For Sumathi Madhure, feeling different was a part of her new country. Ever since she arrived in Nashua, New Hampshire, at age 20, that feeling had plagued her on long drives to an Indian restaurant or while pushing her cart through the grocery store.
“When I saw another dark-skinned person in the supermarket, it was such a rare thing that I would just invite them to my house for dinner,” Madhure said with a laugh. “Creating a sense of belonging, building a community — it doesn’t happen on its own. It doesn’t happen if you don’t make the effort.”
Four decades later, her adopted country has changed. Now Madhure — a physical therapist, mother of two and local political activist — feels that the small stream of her journey across the United States has become a mighty river, along with many, many others.
Those who are immigrants or have roots in India and other parts of South Asia gathered in Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention, and many expressed joy at the impending ascension of Kamala Harris as the party’s presidential nominee.
“To think that someone who looks like her, someone of South Asian descent, is going to be, perhaps, the president, the most powerful person in the world,” Madhure began, pausing to visualize the image. “That’s just… well, it’s just unimaginable.”
Madhure and hundreds of other “desis,” as South Asians living abroad often call themselves, gathered at a community center ahead of Monday’s main convention session, responding enthusiastically as politicians with similar roots described how their election had marked a first for their own communities in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona and other states.
“It doesn’t matter what color or race you are, you have to prove that you are capable and that you deserve the job,” said Madhure, a delegate from New Hampshire. “To me, Kamala has proven that she is capable and that she can do this job. But she has to continue to prove it.”
The potential political breakthrough is a cause for particular joy for those of South Asian descent — India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other nations caught between Asia and the Middle East.
Harris was born in Oakland, the son of a Jamaican father, Donald Harris, professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University, and Shyamala Gopalan, an Indian-born academic who went to UC Berkeley to pursue a PhD in nutrition and endocrinology.
In a meeting with Black journalists last month, former President Trump suggested that his Democratic opponent had somehow been hypocritical by identifying as Indian-American for years, only to “turn black” later in life, something he said showed a lack of respect.
Harris’s Black and South Asian supporters were baffled by the idea of a white man dictating the identity of his multiracial opponent. They did not have to repeat what history clearly shows: that Harris has for decades identified with both her Black and Indian roots.
“Trying to put everyone into a specific category, saying they can’t have demographics and values that fit with other identities, just doesn’t make any sense,” said Bianca Shah, 24, a Maryland resident and Indian-American who attended the convention. “There’s so much mixing of races and ethnicities in our country.”
“She’s African-American and Indian,” said Shah, a health consultant, pointing to multiple indicators of Harris’ Indian heritage, starting with her middle name, Devi (goddess in Sanskrit). “And she had an immigrant mother, who took her to India several times and instilled in her values and traditions that we all recognize,” Shah said.
Harris explained to Asian Week in 2003 that as a child from the East Bay in California, being bicultural seemed perfectly natural to her. “I grew up with a strong Indian culture and was raised in a black community,” she said. “All my friends were black and we would get together to cook Indian food and paint our hands with henna, and I never felt uncomfortable with my cultural background.”
This is something that is increasingly expected in the United States, particularly in diverse states like California. In 2020, as the U.S. Census made it easier to identify multiple racial and ethnic ancestries, the percentage of multiracial Americans increased to 33.8 million, or 10.2% of the total population.
Regardless of which of the two major candidates wins the presidential election, a daughter of the South Asian diaspora will occupy the White House: Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, will become America’s second lady if the Republicans win. Usha Vance grew up in San Diego, the daughter of two academics who emigrated from India.
“Whether it’s Kamala Harris or Usha Vance … there’s a pride that the community has made it into the mainstream of American politics,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), who represents one of California’s largest Native American districts.
(Other Indian-Americans also made their way into the 2024 campaign, with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, vying for the GOP nomination.)
According to Chintan Patel, executive director of the Indian American Impact Fund, in 2016 there were fewer than 50 Indian and Asian Americans in elected office nationwide. By 2024, that number had risen to more than 300.
Congress already has five members with South Asian roots: Khanna and fellow Democrat Ami Bera of Elk Grove, Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.). And with a vacant Democratic-leaning seat, Virginia state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam is likely to become the sixth South Asian in the House.
A community that once focused more on academics and professional life is increasingly comfortable running for office, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a UC Riverside political science professor who studies Asian American voters. And unlike previous generations, Indian American candidates are running without anglicizing their names.
“We are a long way from being a post-racial society,” Ramakrishnan said, “but there seems to be greater social acceptance for Hindus and Indians with distinctive names to run for public office.”
Some South Asians have plastered a meme on their T-shirts on social media: “In Sanskrit, Kamala means LOTUS. In America, Kamala means POTUS.”
Ramakrishnan estimates there are about 2.1 million Indian-American adults eligible to vote in the United States. Some of that population is concentrated in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Trump has won over some members of the community with his warm embrace of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose profile is seen by some as similar to that of his former US counterpart: a strongman willing to challenge political norms.
Ramaswamy is perhaps the highest-profile Indian-American Trump surrogate. At campaign events across the country and on social media, he attacks Harris as a big-government liberal who would undermine “exceptionalism and merit.”
Those views were not heard among the Indian Americans who gathered to support Harris in Chicago this week. Some of them, like Harini Krishnan, got involved in politics at least in part out of disgust with Trump’s rage, particularly his tirades against the ills some immigrants bring to the United States.
Harris’s late entry into the race sparked a wave of support. A call for entries by South Asian Women for Harris drew 10,000 participants. That, in turn, produced 500 new volunteers and $285,000 in donations, according to Krishnan, national director of South Asians for Harris.
The Indian American Impact Fund was one of the first organizations to endorse Harris in the hours after President Biden dropped out of the race. The group launched desipresidente.com “To mobilize and empower the South Asian American electorate to elect the first Indian American president.” Their slogan: “Kamala ke Saath (We are with Kamala).”
In Chicago, South Asian journalists have arrived to cover the convention and Harris, the woman who speaks fondly of her holidays in Chennai, south of Mumbai, where she took long walks and received gifts from her grandfather, a civil servant.
People in India have been making offerings to gods and erecting small temples in Harris' name, said Lalit Jha, chief U.S. correspondent for Indian news agency PT1.
“People there are watching this very closely. They are excited,” Jha said.
Shah, of Maryland, remembers the passionate phone call she received from her “Ba” — her Indian-born grandmother now living in the United States — the night the news reported that Harris had become the Democratic nominee.
“She said, 'Kamala, that was… my “My mother's name!'” Shah recalled. “Can you believe it?”
Her first convention will feature Deepa Sharma, a small-town Bay Area attorney. The California delegate said she felt connected in part because Harris knew her parents’ Indian restaurant in San Francisco. Sharma attended the same law school (now known as UC Law of San Francisco) as the Democratic nominee.
Sharma said she remains anxious about a possible Trump victory, but the 36-year-old from Lafayette, California, said she feels hopeful in a way that reminds her of the first presidential election she voted in.
“It may sound corny, but in 2008, with Obama, I had that sense of hope,” Sharma said. “Now, I feel excited again, to be able to organize around a sense of hope … and to feel like I’m for something and not just against something.”
Seema Mehta, Times staff writer In Chicago contributed to this story.
