It is a truth universally acknowledged that an Indian-American in possession of gubernatorial dreams must be in want of a name like Nikki or Bobby. If I had a name like that, I would not be in Brooklyn writing some online-only essay, wearing a Uniqlo hoodie. I would probably be in Jackson, Montgomery or Raleigh, wearing a red velvet robe, tweaking my State of the State address. And if my name were Nikki or Bobby, the state of the state would be pukka — sorry, strong.
Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and former Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana are the first Indian-Americans of national political stature and fame. This always seemed to hold a message for the other 3 million of us: You can be anything you want in America, but if that thing is a governor, you’d better be a Southern Republican who converted to Christianity, with a “Gone With the Wind” accent and a super-unmenacing name. (Bonus points for having aided an exorcism, as Jindal has.) For many of us, it was a dispiriting lesson. Most Indian-Americans dwell outside the South, most lean Democratic, most aren’t Christian and — though this is, admittedly, anecdotal — most don’t go by Bobby or Nikki.
On Tuesday night, I watched Haley give the Republican response to the president’s State of the Union address. Which was a remarkable thing: Here was the 43-year-old nonwhite daughter of Sikh immigrants, speaking on behalf of a party whose base is overwhelmingly older and white and whose primary has boiled over with nationalist rage and distrust of immigrants and Muslims. Here was a woman in the tricky position of both speaking for her party and chiding its nativist extremes.
As she spoke, I asked Indian-Americans on Twitter what their Southern-governor names would be. They knew what I was talking about. Dev Purkayastha became Dave Parkhurst. Shree Chauhan became Sherry Chapman. Anil Podduturi and Raja Doddala became Neil Potter and Roger Dodd; Chitra Aiyar and Jayshree Mahtani become Tricia Myer and Jaycee Martin. Shaleen Title tried to raise her odds with Charlene Reagan. My Southern-governor name is Andy Ghiradelli, though after I tweeted it, I was advised that it might be too Catholic — better something Protestant-sounding.
Many Indian-Americans I know nurse some resentment toward Haley and Jindal. It is a complex feeling. Part of it is the generic loathing of inauthenticity that bedevils many leaders — like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush. The religious conversions, the nicknames, the immigration stances: It all seems a little too convenient, too calculated. But in Haley and Jindal’s cases, the feeling is deeper. When Nimrata Randhawa, born to Sikhs, becomes the Methodist politician Nikki Haley, and when Piyush Jindal, born to Hindus, becomes the Catholic politician Bobby Jindal — and when they are the only Indian-Americans who make it to the governor’s mansion — it confirms unuttered suspicions: that the road to brown political success is not via colorblindness but rather via the simulation of whiteness. You worry that certain correlates of whiteness — Methodism, guns, the name Nikki — are needed to compensate for your lack of the actual thing. You fear that figures like the two governors, far from euthanizing the demographically doomed idea of America as a synonym for whiteness, may actually be keeping it on life support.
And then, on Tuesday night, Haley gave her speech. In a party now dominated by Donald Trump’s proposed Muslim-banning, Ted Cruz’s “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark” carpet-bombing threats and Marco Rubio’s “out of place in our own country” nativism, Haley’s words arrived like a cleansing rain: hopeful, inclusive, magnanimous and conservative all at once. She instantly became a Pope Francis for the G.O.P. — a heretic in tone, not in doctrine. And there are times, as the pope seems to understand, when a new spirit breathed into an institution can become its own kind of doctrine.
Haley sounded the necessary Republican notes about the exceptional nature of the country: “The freest and greatest,” the “last, best hope on earth.” But in her words was a theory of American history that went deeper than the a priori “we’re the best” peddled by many of her colleagues. She said her state’s past, like the country’s, wasn’t only “rich” but also “complicated” — an unmistakable allusion to the racial hatred that has proved especially indefatigable in South Carolina. Our history, she said, “proves the idea that each day can be better than the last.” It is a view in which America wasn’t born perfect and corrupted by time, but born corrupt and perfected by time.
When she lamented a “broken” American political system that had lost the public trust, she blamed her fellow Republicans alongside Democrats — an even-handedness that earned her criticism from some G.O.P. talking heads. She alluded to tolerance for homosexuality when she said her party would “respect differences in modern families.” She called a white man a “terrorist.” And back when that terrorist, Dylann Roof, murdered nine people at a prayer meeting in Charleston, Haley famously seized the political moment to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds — a feat that Issac Bailey, a longtime journalist in the state, measured against Ben Carson’s achievements and declared “just as miraculous as successfully separating conjoined twins.”
It was when Haley spoke as “the proud daughter of Indian immigrants” that she most shone. She recalled a humble childhood in the rural South: “My family didn’t look like our neighbors, and we didn’t have much.” She spoke of the communal closeness that helped them to weather tough times and of the dream of self-invention that propelled her climb. And then she trumped Trump, and those others with similar ideas but less instinct for virality. “During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” she said. “We must resist that temptation. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country.”
Who knows whether the speech will be to Haley what a 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote speech was to one Barack Hussein Obama — who, it should be noted, became really successful after returning from Barry to Barack. Elements on the right loathed Ms. Haley’s performance: The professional firebrand Ann Coulter tweeted that “Trump should deport Nikki Haley.” But others remarked that Haley should have run for president in 2016 or should at least be considered as a vice-presidential nominee. She will surely struggle to forge agreement within her party on its tone and its sentiments toward a changing America. But it was thrilling to watch a Southern, Republican, Methodist daughter of Indian Sikhs try something even grander: to create a broader, two-party consensus on the simple, exceptional idea that an American is defined by shared hope, not shared blood.
This is Andy Ghiradelli, and I approve this message.
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