WHEN AN EXTREMELY unpopular (no 50% or better approval rating since August 2021) president and Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Joe Biden, was unceremoniously forced off the ticket by party elites and replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris, many had hoped she would automatically lock in the most Indian American votes. After all, Harris is half-Indian, and as such, she is the first Indian American to be nominated as U.S. president. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a Hindu from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, came to the U.S. as a student.
However, despite high-profile endorsements from some prominent Indian Americans (IA) — from author Salman Rushdie to tech entrepreneur Vinod Khosla and celebrity TV host Padma Lakshmi — Harris’s challenges in courting IA voters remain.
Harris has the dubious distinction of being the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee without winning a single primary vote in her two attempts to be the top U.S. executive and the Commander-in-Chief of the mighty U.S. military.
Increasing Democratic disenchantment
Over the years, Indian Americans have consistently and overwhelmingly voted blue (for the Democratic Party) in elections. But a recently formed grassroots group, Hindus for America First, intends to change that. The group, its founder and Chairman Utsav Sanduja, has endorsed the candidacy of former president Donald Trump and has been working hard to organize Hindu American votes for the GOP presidential candidate. The group, said Sanduja, is active in some battleground states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina. There are over 2.1 million eligible Indian American voters. According to the Pew Research survey, nearly two-thirds identify as Hindu.
Sanduja and his group represent some of the disenchanted minorities who are increasingly disengaging from the Democratic Party. Trump set in motion the process of disengagement among minority voters, including IA voters. This diversion has seen a steady upward trajectory over the past eight years of Trump’s presidency and beyond.
In the 2016 presidential elections, only 16 percent of Indian Americans voted for Donald Trump. However, according to the 2024 Asian American Voter Survey, 29 percent of IAs say they intend to vote for Trump. 47 percent of IAs identify as Democrats compared to 56 percent in 2022. Over 46 percent of IAs will vote for a Democrat in 2024, compared to 65 percent in 2020. In the same survey, 54 percent of IAs had a favorable opinion of Harris in 2024, down 8 points from 62 percent in 2020.
Some of the most significant concentrations of Indian Americans are in deep monopoly blue states — California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Washington and Massachusetts — where their votes don’t matter much, except in local elections. Also, in these areas, “leaning left is the social norm,” and “parroting left-wing talking points on race, gender, and sexuality is required to succeed in their field,” according to Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute.
However, those same “left-wing talking points” combined with Democrats’ progressive policies on education, crime, immigration, climate, etc., have pushed many hardworking minority groups, including Indian Americans, towards the GOP. After all, most hardworking, entrepreneurial immigrants come to the U.S. to escape the punishing red tape and bureaucracy, nepotism, lack of opportunity, etc., in their ancestral land.
Donald Trump set in motion a process of disengagement from the Democratic Party among Indian American voters — a diversion has seen a steady upward trajectory over the past eight years.
“Last year, I got involved in our local politics when Pittsburgh was on track to elect a Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) candidate as county executive,” said Teesta Dasgupta of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a battleground state. Dasgupta, an IIT Hyderabad, and University of Pittsburgh graduate, is originally from West Bengal, India. “Given that I saw the decline of Bengal under decades of communist/socialist (mis)rule, I considered it my duty to make sure my (adopted) country does not fall victim to (the communist/socialist) ideology.” Dasgupta is part of a growing group of disenchanted Indian Americans who have come out openly in support of the GOP and Trump. However, many Indian American Trump and GOP supporters choose to remain silent, Sanduja claims, fearful of professional, social, and political retribution.
Former Democratic member of Congress and a 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, a Hindu, endorsed President Trump. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another former presidential candidate and a member of the Kennedy dynasty, has also endorsed President Trump.
Jobs, economy, immigration, education, and crime
According to the 2024 Asian American Voter Survey, jobs and economy, health care, immigration, crime, and national security are among the top concerns of Indian American voters.
Despite claims of a growing economy, Americans have suffered much higher inflation under the Biden-Harris administration — up 19% over the first 42 months of Biden-Harris’s term compared to just under 8% of Trump’s first 42 months. Even on jobs, the U.S. Labor Department had to revise its figures, reporting 818,000 fewer jobs than reported earlier during the 12 months ending in March 2024.
Many Indian Americans are drawn toward Trump and the GOP because of their economic policies that promise job growth, tax incentives, and reduced bureaucratic hurdles. “Parties and candidates that are pro-business, support tax cuts, incentivize entrepreneurs, and want high-skilled immigration are increasingly getting thumbs up from the community,” Mukesh Aghi, president and CEO of the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum, was quoted in the press. “The GOP’s stance on issues such as tax policies, small business support, and economic growth has attracted voters who are concerned about their financial future in a challenging economic landscape,” said Aghi. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Hindu American presidential candidate who endorsed Trump, ran on a platform to dismantle the bureaucratic state.
Eighty-six percent of Indian Americans view education as an important issue (Asian American Voter Survey) for them in this election. Parents’ sentiments against prolonged school closings during COVID, critical race pedagogy, and pornographic material being pushed in schools by the Democrat-friendly teacher’s unions created a movement across the country, said Dasgupta. Asra Nomani, the India-born “mama bear” and a co-founder of Coalition for TJ, became the face of the parents-led mass mobilization that considerably impacted the gubernatorial race in Virginia, turning the state red. Dasgupta also reminded that “Indian American parents fought to reintroduce algebra in San Francisco schools because woke educators used faulty research to have it removed.”
On the matter of race-based college admission preferences, Democrats have been the strong supporters of affirmative action, while the Republicans are viewed as the party of meritocracy. It is important to note that affirmative action programs negatively affected Asian American students, including Indian Americans.
Rising crimes in America constitute a significant concern for IA votes. Inner City gun violence, shoplifting, smash-and-grab looting, etc., have become common in many U.S. cities due to the progressive policies of the Democrats. Robbers have looted several Indian jewelry stores across the nation — in California and New Jersey. Many Hindu places of worship have also been vandalized.
Some Indian Americans also see a rise in crime as a result of the Biden-Harris administration’s unchecked illegal immigration policy. As a consequence of the Democrats’ illegal immigration policy, “we have seen record crime, record drug trafficking … that affect minority communities, small business owners, including those belonging to the Indian American community,” said Sanduja.
According to Sanduja, Trump’s merit-based immigration is quite a contrast to the Democratic platform. Trump proposed “automatic” green cards to foreign students upon graduation from a U.S. college. This proposal, reminds Sanduja, will help many Indian students who want to hone their skills in the American workplace and contribute to entrepreneurship and innovation.
On the issue of crimes, Dasgupta was quick to add that while Harris’s VP pick, Governor Tim Walz, allowed his state to burn during the Black Lives Matter riots that engulfed the country after George Floyd’s death, Harris, on the other hand, promoted bail funds for BLM-Antifa rioters and criminals. Trump, said Dasgupta, “backed the police.” Many police organizations have endorsed Trump. Maintenance of law and order and effective policing is important for a culturally non-violent Indian community that supports strong gun control measures.
Censorship and free speech onslaught
Many Indian Americans were aghast by the Biden-Harris administration’s COVID policies, including blatant violation of First Amendment rights and unscientific mandates on masks and vaccines. According to Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian American professor of health policy at Stanford University, the Biden-Harris administration “using the suppression of misinformation as a fig leaf, coerced social media companies to censor ideas contrary to Biden administration initiatives” during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Anish Koka, another Indian American physician and cardiologist based in Philadelphia, said that “the response to COVID from the standpoint of individual rights was an absolute abomination.”
Bhattacharya added that he was “dismayed by the evident lack of support for basic free speech principles and the failures of public health’s COVID policies by Gov. Walz and VP Harris.” Bhattacharya said that the Biden-Harris administration’s censorship of true ideas included “the inefficacy of mask mandates, the harm to children from school closures, and the reality of COVID-19 vaccine injury, especially among young men.”
Anti-Hindu sentiments on the rise
Many Indian Americans view Democrats and their policies as blatantly anti-Hindu. They point to the introduction of anti-caste and anti-CAA bills introduced and passed in several Democrat/progressive-controlled local legislative bodies as proof of the anti-Hindu bias. Some of the Democrat members of the U.S. Congress have pointedly attacked India and Hindus. They use “Hindutva” and “Hindu nationalist” monikers to weaponize against self-respecting and politically assertive Hindus who refuse to follow the secular-progressive dogmas and orthodoxies.
“The Hindu American diaspora is increasingly feeling unsafe in schools, colleges, and workplaces,” said Purnima Nath, an author and a former Republican congressional candidate in the battleground state of Wisconsin. Nath also mentioned the introduction of “caste” bills by the Democrat-controlled legislatures and other local bodies.
Pro-Khalistani groups in the U.S. have also vandalized Indian consulate offices and frequently attacked and threatened Hindus and Hindu temples. “Separatism and terrorism issues that are being nurtured in American soil, in the name of free speech, seem to target Hindus of America directly,” Nath said. She expressed her disappointment at these developments in America.
Meena Harris, Kamala Harris’s niece, offended many Hindus in 2020 when she tweeted a morphed picture of Maa Durga as Kamala Harris killing Donald Trump, depicted as rākshasa Mahishasura. Biden was shown as the lion. Harris, at that time, was Biden’s vice presidential running mate. Hindus never received any apology from the Biden-Harris campaign despite the global outcry.
Indian Americans also decry progressive Democrats’ stance against India. Harris’s remarks on the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir have been an eyesore to many. In October 2019, Harris suggested a U.S. intervention in Kashmir after the Indian parliament had revoked the temporary legal provision that delayed the constitutional integration of the state with the rest of the Indian Republic. Trump, on the other hand, has openly praised India and Hindus. Trump has also endorsed the idea of building a Hindu holocaust memorial in Washington, DC.
Democrats’ extensive engagements with CAIR — the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group with alleged ties with terror groups — is also problematic for many Indian American voters. CAIR worked directly with the Biden-Harris White House and the State Department to fight antisemitism.
Will Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democrat Party’s ticket stop the bleeding for the Democrats and reverse the Indian Americans’ swing toward the GOP?
Only time will tell.
About the author
Avatans Kumar is a columnist, public speaker, and activist. A JNU, New Delhi, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign alumnus, Avatans holds graduate degrees in Linguistics. Avatans is a recipient of the 2021 San Francisco Press Club’s Bay Area Journalism award.
This story originally appeared in India Currents.
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