How Kamala Harris and JD Vance appeal to Hindu voters

(RNS) — In the days since President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, enthusiasm among Democrats for Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid has soared. 

But Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, may face a challenge closer to home: skepticism among some Hindu voters who say she has failed to connect with them in her previous campaigns for president and vice president.

Though Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was an Indian-born Hindu, Harris identifies with her father’s Christian faith and has long downplayed her connections to her mother’s faith, making much more of her identity as a Black woman. During the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign, she received criticism from Hindu Americans on both the left and the right for not engaging more with Hindu voters, the majority of whom are of Indian descent.

It’s not only Harris who has fences to mend. Though according to limited surveys Hindu Americans favor Democrats by a 70-30 margin, those with ties to the Democratic Party have expressed concern over the party’s lack of engagement, especially with Indian American Hindus who have retained strong ties to India. While the Biden administration has gone to lengths to develop a close relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, holding a state dinner at the White House in 2023, many rank-and-file Democrats and Indian Americans of all religious backgrounds have criticized Modi for his BJP party’s right-wing policies, particularly in promoting a cultural nationalism that is often interpreted in the West as Hindu nationalism.

Meanwhile, the Republicans under Trump made a point of reaching out to Hindus, most visibly in 2019, when then-President Trump joined Modi onstage at a packed rally in Houston’s NRG Center.

Now, the GOP has new opportunities to engage Hindu voters in Usha Vance, the wife of vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance and a practicing Hindu who has openly talked about her faith.

While Usha Vance’s Hindu faith may not be a selling point among Trump’s evangelical Christian base, the Trump-Vance campaign and Republican National Committee are sure to deploy her strategically to engage with Hindu voters, particularly among some older (and wealthier) Hindu Americans who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but switched to Trump in 2016.

Harris is running a completely different campaign from Trump’s, with an opposite vision for America. Yet Hindu voters may still yet be genuinely torn between a ticket headlined by Harris, a politician of mixed Black and Indian background, and Vance, who promotes white Christian nationalism but brings with him the possibility of the country’s first Hindu second lady.

In the 100-plus days before Election Day, Harris has an opportunity to claim these Hindu voters, but she must do more to advertise her Hindu roots, particularly to Hindu American voters living in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Michigan. We may hear more than we have in these places about her mother’s faith in the narrative she will present to voters between now and November.