Thursday, May 31, 2001
Asian Indians seek clout with census gains
By Thomas Ginsberg
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Vinit Dhruva has a plan: Emulate the Jewish American community.

"Their unity is what I'd love to see in the Indian community," said Dhruva, an Indian American political activist from Montgomery County.

"With such small numbers, they have so much influence. Maybe it's a fact of giving money, of lobbying, of being well-organized, of being active. . . . If our plan works the way it's supposed to, we'll follow the Jewish community."

Whether or not the Jewish community is as influential as Dhruva believes, his hope reflects an evolution of sorts for Asian Indians. After vaulting into the middle class and seeing their population explode, a segment of the Indian community is stepping up efforts to nurture its own political voice.

Driven by issues as universal as education, and as self-interested as immigration, Indian American activists said the census had signaled an opportunity.

"There has been a paradigm shift," said Kris Kolluri, a New Jersey-born Indian American and political aide to Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D., Mo.). "There was a conscious decision to get more people involved, driven by two things: Indians are the wealthiest immigrant group. . . . And our population numbers are growing."

During the 1990s, the Asian Indian population doubled nationwide to 1.7 million, making it the nation's fastest-growing major immigrant group.

The eight-county Philadelphia area saw its Indian population grow 111 percent. In tiny Millbourne, Delaware County, 40 percent of its residents were listed as Asian Indian, the highest share in any U.S. municipality. Several North Jersey towns ranked among the nation's largest cities in their number of Indians.

This year, for the first time, several Indian Americans are running for state legislative seats in New Jersey, which has one of the biggest Indian populations but no Indians in state-level office. Nationwide there are just two Indian state legislators, in Maryland and Minnesota, and none in Congress.

"It's natural," said Parag Patel, 31, a school board candidate in Edison, N.J. "Look at the Italian or Jewish Americans. They come in and take a couple decades to mature. . . . It's about time for Indians."

Many, though not all, of the newcomers are well-educated English-speakers who arrived under the federal government's H1-B temporary work-visa program, created in part to fill the labor needs of technology firms. One of the largest Indian American communities is in Fremont, Calif., part of Silicon Valley. It is the fifth-largest, after New York City; San Jose, Calif.; Chicago; and Los Angeles.

Although people holding H1-B visas cannot vote, they have become a visible, prosperous presence in areas they settled. And they are giving a numerical and financial boost to earlier waves of Indians whose average U.S. household income a decade ago was about $60,000, nearly double the national average.

Using the census like a coming-out announcement, an educational foundation in Washington, the India Abroad Political Awareness Committee, sent the Indian population numbers to reporters nationwide to promote its new push: getting Indians elected.

"People are looking at these numbers and saying: 'I don't see these people in office,' " said Prem Shunmugavelu, political associate of the committee.

Locally, Project Impact for South Asian Americans, based in Media, Pa., runs political seminars for Philadelphia-area Indian students and gives them a behind-the-scenes tour of Capitol Hill each year, hoping a few will catch the political bug, said Dhruva, one of the group's leaders.

Nationally, a group of Washington-based Indian activists this year created the Indian American Leadership Incubator to train Indian Americans to run for office, said Kolluri, the Gephardt aide.

There also has been talk of coordinating, perhaps through a political-action committee, the scattered donations of well-heeled givers. Although no total tally exists, campaign-finance records show four top Indian donors alone gave nearly $850,000 during the decade to many races.

The donations went to both parties, and it is unclear whether Indian Americans overall tend to vote Democratic or Republican.

"You would think the Democrats would represent their interests as immigrants," said Veena Aggarwal, a first-generation Indian and onetime school board candidate in Wayne, Pa. "But as Indians have . . . become successful, they've changed their party affiliation and there are many who are Republican."

Whether many more Indians will give their time, and money, to politics is an open question. As an interest group, Indians are fragmented by languages and cultures imported from a country more populous than all of Europe. And they face prejudices, including their own.

"The one thing that has changed is the psychology that they [white Americans] will never vote for us," said Kumar Barve, a third-generation Indian American who was elected to the Maryland legislature in 1990. "With my election and others, we've broken the back of that attitude."

Indian activists said the issues driving Indians to action are many of the same ones facing all Americans: health care, education, taxes, civil rights and religious freedom, to name a few.

Indians also have a particular interest in immigration. Dhruva, the Montgomery County activist, said Indians needed their own people in Congress to protect the H1-B visa program, which could face harsher criticism if unemployment worsens.

"Obviously [anger over immigration] needs to be addressed," Kolluri said. "The H1-B visas are what we needed to take care of [labor] demands now. But that does not mean we should not address worker-training programs."

As Indians remain too few in number to have nationwide impact - they represent less than 1 percent of the U.S. population - activists said they would focus on specific state and local races, then Congress.

"The model to aspire to would be the Jewish American community," said Patel, the Edison candidate. "The Indian American community is just as successful, just as wealthy, just as professional, with just as many doctors and lawyers. It's just 50 years behind the Jews."
Thomas Ginsberg's e-mail address is tginsberg@phillynews.com.