There has been a fair amount of chatter in the media, including on social platforms, that Indian-origin CEOs in America are not doing enough to “defend” India during the recent tariff campaign launched by the US administration. I believe that this view, which holds that Indian-origin CEOs and other successful people of Indian origin in the US should publicly “go to bat” for India’s interests, is quite misplaced.
Most Indian-origin CEOs in the US are American citizens. Their loyalty must remain with the US. If in the Indo-US arena there are disputes on trade or on any other matter, and they start becoming advocates of the party with whom the US is negotiating its differences, they will be doing a disservice to the US, to India, and to themselves. Such behaviour will only strengthen those who are already expressing their antagonism toward increased Indian immigration into the US.
Indians are already accused of gaming the H1B visa system, coming into the US, and reducing the wages and job prospects of native-born Americans. Now, they will also be seen as demonstrating disloyalty to America by taking the side of a foreign country that is engaged in tough negotiations with the US. “We should have known. We cannot rely on their loyalty” — this will be the meme that will rapidly spread across social media.
What is worse is that if these CEOs interfere on India’s behalf, such intercessions will have no effect on the negotiations. The negotiations will proceed in a cold-blooded manner and at a pace of their own. The US has the upper hand. But given its size and the fact that it’s not a major exporting country, India is not completely without any cards. It is best for Indian-origin CEOs to stick to running their companies and leave the negotiations to politicians and diplomats.
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The loyalty litmus test
It is often argued that Indian Americans should learn from Jewish Americans who have successfully lobbied for Israel in the US. This strategy has worked partly because of the shared Judeo-Christian Western heritage. This has resonated particularly well with certain Christian groups in the US.
However, Indians are mostly Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, and Buddhists who are not within the Western cultural tent. Indian Christians, who do share religious affiliations with many Americans, are too small a community to impact relations between countries.
Even the Jewish-Israeli example is not without its problems. In recent times, vocal segments in the US have turned against Israel. And this has happened both on the Left, which is pro-Palestinian, and on the Right, which sees pro-America policies as not necessarily in sync with pro-Israel policies. Without a shared cultural rubric, Indian Americans going into strong political lobbying for India’s national causes would almost certainly backfire.
The issue of perceptions of insufficient or divided loyalties should not be taken lightly. During World War I, German-Americans were viewed with suspicion in the US, albeit on a mild scale. During World War II, many Japanese Americans were detained in camps till the war ended. And this was done on the orders of President Franklin Roosevelt, who is seen as a paragon of liberal tolerance. In England during World War I, Prince Louis of Battenberg was forced to resign from Britain’s Royal Navy because of his German origins. The poor fellow had to change his surname to Mountbatten; other members of the British royal family changed their names too.
In our own country, in 1962, about 3,000 Chinese-origin people living in India, mostly in Calcutta, were detained and interned in a camp in distant Rajasthan. This was supremely ironical because most of these Chinese-origin persons were supporters of the Kuomintang and not of Communist China with whom we were militarily engaged.
In all these cases, there was no evidence of divided loyalty or disloyalty. The mere perception of a possible problem resulted in an arbitrary loyalty litmus test being imposed.
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Keep politics out of karmabhoomi
For many years, I was an advocate for granting dual citizenship to persons of Indian origin who had taken up the citizenship of the countries they were living in. In retrospect, I am glad that the Indian government did not go for this.
The OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) status is an interesting one. It gives the person the privilege of visa-free entry into India. It allows the OCI to buy property in India. But the OCI cannot vote in India and cannot join the Indian Armed Forces. This ensures that the OCIs’ unquestioned loyalty is to the country of their proper and regular citizenship, not to the country of their ancestors, where they may have some privileges.
Other countries have not been as circumspect or as intelligent as India. They have gone in for a simplistic dual citizenship. There have been instances of dual US-Israeli citizens who served in the Israeli army. There have been questions raised about dual citizens taking up senior positions in the US government, and a Disqualifying Dual Loyalty Act was proposed in the US Congress in October. The issue could be a ticking time bomb.
Net-net, successful Indian Americans, including CEOs, should focus on the fact that they have gone to the US in search of economic and professional betterment. To the extent that America has given them opportunities and rewarded them with some measure of success, they should be grateful to their country of residence and citizenship.
They should, of course, have goodwill towards their country of origin, and they should feel free to devote time and energy towards educational, professional, academic, cultural, philanthropic, and people-to-people connections between their karmabhoomi (where they live and work) and their matrubhoomi (where they have amniotic connections). But the idea of lobbying, especially when there is direct interface between the US and India at the political level, is neither desirable nor necessary.
It is best that they stay focused on their primary dharma and run their companies well, without injecting unnecessary politics into that sphere.
Jaithirth ‘Jerry’ Rao is a retired entrepreneur who lives in Lonavala. He has published three books: ‘Notes from an Indian Conservative’, ‘The Indian Conservative’, and ‘Economist Gandhi’. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)