The Indian American
Immigrants and perhaps all non-white immigrants owe their gratitude to Martin
Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Without their effort and subsequent passage of
the Civil Rights Act, very few of us would have made it to America. Who would
want to sit in the back of the bus, drink from a separate fountain and be
humiliated?
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.
Dr. Mike Ghouse is
committed to building a cohesive America and offers pluralistic solutions on
issues of the day. His new book, the “American Muslim Agenda” is about
everything you wanted to know about Muslims. The book is available at Xlibris
and Amazon. Mike is a public speaker, author, interfaith wedding officiant, and
the executive director of the Center for Pluralism in Washington, DC. More
about him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeghouse/
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