Kamala Harris’s speech at the Democratic National Convention gained her voters for multiple reasons, from her prioritisation of an “opportunity economy” to the evidence that a first-generation American with Indian and Jamaican roots can dream the American dream. It’s not a surprise. Immigrants generally set out on their travels precisely because they dream vividly.
But Indian viewers must have connected with something else—the cavalcade of aunts and uncles Harris put on parade, along with her immediate family. These were the people who had helped to care for the Harris sisters so that their mother could pursue her career in cancer research. It takes a village, and an adoptive village is just as good as the real thing.
South Asians have the extraordinary ability to enlarge families by social osmosis, appropriating uncles and aunts wherever they are found. Harris’s Instagram account reveals she supports the culture of valuing uncles and aunts as substitute parents. It’s not just a South Asian thing anymore—Americans celebrate National Aunt and Uncle’s Day on July 26 every year.
But the history of civilisation is the history of suspicion about the other. When the most prominent international phenomenon is not war but commerce, the world trade order is suspicious of people. Goods and capital are encouraged to cross borders by treaty, but humans are barred or restricted. Politics is innately hostile to immigration in most nations. The rise of far-right parties in Europe was triggered by a combination of economic hardship and the perception that immigrants are an invasive species.
The phenomenon almost brought Marine Le Pen to power in France and gave Italy the most right-wing government since Il Duce. Greece is a notable exception—it struggled to deal with immigration and economic failure much earlier, but has branded the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn a criminal organisation. Meanwhile, Indian-origin politician Priti Patel in the Sunak ministry played a creepy role in trying to divert immigrants from an isolationist UK to Rwanda. And in the US, the Trump campaign proposes the biggest purge ever of illegal immigrants.
To return to the DNC, for uncommitted voters, it was an opportunity to test their suspicion that Harris is not American enough for the White House. They’re OK with nerdy South Asians winning spelling bees and playing CEO in the Silicon Valley sandbox, but they think the presidency should go to real Americans. Questions of allegiance and belonging always hang over immigrants long after they assimilate. They are required to pass the Tebbit test again and again, even if they have marshalled an impressive cohort of local uncles and aunts. And the enthusiasm with which their folks back home try to own them must give rise to mixed feelings among the electorate.
Harris’s identity crisis is especially intense. Tamil Nadu has taken ownership of her, but Jamaica has equal rights via father Donald Harris, whose family goes back to enslaved people in Brown’s Town in St Ann Parish. It’s a small market town named for a slave owner, smaller than Indian mandi towns like Koderma and Jind. If anyone from there makes it big, they are naturally celebrated. Harris apparently spent bucolic holidays there in her childhood. It’s a personal tie unlike her relations with India, and Jamaica may have a stronger claim.
But are such claims at all real? Allegiances are expected to change with citizenship, but ordinary citizens tend to maintain emotional links with the motherland that fluidly translate into common cause with the majority back home. This is what has happened with Hindu sentiment in the diaspora, and it was illustrated unpleasantly by a bulldozer paraded in Edison, New Jersey, in 2022, when Muslim properties were being torn down in UP. This month, a float depicting the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was part of the India Day Parade in New York, despite discomfort about militant Hindutva.
But the line between personal attachment and national affiliation is sharper for two categories: people in military service and candidates for high office. Ever since Bhagat Singh Thind donned a US Army uniform to serve in World War I, Indians have celebrated the gradual inclusion of Indian-origin people in the US ranks. In 2017, when American Sikh servicemen were allowed to wear badges of their faith like turbans, it delighted Indians.
But imagine if the allegiance of these soldiers were put to the test by US-India hostilities—the soldiers we imagine to be cousins would have us in their sights. Something similar happened in the India-Pakistan hostilities after Partition, when soldiers and officers of the British Indian forces were divided between the two new nations, and were suddenly called upon to bear arms against friends and former comrades.
For people in high office, the norm is even more uncompromising—national allegiance must be completely unambiguous and identity clearly declared. So while two nations are claiming Harris for their own, the gesture is unlikely to be reciprocated. We have been a little spoiled by entrepreneurs and leaders in industry and academia who emigrated and returned to the motherland to serve or support good deeds from afar. But we cannot reasonably expect such commitments from Indian-origin immigrants working directly for their new homelands. Operationally, they are American, no matter how much we want to own them.
Pratik Kanjilal
For years, the author has been speaking easy to a surprisingly tolerant public
(Views are personal)
(On X @pratik_k)