India House Hosts Nikki Haley to a Roomful of Proud Admirers

By Jawahar Malhotra

HOUSTON: This was the weekend, as sure as any sign of the electioneering season, when political candidates and elected officials seem to have flocked to the Bayou City to meet with community leaders, raise funds and speak their minds at eager audiences. California Congressman Ami Bera was in town for the Hindu American Foundation Annual Dinner and then later at a private brunch fundraiser ; Mayor Annise Parker was at the IAPAC-SIMA fundraiser  and Gov. Nikki Haley (R) of South Carolina made a whirlwind trip through the city for a fundraiser and a tour of India House followed by a speech.

There were red, white and blue buntings decorating the reception hall and corridor of India House as the meeting with Haley on Saturday, September 21 coincided with the event later in the evening for the HAF which featured as its keynote speaker Dr. Ami Bera, the freshman Democratic Congressman from California. Just a couple of hours earlier, the India House Executive Council hosted a meet and greet event for S. Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, organized by Trustee Chowdary Yalamanchili.

Haley’s visit first included a private meeting with an invited list of supporters, many of whom later met her that evening at the Hotel ZaZa in the Museum District and donated around $140,000, according to one source, for her re-election campaign next year, at a dinner that featured live entertainment by local Indian talent.

The afternoon meeting with the public and members of the press in town, was arranged to show off the centerpiece of the community, India House, as well as to allow Haley to speak to them and take a few questions.  Halley was suitably impressed by the facility, exclaiming that she had not seen a community center like it anywhere else in the country. Dr. Devinder Bhatia, a cardiovascular surgeon, introduced Haley to the about 100 people in the audience.

Nikki Haley, at the age of 41, is the youngest Governor in the Union and also the first female Indo American Governor of a State – South Carolina – which has been the bastion of conservatism in the Deep South. Ever since Sen. Strom Thurmond switched parties from Democrat to Republican in 1964, the Republican Party has gained strength and become the dominant party in the state.

It was to this state which required federal Civil Rights laws to end segregation that Nirmata Nikki Randhawa’s parents, Ajit and Raj Kaur emigrated from Amritsar over 50 years ago. Nikki and her siblings were born and raised in the small town on Bamberg. Haley related many examples of the kind of discrimination that she had to experience as a child, like when she played kickball and the kids were confused if she should be on the black side or the white. “I just took the ball and ran with it,” she recalled to the  amusement of the audience, “and the kids ran with me. That showed me that all you needed to go for it and others will follow”.

Haley’s parents were the rare Asian in the town of 2,500 and her dad was the only one who wore a turban. They began importing women’s fashions and Nikki started to help with the accounting at the age of 13. “And I learnt how hard it was to make a dollar and how easily government took it away,” she added with a Carolinian twang. The family business, Exotica International, grew into a multi-million dollar enterprise.

Even though she has grown up in the US, married an Anglo and become a Methodist along the way, Haley has never forgotten her roots and, in fact,  proclaimed it in her first sentence. “I am the proud daughter of Indian parents who immigrated to the US,” she said after she was introduced by Indian Consul General Parvathaneni Harish who held her up as a beacon of what could be achieved in the US. He was enthusiastic about the Indo American community in Texas and said its activities ensured that it contributed to the growth of both the economies of India and the US.

Haley said that her state and Texas had a lot in common and that S. Carolina was the second best state to do business in after Texas. It is now the largest manufacturer of tires in the nation and has passed tort reform. She recalled that when she first contemplated running for office, she told a friend she didn’t know if she was a Democrat or a Republican. “My friend asked me if I thought the government should spend my money, live my life and whether private companies of the government should create jobs,” she remembered, “and I said ‘No’, so she said, ‘Well then, you’re a Republican”.

Haley did acknowledge that though the Indo American community had done well in most spheres of work and life in the US, it had not been so good in politics. “Now we need a stronger voice in the country,” she said, adding that she was proud of the community. “It is the least dependent, most charitable of any minorities in the country.”

During a question and answer session, Haley was asked why she had turned down the Affordable Care Act’s provision to expand Medicare benefits, just like Texas, especially as the state had 500,000 people without insurance or 11 per cent of the state’s 4.7 million population. She responded that for every $9 the Federal government gave, South Carolina would have to come up with $1 and what would happen after the subsidy ended in two or three years? Her solution was in the community and private enterprise giving back to help those in need. She gave an example of how her family started the “Original Six Foundation” (named for the six in her parent’s family) who raise money and give back by funding community programs.