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In the U.S., the occasion was marked more as a milestone for Black women. Even her younger sister, Maya Harris, focused on it. “That day when a little girl from Oaktown became the first black woman to be a major-party vice-presidential nominee…”
That tweet garnered almost 140,000 likes. But the responses to it underscored the sensitivities which Harris has had to juggle; how some Indian Americans yearn to be more than just Black. Suneet Mahandru, a New York journalist whose parents immigrated to the United States from India, was the first to respond to Maya Harris’ post.
“I cannot wait to see how she engages the Indian-American community. Especially Sikhs,” Mahandru tweeted back. “I mean I’d thought you’d include she’s Indian. The first Indian-American in the Senate. Somebody who my sister and I could connect with.”
Asked last week why she felt the need to respond, Mahandru, 36, responded: “We’re always neglected and I just think she can do a lot more. Has she reached out? No.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the first Indian American woman to serve in the House, has heard the complaints that Harris identifies more as a Black woman. But she said in some way it’s understandable because the vice president got involved in politics at a time when Blacks had much more of a political structure than Indian Americans.
“For as old as our community is in the history of the United States, it is also relatively new in democratic participation,” said Jayapal, who has bonded with Harris over their shared history — Jayapal’s great aunt mentored Harris’ aunt, a fellow OB-GYN in India.
After Biden picked a running mate, his campaign tried to appeal to Indian Americans and more broadly Asian Americans. They held “chai and chat” events, formed a South Asians for Biden group, and promoted the song remix from the popular Bollywood movie “Lagaan” about an Indian village fighting British rule. But it was Harris’ small personal touches that drew the most attention, such as when she used the Tamil word “chittis” to describe her mother’s younger sisters at her convention speech.
The efforts came as Trump worked aggressively to make inroads with Indian Americans in ways Republican presidential candidates never had before — recruiting volunteers at Indian grocery stores, conducting campaign events in five different Indian languages, and trying to appeal to Indian American voters through targeted digital ads. Trump himself appeared alongside Modi at two massive rallies: in 2019 in Houston at the largest event ever in the U.S. for a foreign leader and in 2020 in Ahmedabad, India at the world’s largest cricket stadium.
He tried to appeal to an older generation of Indian Americans who legally emigrated to the United States for work or school, still followed Indian politics, and supported the populist Modi. Biden and Harris were critical of Trump’s policies that impacted Indian Americans, including restricting visas and limiting trade, and unveiled their own agenda for Indian Americans, which included measures aimed at curbing bigotry and addressing security needs at houses of worship.
It didn’t always go smoothly. Harris received some criticism in India media and WhatsApp chats for meddling in Indian affairs after she voiced concern about India revoking the special status of Kashmir, a northern territory long the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan. It showed the perils that come with more engagement and that simply being Indian-American doesn’t automatically give one a pass when talking about thorny geopolitical issues.
Still, Harris is credited with helping persuade Indian Americans and, more broadly Asian Americans, to overwhelmingly vote for Biden over Trump, with younger voters more supportive. AAPI voters saw the largest increase of voting among groups by race in 2020, and 67 percent backed Biden, according to data firm Catalist.
“It increased the enthusian factor,” said M.R. Rangaswami, a software executive from San Francisco who founded the group Indiaspora to get Indian Americans involved in politics. “Her being on the ticket actually made people go vote.”
“She does see us because she is us”
Even as she was considered a net positive for the Democratc presidential ticket, Harris has said little about Indian American issues in the weeks and then months since the inauguration.
She joined her former colleagues at a Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus event before her swearing in and spoke at a virtual inaugural ball geared toward Asian Americans to celebrate. But the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus had to wait until May, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, for Harris to meet with them without Biden, almost three months after she met with the Congressional Black Caucus.
The administration has hired more than 50 Indian Americans to leadership positions — from the president’s chief speechwriter to the vice president’s press secretary — but Harris was quiet when Asian Americans were frustrated that Biden failed to name an Asian American to the 15-member statutory Cabinet. Asian Americans have served in presidential Cabinets, including Donald Trump’s, since 2000. (Biden nominated two Asian Americans to Cabinet-level positions: Katherine Tai to be U.S. trade representative and Neera Tanden to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. But Tanden, the daughter of Indian immigrants, withdrew amid opposition from senators of both parties.)
“She lacks Indianness,” Sampat Shivangi, an Indian American doctor from Mississippi who has raised money for Republican presidential candidates, said of Harris. “I don’t know how much we can claim her because she claims to be African American rather than Indian American. I think she is keeping distance from Indian Americans. She should start identifying who she is.”
While Harris has remained relatively quiet about U.S.-India policies, her niece, Meena Harris, shows no such restraint. The latter waded into India’s politics by supporting farmers who have pushed back against Modi’s agricultural reforms and suggested that the prime minister was one of the world’s “facist dictators.” In India, pro-government protesters burned photographs of Meena Harris, among others, on the streets of New Delhi.
Many Asian Americans say it’s too soon to judge Harris’ commitment to the Asian American community because it will likely take months to know what her portfolio of policy issues will be, especially since the early focus has been on the pandemic and economic recovery.
“Her presence will transform the way our community looks at itself,” said Neil Makhija, executive director of IMPACT, an Indian-American advocacy group. “There is a robust, well-recognized established political history in the U.S. that no one understands and they are still learning what it means to be South Asian and what is our history. She will be able to bridge many communities.”
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