
Also, a completely automated world, where labor is no longer relevant at all, is a nightmare for China, because then natural resource endowment will matter more, an area where China is significantly behind the West which has 4 times the land mass of China, and in general world domination.
Brother, a large population doesn't necessarily equate to a labor advantage. We all know that low-skilled jobs are gradually disappearing.
For example, a textile factory in the last century might have needed tens of thousands of employees, while a modern, upgraded factory might only need a few hundred. These few hundred workers may require higher skills, but the factory's products are of more consistent quality and more cost-competitive.
With technological advancements, if technological levels aren't improved, a large population can even become a burden.
Those clichés that claim a massive population guarantees economic benefits should have stopped long ago.
I personally have no good feelings towards India, but I will try my best to explain the issues surrounding India to you in a rational way.
I both agree and disagree with you.
Automation/Technology makes people more productive, however established historical patterns until now mean that people just migrate to newer avenues of jobs, higher scale etc. So automation/technology is instrumental in production/capita. But the overall production/GDP is still multiplied by capita.
Until now, there has never been a fundamental decoupling of either production or consumption aggregates from total humans.