US President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, as the next US ambassador to the United Nations is a landmark for the three million-plus upwardly mobile Indian-American diaspora community. As the first Indian-American to get a Cabinet-level position in the federal government, Ms Haley is an inspiring example, particularly to minority women.
The 2016 election season in the US marks the political ascent of Indian-Americans, with a record five among them winning seats in Congress. Three of these flagbearers are women — Kamala Harris (Democrat of California), Pramila Jaypal (Democrat of Washington) and Tulsi Gabbard (Democrat of Hawaii). Together with Nikki Haley, they are a manifestation of the incredible talent, people skills and commitment to public service which women of Indian origin bring to American politics.
Governor Haley has never shied away from touting her Indian roots as the daughter of Punjabi Sikh migrants. Unlike Bobby Jindal, the former Republican governor of Louisiana who disowned India, Ms Haley has proudly blended her Asian ethnic identity into her persona and harnessed it for international business linkages. The “sub-unit diplomacy” she has engaged with India to attract trade and investment benefits for South Carolina has been striking given her deep gratitude and respect for India and its cultural heritage.
The sight of Governor Haley fighting to control her tears at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 2014 is etched in memory. Here was an American politician and a rising star in the Republican Party telling the world that her faith and beliefs are a seamless amalgam of Western Christianity and Eastern Sikhism. That she carries off her “Indianness” effortlessly despite pressure to conform to a stereotypical mainstream identity in US politics is a tribute to increasing maturity and self-confidence of Indian-Americans.
Instead of getting co-opted into the dominant construct of “whiteness”, Ms Haley represents a confluence of civilisations. Aged just 44, she believes in a syncretic America. She initially dared to critique Donald Trump’s hate-mongering during the presidential election campaign, but later accepted the mantle of serving as his ambassador to the UN out of dedication to larger American national interests.
Governor Haley is a role model for minorities who are struggling to come to grips with institutionalised bigotry. In South Carolina, which has a troubled history of flagrant racist discrimination against people of colour, she has navigated the twin evils of white supremacy and sexism to thrive as a moderate Republican who appeals to a broad cross-section of society. For a woman, that too an Indian-American, to win the trust of voters in a region where majoritarian extremists of the Ku Klux Klan used to run amok is no mean achievement.
Her signature moment in American politics came in 2015 after a white nationalist massacred nine African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolina. The calming influence she brought in the aftermath won universal praise. As a Republican from the Deep South of the US, she had not hitherto challenged the racially insulting and humiliating symbol of the Confederate battle flag flying in the South Carolina Statehouse. But once the Charleston horror occurred with the killer expressing admiration for that flag, Ms Haley won over the state’s legislature to secure the removal of this entrenched object of hate.
For this act of courage, she was branded by conservative extremists as an “immigrant” (she was actually born in the US) who “does not understand American history”. However, Ms Haley was scripting history, not succumbing to the past. It was a political risk to go against accumulated majoritarian bias, but she took the bold step thanks to her ethnic Indian comfort with diversity and tolerance.
From 2017, Ms Haley will be expected to shoulder the burden of tabling resolutions, making interventions and shaping opinions in the sanctum sanctorum of world politics — the UN Security Council. As the holder of the second-most crucial office in American diplomacy after the secretary of state, Ms Haley will be at the centre of international diplomatic jockeying and posturing.
The economic diplomacy and negotiation skills Ms Haley picked up as a state governor while courting governments and private corporations in India, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Britain, France and Japan suggest that she will be a force at the UN headquarters in New York City’s Turtle Bay.
The challenge for Ms Haley is to defend controversial positions of Mr Trump, who is eyed with scepticism in Europe and many other parts of the world. Her conservative convictions favouring free markets, trade and globalisation may need to be shelved as Mr Trump promises to upend formerly sacred norms of American foreign policy.
As an American ambassador to the UN, she has no alternative but to pursue Mr Trump’s “America First” agenda. But her ethnic Indian connection and the US’ expanding strategic partnership with India are likely to enhance New Delhi’s sway in the corridors of the UN. For years, the Indian government has mounted a bipartisan lobbying operation in Washington and New York to shape American policies in New Delhi’s favour. With Nikki Haley in Turtle Bay and five Indian-American Congresspersons on Capitol Hill, India’s cachet in the American foreign policy calculus will grow.
The fact that President-elect Trump chose Ms Haley over other hardline Republican contenders to be America’s top diplomat in the UN is a celebration of her healing and bridge-building qualities that have a sharp Indian ring to them. At a time when the US is being ridiculed in many corners of the world for rejecting liberal and inclusive values, the woman born as Nimrata Randhawa to humble Sikh parents who ran a clothing store after migrating from Punjab is the perfect antidote.
