The New Indian Lobby

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Are Indian Americans primed to become the next political kingmakers?

By ADAM B. LERNER

November wasn’t kind to the political power of Indian-Americans. In the hundreds of congressional and gubernatorial races across the country, only five Indian-American candidates were on the ballot. Three lost. Representative Ami Bera, incumbent Democrat from California, left Election Day trailing by thousands of votes only to secure a narrow victory after provisional ballots and mail-in ballots were counted. Two of Indian-Americans’ biggest victories were the electoral equivalents of shoo-ins—California Attorney General Kamala Harris and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Come next month, Indian-Americans will have only one elected representative in Washington—the same number that they have in the current Congress.

Even the Indian-Americans who weren’t up for election didn’t have a much better November. Unpopular Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal took verbal beatings in his home state from candidates and pundits across the spectrum—many believe he refrained from endorsing a candidate until the runoff because his brand is so toxic at home. Just after the November election, the Indian-American community received another blow when Preet Bharara, arguably the country’s most sophisticated financial regulator as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was passed over for the role of attorney general despite his obvious desire for the job.

But this electoral thumping obscures the truth behind the curtain: The nation’s three million Indian-Americans are increasingly looking to flex their political muscles, and they have one very clear advantage to bring to the money-driven world of modern politics: They’re one of the wealthiest ethnic groups in the United States. According to a 2013 Pew Survey, Indian-Americans’ median household income sits at $88,000, the highest of all Asian-American subgroups (the U.S. average at-large is a relatively paltry $49,800).

The community’s ambitions were on full display at the end of September with the fanfare surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit stateside. The trip began with an appearance Saturday evening alongside Hugh Jackman at Central Park’s Global Citizen Festival on a stage about to be graced by Sting and Jay-Z. Then,on Sunday, before Modi even traveled to Washington for a visit with President Obama, came the pièce de resistance: an early-evening address to nearly 20,000 admirers at Madison Square Garden. The show featured Gujarati dancers, a speaking hologram of the late yogic guru and Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda, a speed-painted portrait of Modi, an acrobatic and laser show and a slate of VIPs including Sens. Cory Booker and Robert Menendez, Gov. Nikki Haley and half a dozen congressmen. Anand Shah, a spokesperson for the Indian American Community Foundation (IACF) that was founded specifically to organize the event, claims it was the largest ever event held in the United States for a foreign leader, surpassed perhaps only by papal masses that have been held at various baseball stadiums.

One attendee, MR Rangaswami, an influential Silicon Valley investor who founded the Sand Hill Group and Indiaspora, a non-profit that brings together leaders within the Indian-American community, explained to me that the community isn’t ready to rest on its laurels quite yet—the other Indian-American leaders that organized the event for Modi see success as not solely economic, but also political. As he explains, “The two parties are looking at us much more seriously now. How do we tap into the resources? How do we get them involved?”

Rangaswami thinks the United States can have an Indian-American president in the next generation—perhaps even sooner if a Jindal, Harris, or Haley hits a lucky streak—but Indians as a whole have a long way to go before they can be seen as an influential group in politics.

But he has a very clear benchmark in mind as he tries to navigate his educated and wealthy ethnic group towards political power: Jewish-Americans. “We’re learning a lot from the Jewish diaspora here and what we have noticed from the Jewish diaspora is that they’re willing to contribute, invest, and write checks,” Rangaswami told me. “Because of the size of India, we could become a much larger community [than the Jews] in terms of population and also in terms of diversity.”

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Though the first Jews to serve in Congress (Representative Lewis Charles Levin and Senator David Levy Yulee) were both inaugurated in 1845, America had a relatively small and uninfluential Jewish population until the 20th century. Mostly fueled by Eastern Europeans fleeing Russian pogroms, the U.S. Jewish population boomed from less than 250,000 in the early 1880s to almost four million in 1924, when Congress stymied its growth through a harsh quota system. During the late nineteenth century American Jews, largely concentrated in urban areas like New York’s Lower East Side, first became involved in politics through religious organizations and labor groups like the United Hebrew Trades, and first asserted their political voice through Yiddish publications like Abraham Cahan’s socialist Jewish Daily Forward.

Only in the mid-20th century did the community begin claiming the political and cultural clout it’s currently known for. By then, the Holocaust had further stigmatized anti-Semitism and second- and third-generation Jewish-Americans had acquired their own wealth as professionals. Today Jews make up less than two percent of the population—about double the percentage of Indian-Americans—but the U.S. Senate currently features ten Jewish members and three of the nine Supreme Court Justices are Jewish.

 

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