Why Indians don’t care if Indian-origin Kamala Harris won or lost

There were no prayers for an Indian-origin woman to become President of the United States, and there’s no heartbreak that she lost.

It was similar to the lack of euphoria over Rishi Sunak becoming Prime Minister of our former coloniser, the United Kingdom, and losing badly after less than two years in power. You would have expected a lot of gloating in India about Sunak, but it was limited to some social media jokes.

Yes, you can find stories in the news media about their roots in India, how their villages were celebrating and praying, but most of it was drummed-up media frenzy.

The Indian diaspora has given prime ministers or presidents to Trinidad and Tobago, Portugal, Fiji, Suriname, Mauritius, and Ireland, apart from the UK. It seems like a matter of time when an Indian-origin person could be Prime Minister of Canada.

Not many Indians will be able to name Leo Varadkar, who has had two stints as Ireland’s Prime Minister, or Goan-origin Antonio Costa, who was Portugal’s Prime Minister until March this year.

There was a time when this used to seem like a big deal, but it no longer does. That is primarily because India today is a much more self-confident country that sees such events not as self-validation but as a matter of course. There’s a strange absence of “oh-look-one-of-us” feeling.

A seventh of the world’s population lives in India, and Indians have been migrating to other lands for centuries. So what’s the big deal?

Trump over Harris

There was at least a section of Indians rooting for a white man, Donald Trump, over half-Indian Kamala Harris, whose first name is so very Indian.

This is due to political reasons: India’s Hindu nationalists have admired Trump’s hard-line positions since his ascent to power in 2016. Google search trends show that there were more searches for Trump than for Kamala Harris in every Indian state except Harris’ home state, Tamil Nadu.

That is not to say all of India was rooting for Trump and Tamil Nadu was rooting for Harris. Mostly, there has been indifference to her Indian heritage. The Indian Express newspaper visited the village in Tamil Nadu where Kamala Harris’ grandfather lived briefly before moving to Madras, now Chennai, before moving to Africa.

Local residents spoke of how they got curious about her only when the media started visiting. Her distant aunt in the village, Dr. Sarala, told the Express, “There are no preparations in the village ahead of the poll results.” Another resident told the paper he would be equally happy whether Trump or Harris won.

This report was in contrast to many others that drummed up excitement in her “ancestral village” with quotes of prayers, and then, “heartbreak,” “hopes dashed”. The media needs a good story.

What Indians do care about is how India benefits from whoever wins. India’s relations with the United States are so close, and ever-growing, that it doesn’t make much of a difference who wins. Indo-US relations are defined by India’s growing economic clout, and the idea in the US that India must be used as a counterweight to China.

Yet, the truth is that Donald Trump’s inward-looking foreign policies as well as trade protectionism are both bad news for India. On trade, tariffs, climate change, defence partnerships, and almost everything, Obama and Biden were better for Indian interests than Trump. This is despite the bonhomie between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

White may be better for brown

There’s an impression in India that someone like Rishi Sunak was perhaps not able to push the India-UK partnership as much as, say, Boris Johnson, because Sunak was of Indian origin. An Indian-origin leader might seem to have a personal interest in pushing for good relations with India.

Given the domestic sensitivity of issues like illegal immigration in the UK and US, it is perhaps better for India to not have an Indian-origin leader in those countries.

As we have realised lately with a bitter breakdown of our relationship with Canada, diaspora power is a double-edged sword. The problem with diasporic leaders is that they may take too much interest in India — taking sides in the domestic political conversation, if not pandering outright to their communities within India. This complicates the overall country-to-country relationship.

Many Indian-origin leaders have again won seats in the US Senate. The Indian diaspora will rise to big offices in much of the West. Good for them.