I am the daughter of Indian immigrants. My parents have lived in this country for twenty-seven years and I consider myself fully Americanized. But growing up, Indian female role models were scarce. That’s why I was initially excited to hear that last month, thirty-eight year old Nikki Haley won the GOP primary in South Carolina to be the first Indian-American woman candidate for governor.
Haley’s parents are Sikh, and immigrated from India in 1973. Her childhood is peppered with incidents familiar to most Indian immigrant families. A popular anecdote reported in the mainstream media describes Nikki (born Nikita) entering a local beauty pageant with her sister as a child; pageant officials were flummoxed. They traditionally awarded a prize to one white child and white black child — they had no idea where to place Nikki. Her brother cut his long hair (a Sikh custom) after being teased at school.
I did not know Nikki Haley was Indian-American like myself until South Carolina state senator Jake Knotts was reported in the press as saying, “We’ve already got a raghead in the White House, we don’t need another raghead in the governor’s mansion,” and “She’s a raghead that’s ashamed of her religion trying to hide it behind being Methodist for political reasons.” Knotts later clarified his statements were “intended in jest” and denounced calls for his resignation.
Other negative charges have dogged Haley throughout her campaign. Two men have claimed to have had extramarital affairs with the candidate; Haley has denied the charges.
Haley married a white Methodist man in 1995 and replaced her surname, Randhwa, with her husband’s, Haley. In the “Truth in Facts” section of her website, clearly meant to showcase the most important issues of her campaign, questions include: “Is Nikki her real name?” and “Is Nikki a Christian?”
The underlying message of Nikki’s website and campaign is a Sikh woman named Nikita Randhwa, even if she was born in America, has no chance of being elected governor of a conservative Southern state. Popular precedent agrees. The most famous Indian-American political figure is Bobby Jindal, Republican governor of Louisiana. A rising star in the Republican party, Jindal was seriously considered as a possible running mate for John McCain in 2008 and has been suggested as a possible presidential candidate in 2012. Jindal (born Piyush) also goes by a nickname and converted to Catholicism in college. His journey to Catholicism started as a teenager and was officially confirmed as a student at Brown University.
In a 2008 Wall Street Journal article, “Rebel With a Cause: Bobby Jindal’s Spiritual Journey,” Suhag Shukla, managing director for the Hindu American Foundation, which represents the interests of the approximately two million Hindus in the U.S., calls him “a mix of hope and disappointment.” She says that “there is hope in what he represents, that an immigrant can hold the highest seat in state government, who doesn’t look like the ‘average American.’ What’s disappointing, though, is at what expense? Does it take turning your back on your tradition? To your community?”
Like Shukla, I am torn between pride and disappointment at these two figures. For an Indian-American woman to come this far in a governor’s race is truly amazing, but her path to success is troubling. I choose to believe I do not have to compromise my religion, my culture, my name to succeed in this country but does being a public figure demand this alteration?
And even despite changing their names and religion, will Indian-Americans be fully accepted into the conservative political scene? Statements by Sen. Knotts and constituent comments in articles about Haley reflect my uneasiness. Knotts’ racist remarks were excused by his colleagues – who knows what hate speech constituents spew behind closed doors?
I understand my situation is different from Haley’s. My parents immigrated to America in 1983 and I was born five years later. In the central Kentucky town I was born in, cashiers asked my dad if the large bag of rice he was buying was for his horse and looked quizzically at cilantro. But the university town brought many Indians and my parents enjoyed the friendship of similar couples. I had Indian friends, took Indian dance classes, and visited Indian temples. Haley, born earlier and in a more isolated town, probably did not have the same connection to Indian culture.
Though Indian women in America are encouraged to enter male-dominated fields like engineering and medicine our path to success is still difficult. We are expected to maintain the household, cook traditional meals, and have a career. Our mothers warn us against fraternizing with boys, especially non-Indian males. Accusing Haley of affairs with other men must her family deeply and is the lowest possible blow to her reputation.
I personally don’t agree with Haley’s conservative policies. But it’s hard to answer whether I would rather have no Indian women in American politics or have a potentially successful candidate who has scrubbed herself of her Indian heritage to succeed.
Haley herself has shied away from the historical implications of her victory. She recently told the New York Times, ““I love that people think it’s a good story, but I don’t understand how it’s different.” Indians make up a significant part of the immigrant population in America, in wealth, power, and numbers. By not discussing her heritage, she risks alienating these voters.
Ultimately, though, I understand why Haley, and other non-white candidates portray themselves the way they do. Despite Barack Obama’s election, despite Hispanics making up a majority of the population in some states, despite the childhood lesson of America being a “melting pot,” politics is still a white man’s game. Haley’s goal is to become the governor of South Carolina. That she and other candidates must shed their names and religions to achieve their goals makes me disappointed in our society and political system, not the candidates themselves.
Sneha blogs at her personal website, thatbrowngirl.
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Very interesting post. I wonder if you have any thoughts on the fact that Haley and Jindal are both Republicans? I am (I am ashamed to say) aware of no prominent or up-and-coming Dem politicians of Indian descent. I find this an interesting contrast between the two parties that shows how racism can manifest in very different ways — in the GOP, it seems, almost anyone can get ahead if they’re willing to put aside everything else for the sake of conformity to the party line whereas Dems can have a lot of ideological differences from one another but that seems to mean that it’s harder for PoC to get a foot in the door.
Haley has the right to change her religion. She has the right to make the very common choice to take her husband’s name when she marries. She has the right to be called by a nickname. None of this, imo, is necessarily proof of anything.
But…as a middle-aged Jew, I can tell her that if you’re doing any of that to escape or hide your ethnicity or your religio-cultural identity, forget about it. It’s the T Rex in the room. The more you run, the faster it chases you, and it will catch up with you. We Jews were where Indians are now when I was growing up, and the reality is that it takes time to become fully integrated into the US culture. She can take it for granted that ugly things are being said behind her back. When they’re too ashamed to say them in public, she’ll know she’s making progress.
Having said all that, I despise her politics and hope she goes down in flames, along with all the rest of her self-hating right wing female compatriots.
@baraqiel: I don’t know about that. There’s actually a Congressional Black Caucus, comprised entirely of Democrats; Keith Ellison, the only Muslim (that I’m aware of) in Congress, is a Democrat; Barney Frank is an openly gay, not to mention influential, man in the House. The diverse entrants in this year’s GOP just seem like naked tokenism whereas the people I mentioned are organic results of their constituents.
I think you have to be fair to Nikki and Bobby. They want to succeed in American politics representing Americans. I don’t see white American politicians play up their whiteness, so why would you expect Nikki and Bobby to play up their browness. Though I don’t agree with many of their positions, I am very proud to see Indians have finally learned how to succeed in this country where it really counts: politics. Perhaps we can learn from them rather than complain about how we have to sell out to get ahead. That is reality.
@BearDownCBears – “The diverse entrants in this year’s GOP just seem like naked tokenism whereas the people I mentioned are organic results of their constituents.”
That’s sort of my point — there is a Democratic political machine and it by and large is not accessible to PoC. Arguably the Dem political machine is less important to Dems than the GOP machine is to the GOP, and there are strong regional differences in terms how how powerful/entrenched the machine is (in Pittsburgh, it’s very strong, for example). It’s been my experience that people who vote Dem are more willing to disregard what the party line is than people who vote GOP. So I wasn’t trying to say that the Democratic party as a whole is less friendly to minorities — I don’t believe it is. But it’d be false to say that either party is not racist, rather I find it interesting that the racism inherent in both parties seems to manifest in these different ways.
What evidence is there that Nikki Haley is a product of “tokensim”? She seems like a very accomplished woman, although I certainly agree she is trying to minimize her Indian background.
Raj, white politicians play up their whiteness all the time. They don’t call it whiteness; they use coded language like “Real American.”
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@Raj: It’s not they should play UP their brownness. It’s that they seem to have a history of playing it DOWN.
@Raj: have you missed the Tea Party? Or the hate campaign in Arizona? Or the platform of the Republican Party?
@Charlemagne: If you take a look, you’ll see that there are no women in positions of real power in the GOP. It’s run by white men for white men, preferably white men with lots of money. Accomplished or not, Haley has no juice in the policymaking process. She will get support from the party just as long as she spouts the party line. In the GOP, women can run for office if they’re good looking enough and take orders well enough.
There’s an amusing (in a sort of sickening way) article about this in today’s Newsweek:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/03/too-hot-to-handle.html
Thank you for this post and your insights, Sneha!
Like you, I reflexively wince when I see someone taking a more Anglo name or giving up the religion of their birth to become Christian in a predominantly Christian nation. But at the end of the day, people have the right to call themselves what they want and worship however they want, and often they do so for solid economic/social reasons; my grandmother’s brother changed his name from Aaron Cohen to Arthur Kent because no one in 1950s Boston would hire him to work in his field with such an obviously Jewish name.
One thing that fascinates me about Nikki Haley—and was brought home when I saw her on the cover of Newsweek this week—is that at first glance, her ethnicity is not immediately apparent, unlike Bobby Jindal. Superficialities still matter, and skin tone is a very important signifier, especially in the South. I wonder if that, combined with an Anglo-sounding name has helped Haley fly under the racist radar to a certain extent. A lot of successful “ethnic” politicians break barriers because they are less obviously different–i.e. the whitest-seeming—and thereby ruffle the fewest feathers in our still very race-obsessed society. Would be curious about your opinion on that.
Thanks, Becky. I agree, one thing that is great about America is the ability to reinvent yourself if you so choose.
I had no idea Nikki Haley was even Indian until the Knotts comments surfaced because she is so light skinned. I didn’t realize Bobby Jindal’s wife was Indian because she too is extremely light skinned. I might be more sensitive to this issue than others because I (like most South Indians) have dark skin and will never be able to “pass” as anything else. A HUGE problem in Indian (and every other culture) is the importance placed on being light skinned. I have no idea whether someone who is not a light skinned Indian could succeed in American politics. But I suspect not.
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@Sneha
I just wanted to give a shout-out, as I suspect I’m currently living in the central Kentucky town where you were born. And while I am not Indian, I work with the university hospital, where many faculty and staff are of Indian descent.
It’s interesting to me, because I grew up in a teeny tiny wee rural Kentucky town, which was all white except 2 or 3 black families. Then in the late 1980s, an Indian-American family moved in. The mother was a doctor, I forget what the father did, and they had a son a bit older than me. Since they lived just down the street, we would visit with them sometimes. I remember that I was fascinated by the saris that the mother wore to dressy occasions, and by the food that seemed so different to me. But I was also fascinated that they had a Christmas tree. I believe they were Hindu, but the son, who would have been around middle school age, really wanted a tree so they let him put it up.
They eventually moved away, as most professionals do in that small town. I went to graduate school out of state and made friends from a variety of backgrounds, including one girl who had just moved to the US from Mumbai. Now I live here, in the college town, and I have had occasion to interact with the local Indian-American association on the promotion of some cultural events. Seeing how vibrant that community is here, I sometimes think of our old neighbors and wonder how weird it must have been for that adolescent boy, to find himself dropped in the middle of the country, in a place where he felt the need to put up a Christmas tree to fit in.
Hey Sneha – thanks for this post. Really great to read your thoughts. They are pretty close to my own.
I agree with what others are saying – that of course anyone has the right to change their name, change their religion, etc., etc. But at the same time, I do wonder if there are other things that influence those changes. Not necessarily that these changes were made with the express intent to hide their “otherness” but subconsciously, that idea was there anyway.
@Flackette
My dad was a professor at UK! And he was a board member of the Indian American association when we lived there. Thanks for sharing.
The phenomenon of Indians moving to small towns en masse as physicians is actually very interesting. My parents had good friends who were doctors in places like Hazard and Elizabethtown. My dad was mistaken for a doctor a few times while driving through such rural areas, because the people living there had no other interaction with a brown person besides their local doctor. From what I know, the doctors in such towns were often very wealthy which I think cushioned the blow of being in a tiny town.
We also celebrated Christmas, Halloween, Easter in a secular “American” way. Now I feel like it’s not important but I was very fortunate my mom understood the importance of “fitting in” and wanted us to experience American culture.