Indian Americans as a power bloc |
Raja Krishnamurthi is one of five Indian Americans elected to the US Congress that started its 115th two-year term in 2017. The three he mentioned by their first names were Pramila Jayapal, Ami Bera and Ro Khanna – all elected to the House of Representatives – and Kamala Harris, the one he missed, is the fifth of the group and the first American of Indian descent elected to the Senate. All 5 Indian-American lawmakers get key Congressional panels. They are all Democrats, relatively young – with Bera, Harris and Jayapal the oldest, at 51 – and brimming with hope, plans and ambition. They made history in the past election by winning in record numbers. They are now caucusing as a group in the US legislature in the tradition of India Caucus, the Black Caucus and various other groupings, which, however, are officially recognised as such.The Samosa Caucus is not there yet, but a beginning has been made. Krishnamurthi is particularly proud of a letter he started that was promptly signed by the rest of the Samosa Caucus, and then by over 70 other lawmakers, urging the administration to address the issue of hate crimes, in the days following the shocking murder of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian engineer killed by an allegedly inebriated man who claimed to have mistaken him and his friend for middle-easterners, in other words, Muslims.
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