(RNS) — When former President Donald Trump startled a live audience at the National Association of Black Journalists convention on Wednesday (July 31) with a dubious claim about Vice President Kamala Harris’ multiracial identity, he also, likely unwittingly, tapped into the profound pluralistic theology of Harris’ mother’s Hindu faith.
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” said Trump in response to a question about Harris’ being called a “DEI hire” by Republican opponents. “I didn’t know she was Black, until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black.”
The former president and current GOP candidate’s accounting of Harris’ racial identity was curious, given that American Hindus have at times felt that the vice president has muted her Indian and Hindu heritage in favor of her identity as a Black Baptist, wishing perhaps that Harris would take to heart a reminder she’d heard her immigrant mother, Shyamala Gopalan, that she did not “fall out of a coconut tree.”
But many Americans have long been conscious of Harris’ racial background, as well as her religious identity as a Baptist in an interfaith marriage with a Jew, and regard it as exemplary of modern American religious belonging. This commitment to diversity in her own home arises, some religious observers say, from the deep-rooted pluralism that for many defines Hinduism.
“One of the things that distinguishes the Hindu tradition is its ability to hold multiplicities,” said the Rev. Abhi Janamanchi, senior minister at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalists in Bethesda, Maryland, who refers to himself as a “UU Hindu.” “The Hindu way of being in the world is both, not either-or. We don’t engage in binaries, which is why there’s really no strong belief in heaven or hell or sin and salvation, this life or the next life.
“That’s not how we are spiritually or theologically oriented, which to me, creates an openness and a holy curiosity toward other ways of being, which in turn, only enriches, not diminishes.”
Janamanchi, who draws from multiple religions’ scriptures in the pulpit, was raised in the reform Hindu tradition of Brahmo Samaj before finding Unitarian Universalism as a young adult. Brahmo Samaj, he explained, developed in the 19th century hoping to “eradicate some of the superstitious practices, rituals and customs that sought to run counter to the values of the Hindu tradition.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at George Mason University in Manassas, Va., Jan. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
His own history, he said, allows him to “understand and relate to (Harris’) ability to live and move with integrity in that hyphenated space.”
Harris’ mother came to the U.S. from Tamil Nadu, in southern India, in 1958 as a breast cancer researcher looking for a higher degree at the University of California, Berkeley. There she met Jamaican American economist Donald J. Harris, and after they married Gopalan converted to her husband’s Christianity. But in addition to regularly attending church, she instilled in her two daughters a reverence for Hindu temples.
This combinaton is less radical than it may seem to anyone unfamiliar with Hinduism, said Anantanand Rambachan, a religion professor at St. Olaf College and author of “Pathways to Hindu-Christian Dialogue.”
“In so many of the leading teachers and organizations is a deep affirmation of the figure of Jesus, but a rejection of institutionalized Christianity,” said Rambachan, pointing to Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna and Mahatma Gandhi. “So Jesus as a great teacher, as a guru, many Hindus felt that we could identify with him, but not necessarily with Christianity.
“I’m wondering if her mom did not, in some way, absorb that approach,” said Rambachan, “and therefore didn’t see necessarily any contradiction or problem in having daughters attend the Christian church. She was perhaps not thinking of Christianity so much doctrinally, but as a spiritual religious tradition, and she wanted her children to have that kind of experience.”
Harris has been open about how her mother’s spirituality influenced her own, and Rambachan said it is up to Harris to choose “what that dimension of her identity means to her, and how it would appear in terms of her role as a political leader.”
Part of what she has drawn from her Hindu side is her commitment to social justice, Harris has said, recalling her maternal grandfather’s dedication to the freedom struggle against the British during the Partition of India in the 1940s.
The Rev. Neal Christie, a United Methodist minister who is executive director of the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations, said many Indian immigrants “stand on the shoulders of the Civil Rights Movement,” during which new quotas for immigration were established that allowed Asians to come to the U.S. He points to the relationship forged between Black Americans and Indians schooled in Mahatma Gandhi’s ahimsa, the Sanskrit term for nonviolence.
It is especially significant, then, that Gopalan chose to adopt a traditional Black denomination, the Church of God, for herself and her children, said Christie.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks at Triumph Church, Oct. 25, 2020, in Southfield, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
“This is where we want to celebrate Kamala Harris’ mother,” he said. “The fact that we need to build bridges around racial justice and identity, that her mother made an intentional decision as an upper-caste secular Hindu to choose the Church of God. That’s a prophetic choice.”
Identity politics will not win Harris the election, said Christie, who says it will be important for Harris explain to voters exactly how that background informs her policy toward justice.
“I’d like to think that as she leans into her Indian ancestral identity, she kind of pulls from the very best of what that identity was,” said Christie. “What created her grandfather that gave him the spirit to serve, what created her mother and gave her the opportunity to do the research that she was doing.”
Janamanchi said he finds Harris a refreshing candidate who is not “touting her faith,” or “carrying it like a badge of honor, pulling the religion card depending on who she is with.” Her various “Christian, Hindu and Jewish influences seem to provide her with a broad and inclusive perspective,” he said.
As voters get to know her, Rambachan believes, they will find that Hinduism’s tenet of inherent divinity within all human beings suits the American democratic ethos. “One of the most fundamental values of the Hindu tradition is articulated in that beautiful prayer, ‘Loka samastha sukhina bhuvantu: May all be happy.’ Public policy has to be focused on the good life for all.”
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