As Usha Vance dazzles, Hindu Americans leaning further right than ever

(RNS) — When Ohio Sen. JD Vance was introduced at the Republican national convention this week as Donald Trump’s newly designated running mate, the most notable debut for many Americans was not the senator but the woman at his side: Vance’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, a Hindu and the Telugu-speaking daughter of Indian immigrants.

She is at first glance a surprising partner for Vance, who made his name as a champion of the white American underclass and has talked baldly of integrating his Christian faith into governance. But in a Fox News interview recorded before Trump tapped Vance as his choice for veep, the senator, a former atheist who converted as an adult to Catholicism, credited Usha’s faith with inspiring his own spiritual journey. 

But Usha Vance may also lend momentum to a rightward shift among Indian Americans and Hindus in particular, who, political analysts say, may be coming to view a Trump presidency as more receptive to the group’s political, economic and foreign policy goals. 

In a survey of Asian American voters released by four advocacy organizations on July 10, Democratic identification among Indian American voters had decreased to 46% from 54% in 2020, when the same survey was sent out, as Republican affiliation increased from 16% to 23%. Support for President Joe Biden dropped significantly, from 65% in 2020 to 48% this year, and support for former President Trump increased just slightly, from 28% to 31%. 

Importantly, 68% of Indian American voters in the July survey reported worrying about crime, harassment and discrimination, possibly related to a series of temple vandalism incidents that has shaken the Hindu American community over the past year.

State Sen. Niraj Antani of Ohio, the first Hindu Republican elected official in American history and a Vance ally, told RNS that U.S.-India relations were good under Trump, who stayed neutral on many Indian political issues. Biden, by contrast, has criticized India’s Citizenship Amendment Act and the abrogation of Article 370, both controversial measures that have helped to brand Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a Hindu nationalist.

In 2019, then-President Trump held a Texas rally with Modi called “Howdy, Modi!,” a grand spectacle held in Houston’s NRG Stadium, one of the largest receptions for a foreign leader in the United States ever. 

On the other hand, Antani said, many Hindu Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with “the progressive left’s demonization of Hindus,” in which he included a Democratic-led attempt to add caste to an anti-discrimination statute in California. In a Democratic congressional primary in Pittsburgh earlier this year, Bhavini Patel, an Indian American candidate, was said to be hurt by her appeals to reputed Hindu nationalist donors, which may have led to her loss to the incumbent, progressive Summer Lee. 

“In the far left circles, there’s a hierarchy in what you would call woke politics of religion,” said Anang Mittal, head of digital communications for House Speaker Mike Johnson. “Because a lot of people on the left are opposed to Modi and opposed to Modi’s sort of version of Hindu nationalism, they have decided that any expression of Hinduism is essentially related to Hindu nationalism. That’s going to be very hard to move away from, because the diaspora and India are linked.”

Hindu American voters will now be treated to images of the Vances’ Hindu wedding and the knowledge that Vance has adopted his wife’s typically Hindu vegetarian diet.

Though not an elected official, Usha Vance also immediately becomes the most prominent Hindu in the American political firmament, replacing Vivek Ramaswamy, the pharmaceutical entrepreneur who made waves last year as the first Republican Hindu presidential candidate, and Tulsi Gabbard, who served briefly in the U.S. Congress as the first Hindu elected to that body. (Vice President Kamala Harris, raised in both Hinduism and Christianity, identifies as a Christian.)

But several analysts said Usha-related gains for Republicans would be limited. Already Hinduphobic online trolls have come out in droves to deride her Hindu identity. 

Support for Trump from the Hindu community, said Mittal, often looks larger than it is. “Online, there’s a lot of overlap between people who support Modi and who support Trump, but a lot of them live in India. They tend to be online people. That doesn’t translate to real-world votes.”

Rather than latching on to the hope that Hindus will be transferring their loyalty to the GOP wholesale, he calls the Democrats the “default party for a lot of the Indian diaspora” (indeed, Usha Vance was long a registered Democrat) and said he expects that to continue. 

Many Hindus, Mittal added, are uninterested in attaching their political identity to their faith. The International Society of Krishna Consciousness, familiarly known as Hare Krishnas, are one of the largest sects in the Vedic Hindu tradition in the United States. On Tuesday (July 16), the group released a statement articulating its position as a nonpolitical entity that “does not support or endorse any candidate, or any party, for any political office, anywhere in the world.”

While Trump has been able to bond with practicing Hindus,”more than secularized Hindus,” Mittal said he finds it less important which party Hindus call home than that they do participate in the political life of the country.

“It’s not a Republican or Democrat thing, especially as far as my religion goes,” he said. “I’m very proud of not just people on the Republican side, but on the Democrat side, who do believe in their past, their traditions and values. I don’t think Hinduism has to be a right or left thing. And if it does become that, that’s a bigger problem.”

“What Usha said hit home,” said Suhag Shukla, lifelong Democrat and the executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy organization. “She said, ‘I grew up in a religious household, and I know that the Hindu faith made my parents who they are. They made them good people.’ I think that just really resonates with so many of us that grew up in Hindu households. We know the power of the force of good that is encapsulated through our culture and our values.

“I think it’s a great time to be a young Indian American and a young Hindu American, because there are so many positive role models,” Shukla added. “Not that it’s fair to make anyone who’s in a high profile an ambassador of the community, but that’s what we’ve kind of become, whether we like it or not.”

But Shukla said she hopes that Republicans and Democrats alike see Hindu voters as concerned not only with foreign policy, but with bread-and-butter American interests such as crime prevention, taxes and inflation. 

She pointed to a statistic showing 42% of Indian Americans reported not being contacted by either major political party. These voters are highly engaged, she said, and tend to live in purple districts or states, where, though Hindus make up less than 2% of the American public nationally, they can swing an election.

“I think it’s quintessentially an American story, right?” said Shukla. “Every new group that comes in, whether they were Irish, whether they were Italian, whether they were Jewish, whether they were Catholic, they’ve had to punch above their weight and fight to get their place at the table. We’ve done that, and we’re seeing that now it’s our turn. We are also as much a part of the fabric that makes America.”