Indra Neelameggham, one of the founders of Utah’s Interfaith Roundtable, felt an immediate connection to Kamala Harris, the first major party presidential nominee with Hindu heritage.
Indra’s maiden last name was the same as Harris’ mother, and both hail from Tamil Nadu, the same area of southern India. The Utahn still has relatives there who celebrated Harris’ win with fireworks and urged everyone to work for her.
Even in the Beehive State, Neelameggham says, the tiny Hindu community of more than 10,000 is “very, very excited about Kamala.” They may not all be voting for her, but they recognize the spiritual values Harris would bring to the highest office in the land.
“The point about Hinduism is that it is all encompassing, accepting every faith as a path to God,” Neelameggham says, “Even if you marry someone of a different faith [Harris married a Jewish man], God is in everyone, and nothing is wrong as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.”
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Indra Neelameggham talks with fellow devotees of the Sri Ganesha Hindu Temple in 2019. She praises Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for blending her faith in Christianity with respect for her Hindu roots and her husband's Judaism.
Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, moved to the U.S. in 1958 to do breast cancer research at the University of California, Berkeley, according to a Religion News Service article. “There she met Jamaican American economist Donald Harris, and after they married, Gopalan converted to her husband’s Christianity. But in addition to regularly attending church, she instilled in her two daughters a reverence for Hindu temples.”
While growing up, Kamala Harris attended a Hindu temple and a Black Baptist Church.
Neelameggham praised Harris for blending her faith in Christianity — she has long been a member of a San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church, whose pastor is the Rev. Amos Brown, a friend of President Russell Nelson, leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — with her respect for Hinduism and the Judaism of her husband, Doug Emhoff.
“One of the things that distinguishes the Hindu tradition is its ability to hold multiplicities,” the Rev. Abhi Janamanchi, senior minister at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalists in Bethesda, Maryland, who refers to himself as a “UU Hindu,” told Religion News Service. “The Hindu way of being in the world is both, not either-or. We don’t engage in binaries, which is why there’s really no strong belief in heaven or hell or sin and salvation, this life or the next life.”
‘I don’t think she practices it’
On the other hand, another Utah Hindu, Uma Khandkar, doesn’t see much evidence of Hinduism in Harris.
“Kamala has always associated herself with the Black church,” Khandkar says. “I know she has a Hindu background from her mom, but I have not heard that she goes to a Hindu temple. I have never seen her wear Hindu clothing like a sari.”
Hinduism is “a religion,” Salt Lake City mother says, “I just don’t think she practices it.”
That, however, makes no difference to Khandkar’s politics.
She was a Utah delegate to the Democratic National Convention and plans to vote for Harris. “She has good values and a good upbringing, but I don’t think religion has anything to do with it.”
JD Vance’s wife
(Doug Mills | The New York Times) Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, and his wife, Usha Vance, during a rally in St. Cloud, Minn., in July 2024.
Another Hindu woman has gained visibility in this year’s campaign: Usha Vance, wife of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance.
Vance, a former atheist who converted to Catholicism, “credits Usha’s faith with inspiring his own spiritual journey,” Religion News Service reports.
And Usha’s acceptance of Donald Trump (whom she initially deplored), the story suggests, “may … lend momentum to a rightward shift among Indian Americans and Hindus in particular.”
Given her “strong-minded husband,” Usha Vance may have given up much of her Hindu practices, Khandkar says. “There will be some pressure not to follow Hinduism. I don’t think she cares to be one or the other [religion].”
To Neelameggham, it doesn’t matter how fully these women embrace their Hinduism.
It has provided them with core values of faith, family and diversity. These values, she says, need to be celebrated during this wrenching campaign season.