Politics in pardes: The rise of Indian American voices

Early immigration and assimilation

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Indian-American community was small and faced significant hostility. Over time, however, their presence grew. Concerns about a “Hindu invasion” led the Congress House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization to hold ‘Hindu Immigration Hearings’ in 1914. During these hearings, Indian immigrant Sudhindra Bose, representing the Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society,  an organisation operated by and for the Sikh population in the western parts of the United States and the Hindustan Association of America, asserted that Hindus came to the US for the same reasons as other immigrants: “America is another name for opportunity.”

Many sought better prospects, including Bhagat Singh Thind, who immigrated in 1913, attended the University of California, Berkeley, and enlisted in the US Army during World War I. His 1919 petition for citizenship faced legal challenges, culminating in a 1923 Supreme Court ruling that declared immigrants from India ineligible for naturalisation as US citizens. Yet Dr Sangay Mishra, an associate professor of Political Science at Drew University and author of Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans suggests that this case was one of the first significant instances of Indian presence in the legal and political arena.

In 1920, Saund arrived in the United States, earning both a master’s and a PhD in Mathematics from UC Berkeley. Despite his academic success, federal laws limiting citizenship to white immigrants thwarted his dreams of teaching. Undeterred, he turned to farming in Southern California while actively advocating for justice. In 1949, he gained US citizenship and, in 1956, became the first Asian-born member of Congress, reflecting changing attitudes among American voters.

Saund won in California’s Republican-leaning 29th Congressional District despite his identity as an Indian, and a Democrat. Although no Indian American served in Congress for nearly five decades after Saund — until Bobby Jindal — his achievements inspired generations and laid the groundwork for future Indian American success.

Dalip Singh Saund (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

A new era of political involvement

After the 1965 immigration reform that lifted restrictions on Asian immigrants, the Indian population in America began to grow. The second generation, born in the US, had skillfully embraced American culture while honouring Indian heritage. A prominent figure from this period is Bobby Jindal. Born Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal in 1971 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Punjabi Hindu immigrant parents, he graduated from Brown University at just 20, earning a honours degree in biology and public policy. He later became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.

After working as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, Jindal entered public service as the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals in 1996. By 1999, he had been appointed president of the University of Louisiana System, the 16th largest higher education system in the US. In 2004, Jindal was elected to Congress, representing Louisiana’s first district, and he was re-elected in 2006. He became governor of Louisiana in January 2008 and began his second term in 2011.

Bobby Jindal ( Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In The Other One Percent: Indians in America (2017), Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh write that while individuals of Indian descent constitute about one per cent of the American population, they are often regarded as a “model minority,” celebrated for their significant achievements in fields such as law, medicine, technology, and business. They argue that within the broader immigrant landscape, Indians are viewed positively; they are neither impoverished nor associated with crime, which distinguishes them from other immigrant groups that face more negative stereotypes.

The book identifies three key advantages that contribute to the success of Indian American immigrants: higher human capital, strong English-language skills, and a predominance from India’s upper castes. This socioeconomic status has facilitated their engagement in political and civic life.

In an interview with indianexpress.com, Dr Sangay Mishra noted, “Wealth represents a whole gamut of factors. Indian Americans often hold multiple degrees and have some of the highest median incomes among ethnic groups. Literature suggests that educated and wealthy individuals are more likely to participate in political processes.”

Additionally, scholars point to other factors influencing Indian American political engagement, such as their democratic roots and connections to Indian politics. Mishra emphasises that South Asians involved in homeland politics are more likely to make political contributions, contact officials, protest, and address community issues in the US. This holds true for many prominent Indian American figures in US politics today.

Candidates, voters and fundraisers

When discussing Indian Americans in US politics, one name that stands out is Nikki Haley. Born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa in 1972 in Bamberg, South Carolina, to Sikh immigrant parents from Amritsar, Haley was deeply influenced by her family’s heritage. Her father, Ajit Singh Randhawa, was a professor, while her mother, Raj Kaur Randhawa, earned a law degree from the University of Delhi. Haley’s views on governance and authority were shaped by her grandfather’s service in the British colonial army and her family’s experiences during the Partition of India, including the accompanying violence and upheaval.

Haley served as the 116th governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 and went on to become the 29th US ambassador to the United Nations from 2017 to 2018. As a Republican, she made history as the first Indian American to join a presidential cabinet. In the 2024 Republican primaries, she achieved another milestone by winning the Washington, DC primary, making her the first woman to secure a victory in a Republican presidential primary.

The Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Devi Harris, born in 1964 in Oakland, California, was similarly shaped by her family’s legacy. Her grandfather, Painganadu Venkataraman Gopalan, an Indian civil servant, provided her with early insights into democracy and governance during her visits to Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

In the late 1950s, it was uncommon for a young Tamil woman like her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, to move to the US alone to study medicine. At that time, Gopalan was one of only 12,000 Indian immigrants in the country and became actively involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Kamala Harris with family. Left to right, Cole Emhoff, husband Doug Emhoff and Ella Emhoff (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Harris has served as the 49th vice president of the United States since 2021 under President Joe Biden. As the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in the 2024 election, she made history as the first woman, first African American, and first Asian American to hold the vice presidency, drawing strength from her father’s Afro-Jamaican and mother’s Tamil Indian heritage.

Rohit ‘Ro’ Khanna was born in 1976 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to an Indian Punjabi Hindu family that immigrated from Punjab in the 1970s. His grandfather, Amarnath Vidyalankar, played a significant role in India’s Independence movement, participating in Gandhi’s Quit India Movement and serving as secretary to Lala Lajpat Rai.

Khanna earned his economics degree from the University of Chicago in 1998 and his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2001. He has served as the US representative for California’s 17th congressional district since 2017. As a Democrat, he made headlines by defeating eight-term incumbent Mike Honda in the 2016 general election after previously running for the same seat in 2014.

The stories of Democrats Rohit Khanna, Subramanian Raja Krishnamoorthi and Amerish Babulal ‘Ami Bera’ echo those of Usha Vance, wife of JD Vance and Donald Trump’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who briefly ran for the Republican nomination. All these figures share threads of privilege, ambition, and a connection to their Indian heritage. As academic and author Sanjoy Chakravorty pointed out in his interview, “It is the second generation, not the first, that is running for office, making this phenomenon relatively new.”

This affluent second-generation Indian American community, as Sharik Laliwala, a PhD scholar in Political Science at UC Berkeley, notes, also plays a significant role as fundraisers in US politics. An example is Vinod Khosla, an Indian American businessman who moved to the US in 1976 to pursue a master’s in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He then worked to secure a place in the Stanford MBA Programme.

Upon completing his MBA in 1980, Khosla turned to entrepreneurship. His firm, Khosla Ventures, now manages $15 billion in assets and has invested in over 400 companies. Khosla has contributed to both Democrats and Republicans, based on their climate policies. A longtime Democratic donor, he hosted Barack Obama for a fundraising dinner in 2013 and Joe Biden in 2024. In July 2024, he pledged his support for Kamala Harris, joining ‘VCs for Kamala,’ a group of over 100 tech investors and entrepreneurs backing her candidacy.

According to data by AAPI, a leading research and policy organisation at UC Berkeley, over half of Indian American voters (55%) identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. Chakravorty identified two key reasons for this trend: the Republican Party’s anti-immigrant stance and its perception as a Christian-dominated party, both of which many Indians find unappealing. He emphasised that tax breaks alone cannot address these core identity issues.

“Most Indian immigrants in America are skilled professionals who have recently arrived and lack a family history of voting for a particular party,” said  an employee at an asset management firm in New York, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. This, he believes, encourages a careful consideration of policies, which is why around 80 per cent of Indian Americans lean blue. He noted that Democratic policies, especially on issues like abortion and pro-immigration, resonate well with the community. However, he emphasised that Indian Americans comprise only one per cent of the population, and the broader electorate often does not share their views, which means their votes may not carry significant weight. “Thus,” he concluded, “it’s not our votes but our money that matters in US elections.”

“Harris won’t win or lose based solely on Indian American voters,” Chakravorty said with a laugh.

The ‘Indian’ American

Reflecting on the Indian ‘Americans’ at the heart of this discussion, Chakravorty posed some provocative questions: “Are there any true hyphenated Americans? Do they genuinely identify as Indians? What, beyond his last name, makes Vivek Ramaswamy Indian? Can Kamala Harris even speak Tamil? Perhaps not. What truly defines someone as Indian? Is visual evidence alone convincing?”

Vivek Ramaswamy (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Last year, Ramaswamy sparked controversy by asserting he doesn’t identify as Indian American, saying at a campaign stop in Marshalltown, Iowa, “Being Hindu and Indian is part of my cultural identity, for sure…but I’m an American first.” As Governor in 2015, Bobby Jindal echoed this sentiment in a speech, recalling his father’s words: “We came to the US to become Americans, not Indian Americans.”

Uday Chandra, a politics and history professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, remarked, “Overall, I do not think we should read too much into the Harris candidacy as a broader sign of Indian American empowerment.” If there’s any doubt, Chakravorty proposed a simple test: “Ask them to point to Pune or Surat on a map of India, and you’ll see how Indian they are.”

Nonetheless, the one per cent representation of the Indian American community cannot be overlooked. While their activism may be more “subtle” and “indirect” compared to the “overt and visible” activism of African Americans, Chandra is confident that we will see more candidates, beyond Haley and Ramaswamy, emerging from the Republican side. He notes that political divides among Indian Americans are becoming more pronounced in US politics. “Both parties will have to cater to this constituency in politics, economy, and society. After all, Indian Americans are the wealthiest group in per capita terms,” he said.

Mishra added that due to the electoral college system, certain swing states become particularly crucial. “States like Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin are vital because they disproportionately determine election outcomes. In some of these states, Indian Americans have a presence, making them increasingly important given the close contests between the two parties.”

Laliwala emphasised that it’s not just about their numbers; “the socio-economic influence of Indian Americans and India’s rising prominence in US foreign policy — especially as a counter to China in the Indo-Pacific — are crucial factors,” he stated. “They are a force to be reckoned with.”

Chakravorty noted that the numbers are likely to grow. “The second generation of Indian Americans is rapidly increasing, and we can expect to see more individuals who are Indian or look-like Indians in the Senate,” he said.As political engagement among Indian Americans rises, one question lingers: how Indian are they?

Further reading:

1. The Other One Percent: Indians in America by Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh

2. Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans by Sangay Mishra

3. American Indian Politics and the American Political System by David E. Wilkins

4. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins by Milton M. Gordon

5. The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris