Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

NOVEMBER 5, barely three weeks away, when 330 million American voters choose their 47th president. There are more than 4.8 million or 1.40 percent Indian Americans; only about two million citizens and eligible voters. In this crucial national election, Indian Americans’ voter number may or may not be the decider, but the volume is certainly quite significant to clinch the result, one way or the other.

It is, therefore, vital whom the Indian American citizens root for: the 59-year-old, current Vice President of the United States, Kamala Devi Harris, or the 78-year-old billionaire businessman, former president of the United States, Donald Trump -- a twice impeached and convicted criminal against whom nearly three dozen cases await trial.

However, the conspicuous characteristic of this presidential contest is the candidates’ personal, political and social reputation of the two major political party contenders for the world’s most powerful office, the 47th U.S. president, Democratic Party’s Kamala Harris and the Republican Party’s Donald Trump. 

Both parties have been campaigning relentlessly, collecting enormously lofty donations, from coast to coast, across the 50 states. Numerous voter surveys, opinion polls and electoral ratings have shown a neck-to-neck fight, latest scores being Democratic Kamala Harris 50%, Republican Donald Trump 49%. 

Meanwhile, Indian Americans have especially quoted mounting Biden-Modi camaraderie, approving Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s innovative economic programmes, efficacious political policies and imaginative diplomatic moves. Many Indian American politicians and commentators have also lauded Modi’s support to America’s global democratic agenda.

In addition, Prime Minister Modi has made his presence felt at almost every place of action.  Modi’s recent state visit to the Biden White House and Oval Office helped US media have a fuller measure of the man. His peace mission to Russia meetings with Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelenskyy and others have raised his stock worldwide.

Modi’s such global endeavours have won Indian Americans accolades as also the Democratic Party’s adulation. While only six Indian Americans are the members of the US Congress--America’s two houses of legislature – the 100 member Senate, and the 435-member House of Representatives. Currently, there is no Indian American member from the U.S. Democratic or Republican member in the Senate. Democratic Party’s Kamala Harris was the only Indian-origin two-term member of the Senate. Kamala is also the first and the only woman Vice President in the U.S.  history.

The U.S. electoral history has it that Harris’s Democratic Party has been the most favourite political party with Indian Americans. Incidentally, Dalip Singh Saund of California, elected in1956, was the first Asian American, and the first Indian American member of the U. S. Congress. He was also the first Indian immigrant and the first Sikh American to be elected. He studied in a America’s  top university, University of California at Berkeley, and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics; he couldn’t get a job as he was not a U.S. citizen.

Meanwhile, Republican President Donald Trump’s campaign is going strong.  Though he has nearly three score criminal cases against him; the courts have given him a pause till the election day; hearing would likely resume after November 5, depending upon the presidential elections result. 

Be that may, Donald Trump has maintained salubrious ties with Narendra Modi despite the fact that majority of Indian Americans have grown a huge dislike because of his generally ugly behaviour. 

Trump is credited with loose-tongue remarks against top Democratic Party leaders like President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris—whose black identity he questioned. Trump has been described as the most ‘dangerous person in this country; he’s a fascist to the core,’ said Harris recently. In the only September 10 debate with Trump, Harris described him a ‘disgrace’ for the country. Harris has criticized Trump for speaking low of the nation’s military service members calling them ‘suckers’ and ‘losers. Kamala Harris thinks Trump “is an emperor of the irrational, pursuing a dismal vision of ‘American carnage’ at a moment when crime is down, illegal migration is down, inflation is down, and the economy is the envy of the world.’’ According to Harris, ‘Donald Trump is a stranger to the most basic requirements of a democracy.’

Trump’s Republican Party’s 111 stalwarts - former senior security officials- declared him “unfit to serve again as president; he has demonstrated dangerous qualities, such as ‘unusual affinity’ for dictators’, and ‘contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behaviour.’’

Kamala Harris firmly ‘believes in American people, American democracy and all that’s American.’ She says that ‘the basic irrefutable truth is that Americans are the luckiest people in history of the world; we have created a stable democracy from disparate resources, from the world ever.’

The fact is that Kamala Harris’s optimism is a sign not only that she thinks we can, but also that she understands how corrosive and dangerous …pessimism can be.’ A senior U S army officer, Stanley McChrystal, writing in The New York Times said: ‘Harris has won me over…I’ve already cast my ballot for character – and voted for Vice President Kamala Harris.’ 

Donald Trump during his 2019 visit to India toured to Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat and paid his homage at Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram in Wardha. This was in a response to the September 2019 ‘Howdy Modi’ event in Houston, Texas. Kamala Harris, however, never went to India in any official capacity, though she fondly remembers her childhood trips with her mother to their ancestral village home in the state of Tamil Nadu. 

There is, however, no doubt that the Kamala Harris in White House would be a betoken for India. Kamala Harris met Modi in 2021 for the first time; beyond that there is nothing on record of any in-depth discussion on the issues of international or domestic concern to India.  Indian American Democratic Party Congressmen Ro Khanna, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Shri Thanedar, Ami Bera, and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal have warmly greeted fast ascending amity and altruism among Indian Americans and the US society generally. Although some of the legislators have been critical of the Modi government’s policies. Meanwhile, not only the US, but the entire world looks forward to November 6- the result day.

By: Prof. M. R. Dua