WASHINGTON: Does religion matter more than national or ethnic identity to Indian-Americans? That’s among questions which have popped up after the surprise discovery that the Indian-American community has contributed three times as much money to Congresswoman than to Senator , both of whom are running for the White House.
Gabbard, who is from Hawaii, is a self-declared Hindu-American, although she is Caucasian of non-Indian ethnicity. Harris, who is from California, is bi-racial of mixed Indian and Jamaican parentage, and was raised both in Christian Baptist and Hindu traditions.
Aside from the from the fact that Harris comes from the bigger state with the largest numbers of Indian-Americans in the US (712,000), she is also among frontrunners for the Democratic Party nomination in the Presidential race, ranking in the top five, compared to Gabbard, who appears to be an also-ran in a field of 20 Democrats.
Yet, according to fundraising data from University of California, Riverside, that publishes research on the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, in the first quarter that ended March 31, Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, had raised more than $237,000 from the Indian American community and Indian green card holders in the US- who are also eligible to contribute to US political campaigns- compared to only $76,300 they gave to Harris.
Harris’s haul from the Indian community was even less than US Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who had received more than $131,000 from the Indian American and Indian community in a state that has less than half the population of Indian origin people (370,000) compared to California (712,000), according to the journal India Abroad that first reported the story. In overall funding though, Gabbard, and for that matter, Booker, have been no match for Harris, who has pulled in more than any other first-time presidential candidate in the field with $12 million, second only to US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who raised $18 million.
The Indian-American tilt toward Gabbard may only be temporary, according to Karthick Ramakrishnan, professor of political science and associate dean of the School of Public Policy at UC Riverside, who is the founder and director of AAPI Data. He says while he was surprised that Gabbard had significantly out-raised Harris, it is still early in the game and if Gabbard fails to get any traction in the polls in the next few months, it’s possible that Harris, if she continues to make a strong showing, may garner more Indian American and Indian donations.
“Given the kind of national name recognition and viability that Kamala Harris had, I expected her to do better,” Ramakrishnan told India Abroad, adding that “there are missed opportunities for the Harris campaign…. I am not seeing any group like for example South Asian for Obama (SAFO) as there were when Obama ran in 2008.” He also surmised that Gabbard’s overwhelming support among Indian Americans and Indians vis-a-vis Harris was also likely “generational,” with the older generation in the community, elated by the fact that Gabbard is the first Hindu-American running for President, enthusiastically supporting her from the beginning.
Gabbard is also close to the BJP establishment in India, having met Prime Minister Narendra Modi both when he visited the US and when she visited New Delhi. BJP general secretary Ram Madhav attended her wedding in Hawaii in 2015. Harris has been a little more circumspect. “I welcome Indian PM @NarendraModi to the United States and reaffirm the unbreakable bonds between our two nations,” she tweeted when Modi visited Washington in 2017.
#ElectionsWithTimes