Tulsi, Kamala, and Indian Americans

One of the reasons the earlier immigrants have come to America was the freedom to live their lives in the pursuit of liberty and happiness. You can be who you want to be in personal achievements and contribute to nation building. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Declaration of Independence.

The guarantor of such rights is assured through electing the right candidates to uphold that principle.

As Indian Americans, we have a natural affinity towards anyone that resonates India and things Indian. The discussions are taking place in American Indian homes across the nation about whom to support between Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and Senator Kamala Harris.

No Indian American wants to mess up what has been good for us; a cohesive America where all of us can function together for common good, and want to elect the candidates who uphold the dream of Martin Luther King Jr., to treat every human for his/her character and not his/her faith or skin color.

Kamala is progressive and inclusive in her approach. She will not buy into the prejudices that hold the nation back.  We need to explore if she has faced exclusion from Indian Americans while growing up because her father was black. Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal have a reduced image among Indians because many of them believed their rise was due to conversion which proved to be wrong. Raja Krishnamoorthy, Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna and others have made it.

Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, has a questionable record that she needs to address. She seems to be prejudiced against fellow Americans who are Muslims and perhaps LGBTQ community and not sure who else. You cannot build a peaceful and prosperous nation with such an attitude, in the end, everyone lives in apprehension.

She has an affinity for authoritarians like Hafez Assad, Putin, Modi, and Trump. She is in the wrong party; she belongs to the exclusive Republican Party rather than the all-inclusive Democratic party.

Vox.com writes in an article about Tulsi, “Gabbard’s fall from grace in the Democratic Party came in a bizarre fashion: She picked a series of high-profile fights with the Obama administration over foreign policy. Gabbard was an exception. As early as January 2015, she started going on every cable channel that would have her — including Fox News — and bashing Obama’s policy on terrorism. She sounded indistinguishable from a Republican presidential candidate.”

She was pushing Obama to acknowledge the oxymoron phrase, Radical Islam, without realizing that Radicals exists in every group of people and Islam has nothing to do with it, if she did not get this, I would be happy to coach her or she can read the book “American Muslim Agenda.”  Here is a video made in June 2016 about the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsnqLkRNI4U

In a tweet on Oct 1, 2015, she praised Putin, “Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did.” After visiting Assad, she came back and parroted the regime’s line that there was no difference between the mainstream anti-Assad rebels and ISIS.” She could have asked Modi to apologize to fellow Indians for the massacre of nearly 2000 Indians particularly Muslims as a part of repentance.

Many a parent inadvertently poison their kids against fellow Americans, without realizing that when their kids grow up to be adults, they have to work with the very people they were told to keep away from, it must be painful for these men and women to form trustful relationships.  Not sure how much of brainwashing her father has done to her to hold such views against LGBTQ and Muslim communities.

I urge the Hindu Americans to look for candidates who will build a bridge between fellow Americans, at the end of the day, we owe it our children, grandchildren and ourselves to have a cohesive America, where all of us can live in harmony and not in suspicion of each other.