The Bharatiya immigrant identity in the west is fraught with complexities. On one hand, there is an assertion of the Bharatiya identity to spell out one’s unique positioning. On the other end of the spectrum, there is the desire to appease the former colonial masters by appearing as close as possible to their worldview. While the Bharatiya diaspora in the west has started asserting its Bharatiya and Hindu identity, rejecting the colonial mold, certain members of the community still choose to sing to the tunes of the white supremacists.
Republican Presidential candidate from the US Nikki Haley is a classic case in point. Belonging to the American Sikh community, Haley was born to immigrant Sikh parents but later converted to Christianity post-marriage. Another shocking revelation about Haley has come forth – that she listed her race as “White” in her voter registration form in 2001.
The issue of Haley blatantly lying about her race by listing herself as “White” in the US Voter Registration form was raised widely in 2011 when Haley became the first Bharatiya American Governor of the US State of South Carolina. Many American media publications carried the news of Haley’s embarrassing act at that time, calling her behaviour a part of the complicated immigrant experience where the desire to become a part of the mainstream is overwhelming. “For the children of immigrants, the road to acceptance in America can be a bumpy one. There will be pain. There will be embarrassment. There will be relentless, cruel accusations from your brethren that you are assimilating at the expense of your true, cultural heritage. And the stories of the children of immigrants who rise to positions of influence and power are especially inspiring given the challenges before them”, says an article published in 2011 by a website called Mother Jones. The article further discusses the issue of Nikki Haley lying about her race in the voter registration form. It’s hard to miss the condescending tone of these quoted lines where the Bharatiya immigrants are becoming the butt of cruel racist jokes in their wannabe quest to be more white and accepted.
The irony of the whole thing is that Haley in 2011, reportedly signed a new law, as the Governor of South Carolina, that voters present photo identification at the polls, that according to her, would usher in a great degree of accountability and transparency. That is why many media publications at that time carried articles mocking her supposed commitment to making the voting process more transparent and foolproof as she had herself blatantly lied about her race during the voter registration procedure.
In the US system, people are asked to self-identify their race. However, they are not given any official definition of who is included in each group. When Nikki Hailey registered for voting, the options for race reportedly were White, Black/African American, Asian, Hispanic, and Other. Those defending Haley’s listing of her race as White give the argument that since Indian American was never there in the option, Haley listing herself as “White” shouldn’t be really a big deal. This simplistic assessment masks the real import of Haley’s bizarre choice- by listing herself as “white”. She is not just coming across as a wannabe but being a part of public life, is creating a terrible example for other Bharatiya American immigrants who follow her. Her choice essentially sends out a message to Bharatiya immigrants that by pretending to be white, they can easily climb up the ladder of American social and political life and come closer to fulfilling the American dream. That is quite odd coming from someone who bases her entire politics on playing the Sikh immigrant card and capitalizing on her minority woman status.
As Nikki Haley campaigns for the US Presidential elections as a Republican candidate, the debate on her voter form misadventure is rekindled with netizens criticizing her for her “wannabe white person” attitude. Rakesh Krishna Simha, a globally cited defense analyst, whose work has been published by leading think tanks, recently raised this issue on his X handle.
“Nikki Haley listed her race as White on her voter registration form. What a joke she has become after converting to Christianity. How much fairness cream and bleach did this Sikh woman use in her life? She is the female equivalent of Bobby Jindal, another Christian convert who wants to be White. Incidentally, both are Punjabis”, he wrote.
The US lectures every country in the world on minority rights and religious freedom. But its own politics is ruled by the rhetoric of white supremacy and majoritarianism. Any non-white person standing for a political position must bend over backward to prove their allegiance to the causes of white people and their respect for the Judeo-Christian set of values. Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was recently made to feel uncomfortable about his Hindu roots in a CNN Town Hall voters’ interaction held in Iowa. In what seemed like a scripted question, he was asked what would he say to those who said that his religion did not reflect the values of the founding fathers of this country. It’s hard to miss the symbolism. Vivek Ramaswamy is indirectly chided for his Hindu roots, portrayed as a whimsical outsider whereas Nikki Haley is portrayed as representing the ideal immigrant experience. She represents the archetypal Bharatiya immigrant who converts to Christianity and starts presenting themselves as White to fulfill the American dream. This does a great disservice to the cause of Bharatiya immigrants who are struggling to weed out the systematic Bharatphobia and Hinduphobia that has pervaded the American society, politics, and academia.
The Sikh immigrants in the US have a painful history of trying to present themselves as white. This, argue those from within the community, is rather a cover-up for their vulnerability as they seek status and acceptance by distancing themselves from Blacks, as well as other Asian immigrants. It’s their strategy to save themselves from racism, argue the insiders. An article published on the website of a Sikh organization called Kaur Life raises this issue in detail. The article titled “How and why do Sikhs align with whiteness?” delves deep into the psychology of an ambitious immigrant community that seems to have somehow concluded that it can only progress by dissociating itself from its cultural roots.
“Why do we think and act like this? In part, it is because we have been taught to, and we have been rewarded for it by white supremacist structures”. Aligning with whiteness is not the same as having white friends (There’s nothing inherently wrong with having friends who are white). Rather, aligning with whiteness means aligning with a power structure and a culture that is built around protecting and maintaining white power and privilege”, says the article.
The article further argues how the immigrant Sikh community in the west distances themselves from black people and upholds the myth of the model minority. That’s precisely how Nikki Haley presents herself – she brings her Punjabi Sikh immigrant experience into the equation to prove how she and her parents flourished and thrived in the US, despite their distinct racial identity and positioning. What Nikki Haley doesn’t tell her voters is perhaps how she uses conversion to Christianity as a trope to appeal to white Christian voters and conveniently plays up her fabricated “whiteness’, whenever it suits her purpose.
There is something inherently wrong and disturbing about positioning yourself as the champion of the rights of minorities and women and presenting yourself as a white person at the same time. Nikki Haley personifies those contradictions full on.
It would be perhaps apt to mention the historical backdrop of the strange Sikh fascination with whiteness in the US that led to Nikki Haley marking her race as white in the voter registration system. According to various media reports, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1923 in the case United States vs Bhagat Singh Thind that Bharatiyas were officially not white.
Bhagat Singh Thind was an American Sikh immigrant born in Punjab who immigrated to the US in 1913. A judge had granted him naturalized citizenship but that decision was appealed and the case reached the US Supreme Court. Naturalized citizenship in the US at that time was limited to white people so Thind’s legal strategy was to prove he was white. He reportedly argued that the term white applied to Caucasian people and some scientific definitions of the term “Caucasian” included north Bharatiyas since they were descendants of Aryans. He was essentially arguing that as a high caste Hindu born in the northern state of Punjab, he was of Aryan race, and thus eligible for US citizenship as a white person. However, the Supreme Court rejected his arguments and denaturalized his citizenship.
Bhagat Singh Thind’s case is a classic example of Bharatiya Hindus belonging to the Sikh diaspora playing into the hands of colonialists and white supremacists by seeking desperate recognition from the whites. The argument that Thind was a white person since he belonged to the north Bharatiya Aryan race is a part of the colonial tropes and conspiracy theories fabricated by the missionaries and the colonizers to divide Hindu society in the name of caste and demonize Hindu Dharma. The now-discredited Aryan Migration Theory is still invoked by woke propagandists and the stooges of colonialism to break Bharat from within. Thind’s case is a classic example of how the white supremacists controlled the immigrant narrative of those times by creating such conditions that any immigrant wanting to be seen as successful had to pander to the whims and fancies of the colonial masters.
Not much seems to have changed since then as the US Presidential candidates converting to Christianity and flaunting their identity as a wannabe white person still seem to be getting an edge over the likes of Vivek Ramaswamy who stay true to their roots and cultural identity.
