Days before Biden dropped out of the presidential race, a poll by Asian Pacific Islander American Voting (APIAVote) showed a 19 percent drop in support for Biden among South Asian Americans. Now, with Indian Americans at the top of the Democratic presidential list, South Asian activists’ phones “haven’t stopped ringing.”
“We’re experiencing an outpouring of interest like we’ve never seen before,” said Neha Dewan, founder of the South Asians for Biden 2020 movement. “Our phones are not stopping. We’re getting hundreds of messages. We’re overwhelmed.”
Anurima Bhargava, founder and director of Anthem of Us and one of the organizers of the “South Asian Women for Harris” Zoom call, said it’s been a “tough year” galvanizing people to vote for Biden.
That all changed when Vice President Harris began running for president.
“I think it’s been a tough year trying to really lift people’s spirits, young and old, and I think what we’ve seen in the last two weeks is that there really is room for hope in a number of different ways,” Bhargava said.
South Asian organizers hosted dozens of events across the country over the course of two weeks, including phone banking, door-to-door canvassing and letter-writing in support of Harris. In the first few days after Harris announced her candidacy, both South Asian men and women hosted Zoom calls that drew tens of thousands of people.
“We’ve already launched phone banks in Pennsylvania and we have close to 300 phone banks and volunteers scheduled to sign up by the end of this week,” said Chintan Patel, executive director of Indian American Impact. “The energy has been incredible.”
South Asians are also excited about the multi-ethnic coalition being forged around Harris.
“I didn’t expect people to react to Kamala the way they did, especially men, white men,” said Divya Sarkar, a leader of They See Blue, a South Asian group working to block votes in battleground states. “So I was really, really surprised in a good way, and I’m really pleased.”
Former President Trump has stepped up his racist attacks against Harris, including new claims that she is trying to hide her black identity.
“Donald, we see you as a racist xenophobe trying to pit one community against another with your divisive and trashy rhetoric,” Harini Krishnan, one of the co-chairs of South Asians for Harris, told The Hill. “Kamala Harris is a Black woman and a South Asian American woman who has proudly and repeatedly spoken about both her heritage and roots and represents our community in every way she is.”
South Asian groups have rejected Trump’s attacks, saying he is “trying to divide” communities of color but “will not succeed.”
“Trump has been part of a concerted effort to either erase race or use it to divide America. Yesterday, he tried and failed again,” Bhargava added. “Vice President Kamala Harris, and we the American people, are so much more than he could ever imagine.”
Why do South Asian voters matter?
According to the 2020 census, there are approximately 6.5 million South Asian people living in the United States.
Shekhar Narasimhan, co-founder of the AAPI Victory Fund, estimates there are around 750,000 Indian American voters in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin.
Michigan and Georgia have more South Asian voters than they won in the last election. Pennsylvania has 85,000 South Asian voters, a state Biden won by 80,555 votes in 2020. AAPI Data’s August report.
Narasimhan added that around 40% of eligible voters have never voted before.
“What the polls are showing is apathy,” he told The Hill, referring to an APIAVote poll showing a decline in support for Biden. “The change in the top candidates is definitely a positive.”
“I think the question is, how do we get all of those groups that have been apathetic or unenthusiastic or not paying attention to this election and let them know that there’s a first-generation immigrant on the ticket who looks like us, who thinks like us,” Narasimhan said. “That’s what’s happening, and it’s very organic, and it’s really wonderful what’s happening.”
Most of these organizations did not exist before Trump was elected president, but over the past decade they have braced themselves for a moment like this.
Patel said South Asian organizers were “ready to hit the ground running.”
“When I first ran in 2010, none of these groups existed,” Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) said. “The base within the South Asian and Indian American communities was very loose, so I just went out and looked for the few people who were politically engaged, who were more engaged in the donor community, and tried to build that community.”
Organizers and political strategists believe the best way for Harris to continue her momentum in her community and across the country is to focus on how her identity can help her understand the struggles of ordinary Americans.
Your life story is a powerful tool
Many South Asian political activists value Harris’ ancestral identity but don’t want her to focus her campaign solely on that.
“We have to reintroduce her for who she is, which is as a multifaceted American with this origin story and how she understands the issues in your life situation,” Narasimhan said. “How do we make your life better for Americans, including you? But I think the origin story is what resonates with people.”
Pawan Dhingra, a professor of South Asian studies at Amherst College, said Harris “needs to work harder to translate this support to the ballot box.”
“She’s able to talk about issues that people care about, not just in terms of general policy, but from the perspective of how important those issues are to her as an immigrant, as the child of immigrants, as an Indian American.”
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) added that Harris should continue to work on solving the “economic challenges” facing South Asian entrepreneurs and barriers to legal immigration.
Energetic young voters, concerned about Gaza
South Asians and young people of color have been at the forefront of organizing around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to Sree Sreenivasan, a former president of the South Asian Journalists Association who helped organize the “South Asian Men for Harris” Zoom call.
“A particular area of importance to South Asians is the war in Gaza and the genocide that’s happening there,” said Palak Sheth, organizer of the call for “South Asian Women for Harris.”
Nikhil Saval, the first South Asian person elected to the Pennsylvania Senate, said he has seen “diminished support” among South Asians concerned about Biden’s Gaza policy.
“I think one of the strongest emotions I heard from people who participated in the chat was that none of us are really at peace about this massacre and we feel more than powerless, we want to know what she’s going to do about it,” Sheth added.
Harris has not taken a position on the Israel-Hamas war that clearly differs from Biden’s strong support for Israel, which includes continuing to supply weapons to Israel.
But at a news conference after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she expressed concern about the scale of civilian deaths in Gaza and appeared to be more sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians than Mr Biden.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months has been horrific,” Harris said after meeting with Netanyahu in July. “Images of dead children, images of hungry and desperate people fleeing for safety – sometimes forced to flee a second, third or fourth time. We cannot turn a blind eye to these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.”
“I don’t expect Harris to necessarily have a lot to say, but I do think she has already voiced some opinions on this issue that are a little different than what has been brought up so far by the Biden campaign,” Sheth said of Harris’ comments.
Dewan said Biden’s team of South Asian youth supporters is “struggling” to attract young voters because of apathy about the Gaza war and Biden being the incumbent.
Things have changed since Harris became a candidate.
“The response we’ve gotten from the youth teams has been incredible – people who never had an interest or voted before are suddenly showing up and asking how they can get involved,” Dewan told The Hill.
“The biggest concern we heard from youth activists was that they didn’t like the Biden administration’s Gaza war policy, so there’s definitely been a shift,” said Bejay Chakrabarti, a South Asian youth activist who supports Harris. “There are a lot more people joining now.”
“I feel like she’s started listening to us more,” he added.
