I suspect the other student was more susceptible to this sort of thing since he was a non native speaker. I'd be curious to see if it would've worked on an American.

Speaking as an Indian who's had the opportunity to try this sort of thing on various Americans (and a lone Australian), it would've worked. The success of the attack probably has more to do with the susceptibility of each individual victim than their specific native language, though (and this is a sweeping generalization) many Indians do tend to have greater deference to authority (real or imagined) than their American counterparts.