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Why the 2024 US presidential election is a Diwali gift to Indian Americans
Summary
Indian-ness is playing out in intriguing ways in the 2024 US election with both sides of the presidential ticket highlighting their India connection
The “Diwali stamp" was practically an annual ritual in the United States.
While working in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 2000s I remember every year someone or the other would forward an email with a petition to the United States Postmaster General, asking them to issue a Diwali stamp. Excited desis would sign it and forward it to everyone they knew. Every year they were told this would be the year. Every year they were disappointed.
Hanukkah, Christmas, Eid had all gotten stamps. Indians in America craved a Diwali stamp. It would literally be a stamp of approval. In 2013, Indian-American congressman Ami Bera pushed for it, saying, “A Diwali stamp has been long overdue." That year 1,300 letter petitions and tens of thousands of signatures were delivered to the US Postal Service, demanding a Diwali stamp.
The postal service eventually saw the light. In 2016, it issued a Forever stamp, showing a diya against a sparkling gold background, “forever" meaning the stamp could be used indefinitely. At the stamp dedication ceremony at the Indian consulate in New York, congresswoman Carolyn Maloney said over 100,000 stamps had been sold already.
But almost immediately new emails started doing the rounds warning desis and their friends that “if the stamp does not sell enough, this will be discontinued. Please do not let this happen, do your part TODAY!" The emails caused so much panic, the postal service had to announce that it had no plans to remove the stamps from sale.
In a way, the Diwali stamp saga encapsulates both desi pride and desi insecurity, as the Indian diaspora craves acceptance in the American cultural mainstream. When Barack Obama lit the first ever Diwali diya in the White House in 2009, Indian-Americans glowed with pride. It helped that Diwali, despite being a Hindu festival, didn’t feel overtly religious. The message of light prevailing over darkness was fairly non-denominational. But even as Obama lit the diya, new email petitions surfaced, encouraging desis to push for a federal holiday for Diwali. Winning spelling bees was one thing, winning recognition from the American power elite was quite another.
In that sense the 2024 US presidential election feels like a Diwali gift to Indian Americans. For the first time, both sides of the presidential ticket have an Indian connection. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’ mother was Indian. Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s wife Usha is of Indian origin. Indian-ness is playing out in intriguing ways in the election.
For example, Donald Trump told African American journalists that for a long time he had no idea Harris was half-Black because he claimed she only played up her Indian roots. It was an odd statement because many desis have long accused Harris of exactly the reverse, that politically she identified with the Black community and was only Indian-American at Indian-American fundraisers or Diwali functions. Trump saw that African Americans were a far more powerful voting bloc than Indian-Americans and thought if he could paint Harris as an opportunistic Black politician, it could help him in the long run.
In some ways it underscored that Diwali stamp notwithstanding, Indian-Americans still didn’t matter enough in the US political math. Joyojeet Pal at the University of Michigan recently analysed the history of Indian-American lobbying for Newslaundry. While Indian American voter turnout was high (74% in 2020) and Indian American mega donors were welcome, the population was regarded as not having the numbers to be decisive, he concluded.
Yet they have mattered. Pal says an Indian physicians group, many of whom were based in Florida, helped build the Indian American Republican Council, which proved crucial when Florida became the deciding state in George W. Bush’s narrow 2000 election victory. Indian American hoteliers invited Narendra Modi to their 2005 annual event, resulting in the visa ban on Modi. Indians built the US-India Political Action Committee modelled on the pro-Israel AIPAC, another community which punches well above its demographic weight in America. While Bobby Jindal made news as the first Indian-American to be elected to Congress after Dalip Singh Saund back in 1956, Pal says Bera’s election to Congress from California was what “triggered a steady growth of Indian American candidates". Now the Indian American Impact Fund funds Indian-American candidates.
Still, it has been hard to shake off that foreign feeling. Even Trump, self-professed best friend of India, would refer to his rival Nikki Haley as Nimrada (sic) Haley, reminding voters of her ethnic origins. Haley’s own campaign website skipped any mention of her birth name Nimrata Randhawa.
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In 2010, I followed several Indian-Americans running for office, almost all in places without a significant South Asian population. In Kansas, candidate Raj Goyle told me that when people asked him how many Indian Americans there were in his district, he said 10. “They said 10 percent is not bad. I said no, 10 people." It makes sense, Shekar Narasimhan, then co-chair of the Democratic National Committee’s Indo-American Council, told me. “We aren’t seen as black or white. It means we are not immediately typecast."
After obligatory salutes to their hard-working immigrant parents pursuing the American dream, the candidates ran on all-American résumés—high-school football player, Iraq war veteran, trombone player in the school band, and now Harris’ claim of working at a McDonald’s. Bera exemplified the cultural tightrope walk when he said he had “the best of both worlds", the family values and work ethic of immigrants and the “strong public school system" of his state. He lost that election but won subsequently, showing change happens even if it takes time.
But old prejudices die hard. Narasimhan realised that in 2006, when Republican senator George Allen mocked a young Indian-American at his rally as a “macaca". That young man was Narasimhan’s son. “It was a huge wake-up call," said Narasimhan. “It established that no matter what we do or how we feel, we are different."
Even in this election, far-right commentator and Trump supporter Laura Boomer caused a furore by joking that if Harris won, the White House would smell of curry. But that’s not to suggest America isn’t changing. Vance bragged he could make a “mean chicken curry". It’s not for nothing that Anjula Acharia, host of the All That Glitters Diwali Ball, tells the New York Times that her once-upon-a-time intimate house party in New York now has sponsors fighting over it. This year Nora Fatehi danced to Dilbar and O Saki Saki.
Also Kamala Harris is not running as a Kathy. She is happy to be filmed making a dosa. Her Indian-American supporters are out in full force—for example, a South Asian Writers Speak Out for Kamala fundraiser headlined by Kavita Das and Kiran Desai. Oscar-nominated Indian-American graphic artist Sanjay Patel created artwork to support her campaign, where he openly pays tribute to Kamala’s namesake, the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, shown holding the US Constitution.
Whether Harris wins or not, the cultural change is irreversible. Patel’s Kamala Harris enamel pins might have a limited shelf life but his Ghee Happy Diwali Coloring Book will hopefully outlast this election cycle.
Like the Diwali Forever stamp.
Sandip Roy is a writer, journalist and radio host. He posts @sandipr.
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