“Loss of Identity” Politics: Masking Indian Heritage in Elections

Former 2024 presidential candidate, Nikki Haley giving a speech. Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore 

The 2024 Presidential election’s unprecedented number of candidates of Indian descent serves as a test case for identity politics’s role in voting patterns. Identity politics, a common feature of contemporary American politics, theorizes that voters sway towards candidates who share aspects of their identity, such as race, regardless of party affiliation. However, Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy faced backlash for various parts of their intricate first-generation American identities, including religious beliefs. This year, religion holds a uniquely divided role in the identity and campaign strategy of presidential candidates. Understanding how particularly non-Christian religions play a role in the success, or demise, of South-Asian Americans and other people of color signal a tumultuous future for minority groups running for president.

Despite the widespread presence of an Indian American population across the United States since the 19th century, the US House of Representatives did not hold a single member of Indian descent until 1957. Since 2013, however, there has been an unprecedented spike in Indian-American candidates across government offices, on both the federal and state level, possibly correlated with the rise in Indian-American immigration. In the case of the 2024 election, after all three candidates have faced backlash as a result of showcasing their identity, they have taken to different strategies to appease their target audience. 

A representative of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote stated “Indian Americans, as our Asian American Voter Survey has shown over the years, have been consistently the most Democratic-leaning out of all the ethnicities we polled. We haven’t seen a big shift here due to more Indian American GOP candidates.” Indian Americans remain one of the most economically affluent ethnic communities, which should indicate a preference for the Republican Party. Yet, the fact that they remain generally loyal to the Democratic party shows a possible correlation to identity politics by suggesting that the higher diversity and appeal to the immigrant story is more persuasive than the economic policy of the Republican party. This indicates that identity politics and specifically the diverse, immigrant culture found within the Democratic party is still appealing to Indian-American voters. 

On the contrary, the role of identity politics seems to have taken the back burner with the rise of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley. Vivek Ramaswamy, a first-generation Tamil-American from Cincinnati, Ohio aligned himself with former president Donald Trump’s “America First” Agenda, claiming that it was the “New American Dream”. Although his campaign did not last through January of 2024, his campaign strategies and support demographic hold a host of new perspectives on identity politics. His Indian heritage is quite difficult to hide, yet he seemed to evade the topic in his “Meet Vivek” section of his website, citing only his academic accolades and childhood in Ohio. He stayed loyal to the meritocracy view of the American Dream stating, “No matter who are…you still get ahead in this country with your own hard work.” One of his downfalls, incidentally, arose when confronted about religion. 

Ramaswamy’s target audience is largely the Evangelical Christian Conservatives who did not react positively. After being confronted by a possible supporter about his lack of the Christian faith, he argued that his belief in “the one true god” was enough even if the god may take many forms in other faiths. This particular window into his heritage, and specifically his Hindu faith, hurt his support significantly and his mode of attempted recovery was to invoke examples of faith from the Bible despite openly being Hindu. This proved an insurmountable issue because, despite having staunch conservative values, the center of his campaign remained his faith.  

Nikki Haley, a first-generation Punjabi-American and the former governor of South Carolina, and the first Indian American to serve as a presidential candidate, had been much more effective at hiding her Indian heritage. Although she suspended her presidential campaign, she was dedicated to pushing the Republican Party away from former president Donald Trump’s influence. Born Nimrata Haley, she was able to avoid the big religion question by openly converting to the Christian church and emphasizing her choice of raising her children under Christian values. Her emphasis of her Christian faith and usage of an American-sounding name assisted in creating a narrative that allows many people forget that she is of Indian-descent. When questioned about her South-Asian background, her main point was how lucky she was to have grown up in the United States, stating that “America was never racist.” Moreover, other Indian American politicians and organizations such as the Iowa Sikh Association and leaders of the Indo American PAC-IA, had admitted they felt abandoned by her lack of outreach to the Indian American community as they had reached out to her early in her campaign hoping to have events for her which never occurred.    

On the other side of the aisle, Kamala Harris, a first-generation Tamil and Irish Jamaican-American had trouble gaining support from the Indian American community. The main difference between Harris and the Republican candidates is their target audiences. Harris harnessed the support of democratic-leaning Indian-Americans who believed that her candidacy was a significant step forward towards a more representative government. 

Harris, in contention with Ramaswamy and Haley, more openly shared her childhood experiences celebrating Hindu festivals and the immigrant hardships of her parents. Additionally, she was able to lean more into overcoming racism and other social and economic hardships. She continuously cites her parent’s financial struggles throughout her childhood and emphasizes the protection of civil rights and reproductive rights. However, her attempts to harness Indian American support, such as mentioning her Tamil family and celebrating Hindu holidays, were met with reactions fueled by colorism and anti-black bias from within the Indian American community. Her failed “Kamala Auntie” campaign which aimed to appeal to Indian-American culture, and specifically younger millennial Indian-American voters, led to a shift of her focus towards harnessing the support of the black community and the general minority voting electorate in the country. Still, in Harris’s case, there is a clear preference for the democratic party’s overall support for diversity of identity despite the general backlash against showcasing indian heritage, allowing her to find success in harnessing support in the 2020 election. 

These candidates, despite having different backgrounds and being across the political spectrum all faced a loss of support when showcasing their Indian heritage. As the number of Indian immigrants in America continues to increase, the representation in government candidates and appointees also continues to increase. However, if the response to representing the Indian American population is met with backlash against current candidates across party lines, how will representation of not just Indians, but other minority populations continue to increase? 

It is vital to have a shift in whose response to the growing representation in candidates to reflect the increase in diversity in our country. In the case of Indian-American candidates, the role of identity politics has shifted as it has become more strategic for these candidates to hide their Indian identity which could lead to a decrease in representation in all forms of government, threatening the existence of a government that truly represents its people.

Soumya Kamada (BC ’27) is the managing editor of interviews at CPR studying economics-statistics and political science. She can be reached at sk5337@barnard.edu.