What explains the recent rise of western politicians of South Asian heritage?
South Asian social and mainstream media alike paid much attention to the ascension of Humza Yousaf, the son of Pakistani immigrants, to First Minister of Scotland last month. Similar notice was taken of Leo Varadkar’s return as Prime Minister of Ireland last December, Rishi Sunak’s elevation to Prime Minister of the UK in October and Sadiq Khan’s election as Mayor of London in 2016.
This flowering of South Asian political talent has brought much joy and excitement to the global diaspora, especially because it seems as if it is part of a wider phenomenon. Across the pond in Canada, Jagmeet Singh has led the New Democratic Party since 2017, while in the US, Kamala Harris was elected Vice President in 2020 and the Republican Party leader Nikki Haley announced her bid for the 2024 presidential election in February.
The subtext in the gleeful commentary from the subcontinent implicitly linked the sudden rise of South Asians to the highest elected offices in the North Atlantic to South Asia’s own rise, and the overturning of colonial hierarchies. This feel-good view is, unfortunately, unmoored from political realities.
Although South Asian migrants have proved to be exceptionally good at mapping and playing “the game” in increasingly diverse and open English-speaking societies, there is little evidence that their successes are changing the larger rules of the game. These candidates climbed the conventional ladders, offered conventional views, and above all, reflect the preferences of their largely non-South Asian constituents. Mr Sunak, for example, as a Conservative, is unlikely to ever critique the historical ethos or conduct of the British Empire.
The reasons for this are relatively straightforward. The South Asian diasporas in Guyana and Fiji are among the largest ethnic groups in those countries, and act as powerful vote banks. In contrast, despite high levels of migration from the subcontinent, South Asians are under 10 per cent of the UK’s population; about 7 per cent in Canada, and just under 2 per cent in the US.
This means that South Asian candidates seeking party leadership at the higher levels cannot count on ethnic solidarity to propel themselves forward.
The specifics of their routes differ of course. Mr Khan, Ms Harris and Mr Singh were all lawyers in public service who became active in local party politics in important and diverse cities (London, San Francisco and Toronto, respectively). Mr Sunak and Mr Yousaf, on the other hand, attended elite high schools and became active in student politics at university. These candidates’ access to important networks favoured by the ambitious helped them climb up inside the political machine. Mr Sunak and Mr Yousaf, for example, both won party leadership contests after unexpected resignations by their bosses, rather than by leading their party to victory in general elections. This was in Mr Varadkar’s case, too, when he became Prime Minister for the first time, in 2017.
In that sense, Mr Khan is a standout in his generation of South Asian diaspora politicians from the British Isles. He has won two tough mayoral elections in London – a city that is only 15 per cent Muslim, and 20 per cent South Asian – despite the deployment of potentially damaging Islamophobic rhetoric against him by his opponents. Given Boris Johnson’s own tenure as mayor of London to Conservative party leader and prime minister, Mr Khan’s career could certainly take him much higher, once he is prepared to do so. In the US, both Bobby Jindal and Ms Haley similarly won re-election as governors in Louisiana and South Carolina, respectively. However, Mr Jindal’s bid for the Republican nomination in 2016 failed, and Ms Haley’s appears to be something of a long shot.
Of course, it isn’t just the ability to win big elections; it is who you have to be to win them. Although second-generation South Asian immigrants benefit from native fluency in English, and opportunities to build credentials and networks through status-enhancing education and jobs, faith often marks them out as different, as much as their skins. As a result, South Asian candidates’ political prospects for advancement to the highest levels reflect the norms of the societies around them.
For example, as a practising Sikh, Mr Singh has always appeared in public with his turban. Mr Sunak, as a practising Hindu, is the UK’s first ever non-Christian prime minister (Benjamin Disraeli, although proud of his Jewish ethnicity, was a member of the Church of England). Mr Yousaf was head of the Muslim students’ association at the University of Glasgow, and wore a sherwani to his inauguration as first minister; notably, he had worn a kilt and made his oath in Urdu when he was sworn in as a member of Scottish Parliament in 2016. In other words, these politicians’ faith and willingness to display cultural symbols was not a bar to their acceptance by the rest of the political class and the public.
It is hard to imagine an American president similarly presenting such fashion any time soon. The US, particularly in the South and Midwest, remains a far more religiously and culturally conformist country than either Britain or Canada, where even mainstream conservatives have embraced a multi-faith and multi-ethnic approach.
It is not a coincidence that unlike Mr Khan, Ms Haley and Mr Jindal, two of the most electorally successful Indian-American politicians so far, were both adult converts to Christianity. Ms Harris, like Mr Obama, leaned into the gospel church traditions on the African-American side of her mixed-race family. American voters have not yet been willing to elect an atheist, Jewish or Mormon president yet, so there is some distance to be covered before they become comfortable with being represented by someone who doesn’t practise their faith.
But on both sides of the Atlantic, these politicians rely on their ability to project pride and identification with their countries and regions of birth in order to succeed – whether it is London or Glasgow, South Carolina, Toronto or Dublin. It is the ability to convey this kind of conviction that provides the essential glue for voters from entirely different backgrounds to overlook differences in racial, religious and linguistic backgrounds.
What these political systems and societies are demonstrating, to their credit, is that they no longer automatically believe that ethnicity and nationality are the same thing – that how you are named, or where your parents came from has anything to do with your ability to belong. But the requirement to wave their electorate’s national flag, however inclusively, remains stronger than ever for those with eyes on the top national-level jobs.
These candidates have climbed conventional ladders and offered conventional views to non-South Asian voters