The Indian-Americans now have two choices

It is something that many of us have been thinking. But, as is often the case, it was Shashi Tharoor who put it best.

As you probably remember, Tharoor recently led a delegation of Indian parliamentarians to the US to try and canvas support for our country at a time of turbulence in our relationship with America.

 

While he was there, he recalled, “one of the points we raised was why the Indian-American diaspora has been so silent about all of this”. The delegation spoke to US legislators and one of the congresswomen they met said that “not one phone call has come to her office from any Indian-American voter asking for her to support a change of policy.” This was echoed by other members of Congress.

 

   Obviously Tharoor was surprised because he added “if you care about the relationship with your motherland, then you also have to fight for it, speak for it and make more of an effort to press your political representatives to stand up for India.”

 

   Tharoor is not the only one to be surprised. Many of us have been taken aback by the silence of the diaspora. A few American politicians of Indian origin have spoken up (Ro Khanna and Nicky Haley, for instance) but, at a time when India needs as many advocates as it can get in the US, rare is the Indian-origin politician who has made the issue their own. Not Kamala Harris. Not Vivek Ramaswamy. And not many others.

 

   Nearly all of those PIOs who told us how wonderful Donald Trump was and how good he would be for India are strangely subdued these days as Trump follows policies that are clearly detrimental to India’s interests or jeers that India has a dead economy.

 

   Obviously Trump’s Indian-origin chamchas and cheerleaders got him and his attitudes very wrong. And they are now running shy of calling him out or of using their much-vaunted leverage to make him change his mind. Many of these people once told us how important and influential the Indian diaspora was in the US and how Democrats were bad for India-US relations while the Republicans and Donald Trump and his supporters, in particular, were well-disposed towards India.

 

   Clearly they overestimated their own importance and influence in American politics because it’s now open season on India and Indians as far as the American rightwing is concerned. (And no, the haters don’t bother with terms like ‘Americans of Indian origin. We are all just Indians to them.)

 

   I understand that the issue is complicated. When you leave your country and make your life in another country you must try and identify with your new country’s interests. You must leave your old country’s politics behind.

 

"I am not one of those people who believes that people who left India have no right to comment on our internal affairs."

   It’s even more difficult if you are not white. During the Second World War, Italian -Americans and German-Americans had to work extra hard to demonstrate that they were fully committed to America and not to the countries their ancestors had come from. But they had it easier than Japanese-Americans, 12000 of whom (mostly American citizens) were imprisoned during the War for no crime other than their ethnicity.

 

   So, I can understand why Indian-Americans might hesitate to seem too pro-Indian in the current climate. But you don’t always have to choose between countries.

 

   Millions of American Jews are proud supporters of Israel and advance its interests without worrying about being seen as anti American or having to turn strangely silent as so many once vocal Indian-Americans have in recent months. (It may help that American Jews are, in fact, what Indian-Americans sometimes pretend to be: the most politically powerful ethnic/religious minority in the US.)

 

   One reason why we are so surprised by the unwillingness of the diaspora to speak up for India is because, in recent years, so many Indian Americans have chosen to openly identify with Indian politics or to take sides in our discourse. When people in India point out that they are now Americans and therefore, in no position to lecture those of us who have chosen to stay on in India and advance our country’s prospects and interests, they respond that even if they have American passports they still care about their motherland (admittedly from several thousand miles away).

 

   I am not one of those people who believes that people who left India have no right to comment on our internal affairs. I believe that ideas of citizenship and belonging go beyond passports. I welcome and respect comments from Americans of Indian origin who tell us, even if it is from New Jersey, how India should be run. They are perfectly entitled to be heard.

 

   My concern is different. When people of Indian origin who have nothing in common with each other except their foreign passports try and trade on their Indian ethnicity to form a voting block to influence US politics and then organise ‘Howdy’ rallies (such as one in Houston in 2019) where the likes of Trump are venerated, don’t they think they should do something to also advance India’s interests especially when the Prime Minister of our country is a star speaker?

 

   Were they Indians then when the going was good? And are they Americans now when things are not so smooth?

 

   I think Indian-Americans have two choices. They can do what the Jews have done and support India’s interests (as Jews have traditionally done with Israel) while still being completely loyal to America. Or they can point to their passports and say that as Americans they can’t be expected to advance India’s economic and political interests.

 

   Both positions are fine and reasonable. But you can’t identify with our politics in good times and then walk away in bad times.

 

   If you do that then, every time you comment on Indian politics or tell us which Indian politician you support, people in India will not take you seriously. The importance of the Indian diaspora lies, not so much in that it is a diaspora. But that it’s supposed to be Indian.