Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna, 46, led a bipartisan congressional delegation to India last week. During the visit, he attended the Independence Day celebrations at the Red Fort and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, among others. Media reports suggested that human rights and the treatment of minorities were the major agenda of his visit. While he did meet with victims of the recent communal violence in Haryana, as well as representatives from the Kuki community from Manipur, the delegation’s agenda also included trade ties, technology transfer, and defence cooperation.
Mr. Khanna is a member of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, alongside the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. He is the co-chair of the U.S. Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans.
He likes to highlight his connection with India, especially the fact that his grandfather Amarnath Vidyalankar was a freedom fighter who went to jail with Mahatma Gandhi and later became a Member of Parliament from the Congress party.
In 2019, in the days following India’s dilution of Article 370, Mr. Khanna had tweeted, “It’s the duty of every American politician of Hindu faith to stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians. That is the vision of India my grandfather Amarnath Vidyalankar fought for.”
His statement sparked an immediate and vicious backlash from the Hindutva ecosystem. In the four years since, political observers have noted a distinct softening of his stance toward Hindutva, and his progressive credentials have begun to attract greater scrutiny. Many attribute this subtle shift to the increasing clout of Hindu nationalists, both among the Indian disapora in the U.S., and in American politics.
Indian-Americans, who number around four million, are the second largest immigrant group in the U.S, after Mexicans. The constituency Mr. Khanna represents, California’s 17th congressional district, is remarkable for two reasons. It roughly overlaps with what the world likes to call ‘Silicon Valley’, and it is a district where Asian Americans are in the majority. Mr. Khanna has been effective in leveraging both these constituencies for his political advances.
The interlocutor
Mr. Khanna is a second generation immigrant. Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Khanna studied economics from the University of Chicago before graduating from Yale Law School. He subsequently worked as an intellectual property lawyer, with clients from the tech industry. As a Congressman elected from Silicon Valley, he has fashioned himself as a ‘progressive capitalist’ — someone who is not only an effective interlocutor between the messianic fantasies of tech billionaires and federal regulators, but also between the libertarian impulses of IT employers and the social needs of their employees.
His branding as a progressive Democrat concerned with human rights issues, though a bit frayed, stands for now. But civil rights groups in the U.S. have been vocal in their criticism of his proactive lobbying — which involved orchestrating a bipartisan letter to Speaker Kevin McCarthy — for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
Mr. Khanna has responded to this criticism in two ways: first, by pointing to India’s strategic importance, both as a geopolitical ally, and for the U.S.’s economic ‘decoupling’ from China; second, by arguing that it is better to engage with regimes accused of human rights violations rather than lecture them from a moralistic pulpit.
Having started out as a progressive idealist in the Bernie Sanders mould, Mr. Khanna’s progressivism seems to be settling — some might say ‘maturing’ — into a Clinton-like pragmatist mode as he masters the difficult art of juggling the contradictory expectations of political constituencies.