#KamalaHarrisForVP @KamalaHarris @JoeBiden Just for the record, this was part of my August 5 broadcast on Suhani Subah on Bharat FM. pic.twitter.com/JojAgRKos8
— Mayank Chhaya, Journalist, Writer, Poet, Painter (@MayankChhaya) August 11, 2020
Admittedly, it was a fanciful thing to say then but immediately after Senator Kamala Harris dropped out of the presidential race on December 3 and once even while she was very much in it I had envisioned a Biden-Harris ticket and said it as much. On a more serious note, during a broadcast of my morning radio show 'Suhani Subah' (Lovely Morning) on Bharat FM on August 5 I had offered a very short but a very clear precursor to her eventual nomination yesterday by the presumptive Democratic Party president nominee Joe Biden. I tweeted that short audio clip yesterday mainly to gain some cheap vindication because after all that is the only reward for a journalist these days since no one really pays you to be right.
I have been reading some perspectives in mainstream America media about Senator Harris's selection, some of which call it a "safe choice". That is a curious description. I suspect what they perhaps mean is that it is a logical choice from former Vice President Biden's standpoint. It is a logical in the sense that the 55-year-old senator from San Francisco with a mixed cultural heritage, Indian Tamil from her mother Dr. Shyamala Gopalan's side, and Jamaican from her father Professor Donald Harris's side has great potential to bring out a particular demographic turnout in large numbers. By that I mean young African American, Hispanic American and South Asian American voters.
I would have preferred Senator Harris on top of the ticket but for a country that so abjectly scrambled to the current choice in the White House after pretending it had forever socio-culturally transformed itself during the election of the last incumbent that would have been an inordinately bold move. So it is just as well that we have Biden as the reassuring traditional avuncular presence as the presumptive nominee with Harris as the clear inheritor of a new Democratic Party for the next two to three decades.
In terms of how the Indian American community might respond the answer is more complicated than it might seem tempting to suggest. It might seem tempting to suggest that the community will wholeheartedly and sanguinely accept her as their choice. That may be misplaced. There is a sizable constituency within the Indian American community that regards President Donald Trump with enthusiasm because they see him as a great supporter of US-India relations generally and Prime Minister Narendra Modi particularly. There is such a strong groundswell of effusion for Prime Minister Modi's sharply right-of-center Hindu brand of politics among Indian Americans that that see President Trump's support for him as the most reassuring factor for them to support the latter. This is notwithstanding the fact the president has been extraordinarily harsh on immigration generally and particularly the specialty work visas known as H1B of which Indian technology professionals are among the biggest beneficiaries.
Add to that Biden's not necessarily friendly view of India on the contentious issue of Kashmir. A significant number of Indian Americans, who openly side with Prime Minister Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Kashmir, were upset that the former vice president called on the Indian government to “take all necessary steps to restore rights for all the people of Kashmir”, and noted the former vice president was “disappointed by the measures that the government of India has taken with the implementation and aftermath of the National Register of Citizens in Assam and the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act into law.” The Biden campaign found such measures to be “inconsistent with the country’s long tradition of secularism and with sustaining a multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy.”
So while there has been some attempt to wax poetic over Kamala Harris's first name which in various Indian language means lotus and which is also the political symbol of the BJP, it is possible that a section of Indian American voters might see the Biden approach to Kashmir as a deal-breaker for them. That may not have a particularly decisive consequence for the electoral prospects of the Biden-Harris ticket since the community is not so large as to swing elections in any significant way.
Beyond these specifics, Senator Harris's selection as a running mate is indeed viewed as extraordinarily important. To the extent that Indians are known to celebrate even the most tenuous of connections to Indian heritage, her selection is clearly resoundingly historic.