Kamala Harris nomination does not thrill government in New Delhi

Being the first woman of Indian origin to have been nominated for US presidential candidate Joe Biden's runner mate, Kamala Harris' tremendous honour has passed without a whimper of congratulation from India. Senior journalist Nilova Roy Chaudhury through this article explains the possible reasons for India's silence over the nomination.

Hyderabad: It has been customary for the Indian government, particularly in recent years, to very proudly embrace any achievements of its diaspora, however far removed they may be. Which is why it is strange that the government has reacted with deafening official silence to the nomination of Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour and person of Indian origin, to a major US political party’s top presidential ticket.

Harris, who proudly flaunts her origins and the lessons she has learnt from her Indian mother, who was a first generation immigrant from Tamil Nadu, could, in November, be barely a heartbeat away from what is widely regarded as the world’s most important job, President of the United States. While several countries, from nations in the Caribbean to Portugal and Ireland, Singapore, Fiji and Mauritius have had top leaders of Indian origin, the prospect of a possible US Vice-President of Indian origin is huge and has rightly been widely hailed in the media and among community members and others in India and the US.

There are several reasons for this reticence, the most apparent of which is the Indian government’s perceived closeness to the Trump administration and its effort to portray the Donald Trump government as particularly India-philic. While deepening relations with India has been largely a bipartisan effort, both

Republican and Democratic, India’s open espousal of President Trump has not gone down well with the Democratic Party, many leaders of which have been very critical of some recent policies of the Narendra Modi-led government, particularly the revocation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). This is despite the perceived closeness between former (Democratic Party) President Barack Obama and Modi.

Harris is one of those leaders who has been openly critical of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, even criticising External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for opting out of a meeting on J&K with the House Foreign Relations Committee last December. Even before that, in September last year, Harris chose to stay away from the ‘Howdy Modi’ event in Houston, where Trump, along with an array of leading US legislators including most of those of Indian origin, joined Modi for a celebration of the India-US partnership.

Privately, many of those in New Delhi’s strategic establishment believe that the nature of Trump’s mercurial personality is a key reason for the government choosing to remain silent on Harris’ nomination as Democratic candidate Jo Biden’s running mate. The Modi government does not wish to give Trump any cause to take umbrage, especially when it is likely that Washington could soon restore India to the GSP (generalised system of preference) in trade.

Also, as relations with China remain tense because of the situation along the border and, of course, its backing of Pakistan including in areas India claims as its territory, it is vital that New Delhi retains the US administration’s open support.

Additionally, the Democrats have traditionally been more vocal than the Republicans on issues like human rights and religious freedoms, both of which could cause some discomfort among the New Delhi establishment, which does not take criticism well. Although broadly more in sync on issues of the environment and global warming, the Democrats could be more probing of recent environmental policies like removal of the need for an environmental impact assessment (EIA).

So there is little expectation here that the nomination of Kamala Harris would be of special advantage to India. In fact, there is some concern and the government appears to have placed its bets on Trump re-emerging as winner, with the Howdy Modi event particularly meant to enthuse Indian Americans to go out and vote for Trump.

However, even though the Namaste Trump event in Ahmedabad was meant to reinforce that image of Trump as a great friend of India, the nomination of Harris as Biden’s vice-presidential candidate has sent ripples of enthusiasm across a very wide spectrum of the Indian diaspora in the USA, many of whom are likely to embrace the Senator from California of Indian origin.

The Indian government, traditionally, is justly very proud of its diaspora, the world’s largest, numbering over 30 million, and spread across every part of the globe. Contributing over 80 billion dollars to the Indian economy, again the largest in the global volume of remittances, the contribution of the Indian diaspora to nation-building has been enormous and, for the past two decades, has been strongly acknowledged by Indian government in the form of the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Non-Resident Indian Day) and awards.

The United States leads the list of countries where first and second-generation Indians have settled and done their country of origin proud, as professionals, in academia, science, technology, and entrepreneurship.

The almost four million persons of Indian origin in the USA, who are the best-educated and most wealthy among all immigrant communities there, are a major factor in fostering not only the strategic and economic Indo-US bilateral partnership but also the close cultural connect.

Indians in the US, like Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, who lead top high-tech companies, among them Google, Microsoft, Adobe and IBM, most based in California’s Silicon Valley, have been publicly hailed for their contributions and their India connect, clearly indicating that Indian entrepreneurship is a critical engine of economic growth, both US and Indian. Recently, Abhijit Banerjee was feted for receiving the Nobel Prize.

But the tremendous honour for Kamala Harris, of a nomination to a major political party ticket, for the Democratic Senator from California who is aspiring to the top political position in what is still the world’s largest economy, has passed without a whimper of congratulation from India, one of her countries of origin which is normally very swift to embrace those it perceives as from its own.