The Political Rise of Indian Americans in the US Government

Indian Americans are the most well represented minority in the Trump’s 2nd term in office taking the reins of power after his oath taking on January 20th. Most of them have already begun their preparatory work before they launch into action. Some find that surprising, but US media experts say the group has long been poised to slip into the current Republican Mold. When President-elect Donald Trump assumes office on Jan 20th, 2025, next year soon after taking oath as the president of the United States in his 2nd term, he would be supported by a by a large group of young Indian American political stars ranging from Vivek Ramaswamy in the DOGE, Kash Patel as FBI Director and Jay Bhattacharya heading the National Institute of Health. Not to forget Harmeet Dhillon in the Department of Justice.

Thats Kash Patel, who could become Trump’s FBI director if he is confirmed, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who with Elon Musk will lead a new non-governmental project called the Department of Government Efficiency. Alongside them, with quieter public receptions, Harmeet Dhillon and Jay Bhattacharya prepare for potential key roles in the Department of Justice and the National Institutes of Health, respectively. And there’s Vice President-elect JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, who will be the first South Asian American second lady. These Indian Americans are perhaps the most well-represented minority group on the president-elect’s newly announced team.
With this ethnic group making up less than 2% of the population and typically among the most Democratic of all Asian subgroups, many find it surprising. Others say the Indian American community has been poised to fit into the current Republican Mold for some time. As Trump cozies up to tech industry titans, continues to blast China and cheers on India’s current government, it does not appear to be an accident that Indian Americans are taking on key roles in his administration, experts said.

“It’s remarkable how disproportionately represented Indian Americans are compared to other communities of colour,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder of AAPI Data. Their embrace of some of Trump’s positions — like Patel’s baseless accusations about a secret “deep state” and Ramaswamy’s calls for mass deportations — are out of sync with the politics of most Indian Americans, experts said. But that might be changing.
NBC News polling did not disaggregate for ethnicity, but according to national surveys of the Asian American electorate by AAPI Data, support for Democratic candidates has dipped. After the 2016 election, 77% of Indian Americans said they voted for Hillary Clinton. In September 2024, 69% said they planned to vote for Harris. Asian Americans more broadly shifted right by five points, compared to 3.2 points for the general population.
“Trump had higher support among 18- to 34-year-old Indian Americans, and especially among Indian American men,” Ramakrishnan said. “It is not just the native-born younger men like Ramaswamy and Kash Patel. It includes foreign-born younger men who are likely recently naturalized. You probably have a fair number of people working in tech.” Some find this mutual affinity contradictory to the story that brought them to the U.S. Trump campaigned on a heavily anti-immigrant platform, with allies like Ramaswamy promising to slash the H-1B visa program and even revoke birthright citizenship.

In a statement to NBC News, the Trump team said Biden’s “incompetence” and undocumented immigration brought Indian Americans into the party.
“Fed up with the last four years of economic stagnation, unlimited illegal immigration, and general incompetence under the Biden administration, Indian Americans came out in historic numbers to give President Donald J. Trump and his agenda to Make America Great Again a resounding mandate,” said Kush Desai, a Trump-Vance transition spokesperson. . “I think it fits really well with Trump’s vision of what he wants his right-wing, conservative, populist politics to look like,” said Sangay Mishra, an associate professor at Drew University in New Jersey and the author of “Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans.”
An immigration pattern than led to the current moment.
Some experts opine that a set of current national and international circumstances have helped create a runway for the GOP to embrace people like Patel and Ramaswamy when they otherwise might not have. At home, Indian Americans are thriving, they said. Indian Americans on the average are the highest earners in the U.S. They are overrepresented in the tech industry, and 77% of them have a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to AAPI Data. And this has not happened naturally. Much of it stems from the first major wave of Indian immigration to the U.S. in the 1960s and ’70s — mostly young people looking to take white-collar jobs.
“It’s a very demographically specific group in terms of caste, class and access to education that they had in India that allowed them to come to the United States,” said Madhavi Murthy, an associate professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “The current cohort of prominent Indian Americans that we’re seeing now in political life are the children of this group.” Ramaswamy’s, Patel’s and even Usha Vance’s stories fit that, Mold. Ramaswamy’s father is an engineer and so is Vance’s — Patel’s father works in finance.
Vance and Ramaswamy also both happen to be from upper-caste families — privileged in India’s stringent caste hierarchy, which, though illegal, still dictates much of social and economic life on the subcontinent. Ramaswamy describes learning about his high-caste Brahmin roots in his 2021 book “Woke Inc.” “Kings were below us,” he wrote, also mentioning how his family’s servants of a lower caste were required to enter the home through a different door and follow a separate set of rules.

“Caste privilege is part of who they are,” Mishra said. “Some of that does open up the possibilities of adopting a deeply, deeply conservative and hierarchical way of thinking about the world,” says Sakshi Venkatraman writing for the NBC. While Mishra says he does not think Trump overtly considered race and caste when selecting his staff, he thinks those attributes could contribute to their personas as “model minorities” and their families’ immigrant success stories in the U.S. Also convenient for rising Indian Americans in the GOP is Trump’s icy relationship with China.
“It’s a less crowded field in terms of talented people of colour in the Republican Party,” Ramakrishnan said. “It’s more difficult for Chinese Americans to serve in prominent positions now than a decade ago or two decades ago because of increased tensions between the U.S. and China.” On the other hand, Trump’s perception of India and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi is strong.

The Role India might play.

Some experts credit some of the Indian American, and in particular Hindu, success in the Trump administration to the president-elect’s affection for Modi and his government — a right-wing nationalist movement that some human rights groups blame for the rolling back of civil rights in India. Trump has put his close relationship with Modi on display on several occasions, joining hands with him at “Howdy, Modi!” a rally in Houston that drew tens of thousands of Indian Americans in 2019.
While none of Trump’s Indian American staff picks have spoken much about India’s government, both Patel and Ramaswamy have been vocal in their support for Modi’s actions in the past. Another Hindu Cabinet nominee, Tulsi Gabbard, has met with the controversial prime minister multiple times and championed him in the U.S. Gabbard, who is Samoan American and converted to Hinduism in childhood, could be Modi’s fiercest ally in the administration.

In a video message welcoming Modi to the U.S. in 2019, Gabbard described India as one of the United States’ “most important partners.” She has also parroted Hindu nationalist talking points about “Hindu phobia” growing in the U.S. and protecting Hindus from jihadist Muslims, something that Trump, too, has capitalized on. “The Indian and Hindu community will have a true friend in the White House,” Trump said in a 2016 Diwali campaign message organized by the Republican Hindu Coalition. “We will defeat radical Islamic terrorism.”
In a statement to NBC News, Gabbard’s team said backlash against her for her connection with Modi is “bigoted.” “The repeated attacks that Lt Col. Tulsi Gabbard has sustained from the media and Democrats about her faith and loyalty to our country are not only false they are bigoted as well,” transition team spokesperson Alexa Henning said in an email. “Just like President Trump she also recognizes the importance of U.S. — India relations and working closely together to strengthen ties especially among common interests like combatting terrorism and strengthening economic ties.”
While Trump is not necessarily assessing Indian American nominees based on their relationships with India, Mishra said, the partnership creates fertile ground for more Indian and Hindu politicians to come up in the GOP. “They may or may not be aligned to Hindu right-wing politics, but larger right-wing politics is what brings them together,” he said.

Alignment with a movement that has been racist against Indian Americans

Not everyone is on board with the Trump administration’s perceived inclusion of Indian Americans, no matter how much their policy visions align, says Sakshi in her writeup for the NBC.
“There is definitely an element of the right which is deeply racist and white supremacist,” Mishra said. Far right and white nationalist Trump supporters have lashed out at the number of brown faces in Trump’s orbit, posting on platforms like X that they think this is a signal of softness on immigration.
“JD Vance’s wife ‘Usha’ was not raised Christian and is not a Christian,” posted Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist influencer whom Trump once hosted for dinner. “What kind of family is this?”
“Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and names their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?” Fuentes said in another video.
Similar far-right accounts echoed that sentiment, with one posting photos of Patel, Ramaswamy and Usha Vance’s family captioned “the future of ‘conservatism.’” In July, when Dhillon delivered a Sikh prayer at the Republican National Convention, she was the subject of similar trolling, with big right-wing accounts accusing her of “witchcraft” and calling for her deportation. Dhillon’s team declined to comment.
Vance and Ramaswamy have both openly spoken about being Hindu, but it often comes with a caveat. Vance said in a Fox News interview with her husband that despite her faith, she pushed him to get closer to Christianity. Ramaswamy has tried to hedge his Hindu faith by quoting Bible verses on the campaign trail and telling voters, “We share the same values, the same Judeo-Christian values in power.”
Ramaswamy’s team did not respond to a request for comment but in August told NBC News that they disagreed with that characterization.
“Yes, he knows the Bible better than many self-proclaimed Christians, but that’s exactly what allows him to speak with authority about shared values,” his senior adviser and communications director Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News. “He has given speeches where he invokes a fundamental teaching from Hindu scripture, the Vedas: ‘Satyam Vara, Dharmam Chara.’ It means speak truth, do your duty. Which happens to be the heart of Vivek’s message to our country.”

But experts said that to a right-wing base that loves Trump for his anti-immigrant stances and “America First” rhetoric, no amount of assimilative behaviour will win everyone over.
“I am old enough to vividly remember post 9/11, many Muslims, many Hindus, many Sikhs from South Asian communities went into overdrive to prove that ‘we are truly Americans,’” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the nonprofit South Asian Network. “We know today that does not work.”
While speaking with Vivek Ramaswamy on his podcast earlier this year, conservative pundit Ann Coulter started by telling him, “I agreed with many, many things you said … when you were running for president. But I still would not have voted for you because you are an Indian.”