Kamala Harris’s “American Journey”: Caste, Global Mobility & State Power
As the Democratic VP nominee Kamala Harris is celebrated by South Asian communities, Kohli reflects on intertwined caste, class, and imperial forces that have fueled her ascent to global power.
Image: CNN
Scrolling through social media since August, I have not been able to escape Kamala Aunty. As soon as Kamala Harris was announced as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Instagram was exploding with stories of wistful admiration —Indian-Americans wishing their younger selves had also known someone who grew up eating daal, idli, and rice in a presidential race. They lauded the moment as pivotal for a new Indo-American diasporic history. Twitter offered no respite: Bindi activists fervently celebrating the prospect of Hindu festivals at the White House and butter chicken food trucks at every corner, relishing the mirch and masala Harris would bring with her position. Even TikTok creators were dancing to medleys of Dougie and Bhangra.
Such excitement comes as no surprise. Kamala Devi Harris’s VP nomination is certainly a ray of hope for many, amid growing global fascism and a pandemic. Her nomination bears tremendous significance for Black and South Asian women and BIPOC representation in the United States. Born in Oakland, California to civil rights activists—the late Tamil-Brahmin Shyamala Gopalan Harris (born in India), and Donald J. Harris (born in Jamaica)—Kamala Harris is the product of intertwined global histories shaped by caste power, global mobility, and imperialism.
It is worth noting that over much of her public career, Harris has emphasized her identity as a Black woman, while only recently emphasizing her Indian heritage. This may owe, at least in part, to deep anti-Black sentiments within diasporic Indian communities, who have held back support from her past campaigns.
In this article, I will not dwell on whether Harris deserves to be voted into office or examine the value of electoral politics. It is not up for discussion that a Biden-Harris ticket is immeasurably better than another fascist Trump-Pence term. Instead, I trace Harris’s own journey to power through the lens of caste and class, delving into her Indo-Jamaican heritage and family history of global mobility. I analyze the inner workings of caste and class power within the US-Indian diaspora while reflecting on the role of upper-caste Indian-Americans in aiding global fascism through the US-Israel-India strategic axis. My aim is to demonstrate the conflation of ‘Indian-ness’ with Brahmanism in the diaspora, the flexibility of caste across national borders, and the limits of representative politics in attaining the liberation Harris herself promises to deliver.
Understanding Caste Power as State Power
In a 2003 interview with the San Francisco Weekly, Shyamala Gopalan, Kamala Harris’s mother, announced proudly—
In Indian society we go by birth. We are Brahmins, that is the top caste. Please do not confuse this with class, which is only about money. For Brahmins, the bloodline is the most important. My family, named Gopalan, goes back more than 1,000 years.
A young Kamala Harris with her mother Shyamala Gopalan. Image: CNN
Her seemingly throwaway line reveals one of the Indian diaspora’s best-kept secrets: caste matters. With her Tamil-Iyer-Brahmin heritage, Harris's bloodline is upper-caste (or Savarna). While Indian diasporic writers such as Anand Giridharadas hail Harris’s birth as a momentous breaking of her family’s ancestral affiliation with the caste system, her mother’s remarks remind us that caste continues to be claimed by diasporic elites as a source of pride.
The historical and contemporary configurations of caste indicate that its implications run much deeper than pride. Caste is a highly contested formulation, with scholars continuing to spill much ink trying to pin down the features of caste practices. One way to deduce someone’s caste is through their surname, which explains Gopalan’s emphasis on her family name. The caste system is hierarchical and Brahmins occupy the top spot. They are perceived as “purer” and more worthy of power than lower castes and those deemed outside of the caste system.
Historically, caste has been employed as a tool to derive value from the state by organizing itself around it, primarily through taxation and the manufacturing of knowledge. Anthropologist Jefferey Witsoe highlights how caste became rather essential to colonial “governmentality”, helping the colonial regime to “survey, manage, and regulate the population under its control”.
Under colonialism, upper-caste zamindars (feudal landlords) magnified their power as the British introduced systems of land tenure to support colonial rule and facilitate governance through a class of rural elites and bureaucracy. These zamindars held complete political control of the villages they collected revenue from. Hence, social power emanating from upper caste status was also translated to class power and the accumulation of intergenerational wealth.
In addition to leveraging caste for political power, Brahmins manufactured knowledge and histories in their favor during the colonial period. In her essay, “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi,” Uma Chakravarti writes that the British relied upon the “conservative indigenous literati, also known as Brahmin Pandits, to reconstruct Indian histories”. Brahmins took an active role in reshaping a past that flowed from their own religious texts and their social and political concerns. Part and parcel of this reconstructed past was a “glorious Hindu past,” characterized by Sanskrit and a Hindu religion centered upon scriptures, the Vedas and Upanishads.
Over the years, Brahmanism has become synonymous with Hinduism, which in turn has become synonymous with “Indianness” and “South Asia,” in the US, erasing other religions, especially Islam. In his essay, “One Step Outside Modernity: Caste, Identity Politics, and the Public Sphere”, Dalit historian M.S.S. Pandian argues that upper caste anti-colonial nationalism in British India relied upon a conflation of Hinduism as Indianness, asserting, “what gets encoded here as Indian culture is what is culture to the Brahmins/upper castes”.
All of this to prove one point: caste power is about capturing state power.
Imperialism, Caste and Global Mobility
Many question the validity of Harris’s identity as a first-generation Indo-Jamaican in the US. They argue that Harris’s Jamaican heritage is not “Black” enough as her family did not experience enslavement in the US while believing that her Blackness cancels out her Indian-ness. Such xenophobic narratives dismiss an identity Harris shares with thousands of people in the Caribbean. Examining Harris’s Indo-Jamaican identity in the US, in comparison to Indo-Jamaicans in the Caribbean, is key to understanding her ascent to global power.
As scholar Lisa Lowe writes in the Intimacies of Four Continents, the rise in indenture servitude coincided with the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. This was a strategic move by the British empire to stave off the Black revolution while continuing to reap the benefits of resource extraction by stolen labor. While the British claimed to transition from “primitive slavery” to “free labour”, the conditions of indentured labourers (derogatorily known as “coolies”) were far from egalitarian. Coolies from India, China, and the Pacific worked on sugar, cotton, and tea plantations and rail construction projects in colonies around the world, including the Caribbean.
“Harris’s family illustrates how caste, class, and global mobility are linked through access to state jobs, upper class education, social networks and opportunities for immigration. ”
From the 1830s to 1917, Britain transported two million indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent (mainly Madras and Bengal) to 19 colonies. The labourers sought to escape poverty and famine, phenomena carefully constructed by imperial arrogance itself. They were forced into bonded contracts to work abroad for five years or more, in return for wages and land. In reality, these promises never materialized. About 37,000 indentured labourers were sent from British India to Jamaica, suffering harsh sea journeys and inhumane working conditions. The vast majority of them were not from upper-caste elites, who are protected by centuries of intergenerational wealth but from caste-oppressed communities.
Indentured labourers from India in Trinidad and Tobago. Between 1845 and 1917 approximately 2 million Indians were transported to British colonies, including to the Caribbean. Image: Media Diversified
Indians are the largest ethnic minority in Jamaica today. However, Harris does not descend from this lineage of indentured labour. She is the daughter of a Jamaican emigree academic and therefore part of a more skilled Jamaican diaspora in the US. Power and privilege emanating from her caste and class separate Harris from those with lineages of indentured servitude.
Harris’s family illustrates how caste, class, and global mobility are linked through access to state jobs, upper-class education, social networks, and opportunities for immigration. Harris’s grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, one of her “favorite people in the world,” was an imperial officer—a position which made possible his daughter’s immigration to the US.
Gopalan was a life-long civil servant, first in the Imperial Secretariat Service of British India, and then the Central Secretariat Service post-Independence. In her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, Harris calls Gopalan “an original Indian Freedom Fighter”. However, some of her close family members highlight how any public opposition to British rule would have meant the loss of Gopalan’s job and livelihood.
As a child, Harris visited Gopalan in Lusaka, Zambia while he was stationed as Director of Relief Measures and Refugees. Gopalan managed the refugee crisis triggered by British imperialism which brought Rhodesians (now Zimbabweans) to British-occupied Zambia.
The crisis began when Cecil Rhodes brought the British South Africa Company and British South Africa Police to extract minerals from the Matabeleland. After several insurrections, huge Rhodesian contributions to the British Empire during WWII, and growing African nationalism, Zambia won independence in 1964-1965. Britain retaliated by enacting harsh sanctions and successfully petitioning the United Nations to embargo the new nation while funding guerrilla wars causing massive destruction and the refugee crisis. Ironically, a bureaucrat from the former jewel of the British Empire was entrusted to manage the fallout of its last vestiges. It cannot be ignored that it was Gopalan’s caste and class status which facilitated his ascent up the bureaucratic ladder to a high post in the Imperial Services and then the Government of India.
The same caste and class power, along with Cold War politics, opened the door for Shyamala Gopalan to immigrate to the US for her education. Following a prolonged period of exclusionary practices, Cold War tensions pushed the US to weaken its immigration restrictions, in an attempt to compete with the USSR’s advances in space technology.
Shyamala Gopalan immigrated to the US in 1958 to pursue a Master’s degree in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1963, John F. Kennedy overhauled the immigration system to attract “talented people who would be helpful to our economy and our culture,” mainly to meet the demand for medical personnel. The US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed barriers to immigration for highly skilled workers. ‘Highly skilled’ Indian workers, of course, tended to be born into caste-class privilege, which in turn facilitated their global mobility. Thus, around Harris’s birth in 1964, immigration was increasingly being structured along class lines and informed by capitalist interests.
“Global mobility is informed by the braided histories of caste, imperialism, capitalism and migration.”
Kamala Harris is the product of a “triply selected” Indian diaspora, as described by Chakravorty, Kapur, and Singh in The Other One Percent. This group of migrants is first selected through the caste hierarchy in India that determines access to land ownership and higher education. Next, they are selected by an examination and education-financing system that limits the number of people eligible for immigration to the States. Lastly, they are selected by a capitalist immigration system selectively admitting those who match the country’s needs.
In 1916, the great Dalit leader and architect of the Indian constitution, B.R. Ambedkar wrote, “If Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world problem.” Although much of the Indian diaspora seeks to relegate caste to the past and to the geographic boundaries of the subcontinent, caste oppression continues to rear its ugly head in the diaspora. Global mobility is informed by the braided histories of caste, imperialism, capitalism, and migration. Harris’s quest for power is enabled by her caste and class power, in turn, informed by historical caste-hegemony, imperial service, and higher education.
“Top Cop” Harris on the Global Stage
Mindi Kaling invited Kamala Harris to cook Masala Dosas, a South Indian dish, while they bonded over their South Indian heritage. Image: Connected to India
Ironically, many Indians in the US lauding Harris’s nomination are the same ones who were most vocal in their support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) prison and police abolitionist uprisings this summer. They were religiously posting infographics about the history of police and protests, writing long Facebook statements about their privilege as Indians in the US, and hosting acapella and dance team fundraisers for charities benefiting BLM.
Much has been made of the fact that while Harris has rhetorically supported an end to the carceral state and policies antithetical to Black liberation, her actions do not match her words. As District Attorney (DA) of San Francisco, Harris increased DA drug arrests by 25% within just three weeks of her appointment. She went on to introduce California’s inhumane “three strikes” law, in which a second felony resulted in a harsher sentence and a third felony led to an automatic 25 years to life imprisonment. She also created the egregious anti-truancy program to threaten parents with legal prosecution and appealed a judge’s decision to make the death penalty unconstitutional in California. Although Harris has stated that she regrets many of her past actions, this does little to erase their impact.
While serving as California’s “top cop,” Harris allowed law enforcement agencies to use secret surveillance technology to monitor protests and BIPOC activists. Harris’s record on protecting religious freedoms is similarly weak. For years, Sikh activists have been pushing Harris to apologize for dismissing a lawsuit filed by a Sikh man who had been denied a job as a state corrections officer for refusing to shave his facial hair, a pillar of his faith.
Perhaps her foreign policy is one of the reasons Indians in the US diaspora see Harris as an ally and are willing to reach into their deep pockets for her this Presidential election cycle. Harris seeks to return to a liberal internationalist world order when American hegemony ran unchecked, “security” was the utmost priority, and “repressive and corrupt dictators” were not allowed to stay in office. She has joined a Presidential campaign that employs an Islamaphobic Hindutva sympathizer. Unsurprisingly, Harris has stayed largely silent on the rise of Hindutva forces both in India and the US.
While the US and India descend into parallel near-fascist regimes, many view Harris as a bridge between the two countries, with Harris herself increasingly pandering to the Indian diaspora in recent years. One reason Harris’s Indo-Jamaican heritage is claimable by the Indian diaspora in the US is her Brahmin caste-status. It redeems her in their eyes, rendering her Indo-Caribbean identity legible and leverageable to their desire for political capital. The Indian-ness we so celebrate in Kamala is Brahminism.
At a moment of heightened caste-based oppression in India and the diaspora, Harris’s silence on the rise of Hindutva mirrors that of the Democratic Party, seeking to appease the upper-caste Indian lobby and the “triply selected” Indian diaspora. The growth of the Indian lobby in the US is reflected in the Hindu American Foundation and Republican Hindu Coalition. Although Harris has occasionally spoken out against the Modi government, she has not taken any material action to make her rhetoric a reality. In fact, her support of AIPAC and Israeli “security” contradicts any rhetorical statement against Hindutva fascism, considering that India’s state-sanctioned violence against Muslims and caste-oppressed people is funded by the Israeli arms industry.
Just as Modi sees the diaspora as key to his foreign policy, their utility to US politicians is equally crucial. The continued influence of the Indian diaspora on Biden’s campaign is apparent. From posting about India's independence day on Instagram to his “Indian-American agenda” and reticence to critique Modi’s fascism, Biden actively panders to the Indian diaspora. Harris’s nomination for Vice President can also be seen as part of this trend to appease upper-caste diasporic Indian elites.
From Representative Politics to Liberation?
“History shows us that rhetorical promises for equity rarely yield material action.”
There is no question that Kamala Harris’s career has broken glass ceilings and barriers. However, I would like to end with Black scholar-activist Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor’s recent tweet on Harris’s nomination:
Symbolic firsts are no substitute for substantive gains. We have been celebrating firsts for fifty years but the gains for the few almost never translate into a better life for many.
Our discussion shows how Harris’s ascent to global bureaucracy is fueled by her caste and class power and shaped by deeply oppressive histories of migration, imperialism, and capitalism. As Taylor points out, we must question exactly what “progress” the Biden-Harris ticket will bring domestically and internationally. History shows us that rhetorical promises for equity rarely yield material action. We must continue to trace how and where power accumulates, in order to imagine a truly liberatory future.
Tanvi Kohli is a recent graduate of Washington University in St. Louis where her research focused on how the Indian diaspora in the US leverage their identity to consolidate state power.