When Nimrata (Nikki) Haley married Michael Haley, there was the obligatory Sikh wedding. When Usha Chilukuri married JD Vance, there was the obligatory Hindu wedding. Nikki Haley converted to Christianity while Usha has remained a practicing Hindu. Where on the religious spectrum does Kamala Harris lie? Unlike Nikki Haley who was born to Sikh parents, and Usha Vance who was born to Hindu parents, Harris was born in a mixed marriage—her father was a Jamaican Christian and her mother an Indian Hindu.
Her father had a negligible role in her upbringing; it was her mother, Shyama Gopalan, who really brought her up. But Gopalan realized that she would be bringing up a black girl in America. This was no one else’s realization, it was her self-realization alone. Harris has talked about Hindu rituals as part of her upbringing, but Gopalan quickly sent her to a black church to assimilate and adopt Christianity. Most of the older people that Harris has said who have had an influence on her were black Christian people. It is unclear if Gopalan ever converted to Christianity, although she must have spent a lot of time at the black church. This brings into focus an important point about America.
To aspire to the highest offices in the land (president and vice-president), one has to be from the majoritarian religion, i.e. Christianity. Nikki Haley converted, Usha Vance didn’t need to because she was not running for any office unlike Haley who was running for president. And now, Kamala Harris has converted. The US talks a good game, lecturing the world on religious freedom, while retaining its top spots for Christian people. Barack “Hussein” Obama was mocked relentlessly by Donald Trump for having a Muslim middle name. Well into Obama’s presidency, some 30 per cent of Americans believed that he was a Muslim. He had to prove his Christianity by going to church every week. The US is not a Christian nation. It is a secular nation which strictly separates church from state in its constitution. Yet it practices otherwise when it comes to its top jobs. Unlike the US, the UK is a strictly Christian nation.
The head of state in the UK, i.e. the king must be Christian. Yet the person who rules the country, the prime minister, can be a practicing Hindu, as Rishi Sunak so proved. He also openly flaunted his religion when he was in 10 Downing Street. No wonder many Americans themselves consider the British to be a sophisticated people. What about India? Four of our heads of state, our presidents, have been from a religion other than the majority religion, Hinduism. Three Dr. Zakir Hussain, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, and APJ Abdul Kalam – have been Muslim. Another, Giani Zail Singh, was Sikh. One prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has been Sikh, and one supreme leader of the land, Sonia Gandhi, was Christian.
Yet, the US government continuously chides us for violating religious freedom. We too like the US are a secular state, in whose constitution, church and state are strictly separated as in the US constitution, but we seem to take our secularism more seriously than the US. What right then does the US have to scold us? Practice what you preach is the dictum that they should follow. A hilarious thing. As dissolute a man as Donald Trump is selling Trump Bibles off his web site called Truth Social. Trump hasn’t got religion, it is religion that has got Trump. He is using religion to win the presidency. One of the more notorious photoshoots of his presidency was him waving the Bible in front of a church to quell the Black Lives Matter movement.
His instincts might have been vaguely right, but he got it all wrong, waving the Bible upside down. When will America realize that it will be a better nation if it were not such a hypocrite? Using religion for political gain, which unfortunately happens in India as well. Lecturing Israel not to ground Gaza to dust for the October 7 incident, whereas launching preemptive nation-destroying strikes on unprepared nations like Iraq and Afghanistan for 9/11. America has such a preeminent place to play in the world that were it to self-correct, the world will be a better place. And in the meantime, it should really get rid of the religious freedom report that its State Department issues every year. And if it continues to do so, it should have a special chapter on Trump, who continues to berate non-Protestant people in his own land.
(The writer is an expert on energy and contributes regularly to publications in India and overseas.)