Charge of the Indian-American brigade

FOR a country with a relatively short history by the standards of humankind, the United States, which does not live even by the brevity of its history, is seeing a difference in its ongoing presidential election cycle. The just-concluded Democratic National Convention (DNC), which broke glass ceilings, was replete with history.

The first Indian to attend a DNC was a Sikh American, Dalip Singh Saund, in 1952. Indians were not allowed to embrace US nationality until legislation permitting it was passed in 1946.

It was appropriate that Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State, First Lady, Senator and 2016 presidential candidate, was the prime-time DNC speaker who reminded the American people, more than anyone else by implication, of the George Santayana adage — “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” She did not quote the Spanish philosopher at the Chicago convention, though. The biggest setback in her career, a defeat at the hands of newbie politician Donald Trump eight years ago, was partly the result of not remembering history. Specifically, the history of US elections.

Last week, Hillary recalled that women in the US got the right to vote only 104 years ago — on the day before she spoke — in 1920. The first time a Black woman bid for a presidential nomination — unsuccessfully, of course — was not very long ago: in 1972. Twelve years later, Hillary took her young daughter Chelsea to meet Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman nominated for Vice-President of the US. And in 2016, Hillary made almost 66 million cracks in the glass ceiling with her candidacy of a major party for the White House. That was the number of popular votes Hillary received then. Kamala Harris, the incumbent Vice-President, hopes to shatter that cracked glass ceiling in November and become the first woman President of the US. If Harris wins, she will also break a glass ceiling for South Asian-Americans.

Historically, it has been at Republican National Conventions (RNC) that America’s past has been celebrated. In part, this has been because some of the great US presidents have been Republicans — Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D Eisenhower, to mention a few. Lincoln was the first ‘red-blooded’ Republican to be elected President, to cite the party’s preferred colour. Others who embodied Republican ideals were elected as Democratic-Republicans or as Whigs, according to political descriptions during varying periods in the political evolution of the US.

The US did not have a Catherine the Great, a Bismarck or a Chanakya. So, it fell on Republicans in the final decade of the last century and in the new millennium to create an icon of Ronald Reagan. At every RNC I attended through five presidential election seasons from the year 2000, Reagan was the great Republican hero. That changed with the arrival of Donald Trump on the political scene.

The RNC in Milwaukee this year was bizarre. First-time voters who attended it could not be blamed if they thought US history began only in 2015 when Trump began his improbable and then unpredictable quest for the White House.

Indians are, unfortunately, familiar with such a catastrophe in their midst. To turn around a memorable description of democracy by Republican Lincoln, the Milwaukee gathering, which renominated Trump as their party’s nominee for the November election, was a convention of one family, by one family and for one family: the Trumps.

Only one person and one family by extension matters in the Grand Old Party (GOP) now. The Republican Party has become a cult. By contrast, a hundred flowers bloomed at the DNC in Chicago. Brilliant orators like former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who represent diversity, bloomed. So did former First Lady Michelle Obama, who enjoys a phenomenal public acceptance despite never holding an elected office.

The first Indian to attend a DNC was a Sikh American, Dalip Singh Saund, in 1952. Indians like Saund were not allowed to embrace US nationality until legislation permitting it was passed in 1946. Saund was the first Indian-American to be elected to the US House of Representatives in 1956. Had he not been felled by a stroke in 1962, Saund may have risen much higher in American politics. The US did not see another Indian-American in either of the chambers of Congress for another 42 years. Today, there are five of them, all Democrats.

The GOP has elected only one Indian-American to the House to date: Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal. A few decades ago, Indian-American Republicans, along with sympathetic White and Hispanic GOP leaders, drew up a road map for getting those like Jindal into statewide public offices in southern states, known as Dixieland in popular culture. It had some success when Jindal was elected as the first Indian-American Governor in any US state in 2007. Nikki ‘Nimrata’ Haley was next, in South Carolina, four years later. The plan to put more Indian-Americans in elected offices in Dixie states appears to have fizzled out. Jindal and Haley both made unsuccessful bids to be GOP nominees for the White House in subsequent election cycles.

With ethnic half-Indian origin Harris now a heartbeat away from the White House, Indian-Americans and their former compatriots back home must pay a tribute to her rise to a forgotten former Democratic Party chief, Howard Dean. A three-term Governor of Vermont and a presidential aspirant two decades ago, Dean was the first national-level US politician to predict the rise one day of an ethnic Indian as America’s President. Few people remember that in 2008, Dean, as Chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote an article in a publication of the Indian-American Leadership Initiative. This initiative was created to put US citizens of Indian origin in electable public offices, right down from local school boards, county councils and as city mayors to high up on Capitol Hill. “Indian-Americans are leading the charge to strengthen our (Democratic) Party, elect our candidates and ensure that we build a government that lives up to the ideals that inspired generations of Indian immigrants to make America their home,” Dean wrote. “Perhaps they include a future Democratic President of the US.”

Harris was a local party functionary seeking to grow in public life in her home state of California then. There is no evidence that Dean had Harris in mind when he wrote those lines. Today, they appear prophetic.