Some Are More Equal Than Others

At the Wall Street Journal Sadanand Dhume provides some interesting background on Kamala Harris’s Indian mother:

For many Americans, Shyamala Gopalan’s immigrant story is a heartwarming part of a famous politician’s biography. But Ms. Harris’s mother also figures in another tale told less often: of India’s small and successful Tamil Brahmin diaspora.

Originating in Tamil Nadu, on the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent, Tamil Brahmins, known colloquially as Tambrams, are thought to number fewer than two million world-wide. Though precise numbers don’t exist, scholars estimate the group’s size in the U.S. at about 50,000, a small fraction of the four million strong Indian-American community. Another 50,000 are scattered in other countries, including the U.K., Canada and Australia.

Like most Indian-Americans, Tambrams are relatively recent immigrants. Most came to the U.S. after Congress eased immigration rules in 1965. But they have produced two Nobel Laureates in the sciences, a clutch of prominent business leaders, including former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and too many prominent doctors, engineers and academics to count.

What explains this? To begin with, historically Tambrams occupied the pinnacle of society in the Tamil-speaking region in southern India. As hereditary Hindu priests, they benefited from centuries of literacy, and many were significant landowners as well. Under British rule, the community quickly took to English education. Over time, many Tambrams rose to occupy trusted positions in the colonial government, where they developed a reputation for probity and for being sticklers for rules. Others took to modern professions such as law, engineering and medicine.

In the 20th century, as political and economic upheaval drove Tamil Brahmins from towns and villages to cities, the community developed a cult of learning. M.R. Rangaswami, a California-based technology investor who founded Indiaspora, an advocacy group that seeks strong U.S.-India relations, recalls growing up in Madras (now called Chennai) in the 1960s and 1970s, in a Tamil Brahmin community that revered the mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) rather than the usual movie stars.

Ms. Nooyi credits her success in corporate America to her strict and frugal Tamil Brahmin upbringing in Madras. In a phone interview, she recalls a community for which “education was everything.”

Children weren’t allowed to be even five minutes late for school or to talk back to elders. Grandfathers supplemented homework with extra math problems and spelling tests. “As a conservative Tamil Brahmin, you could forget about fashion or having a social life,” said Ms. Nooyi. “When you weren’t studying, you were focused on classical music and dance, and on reading as much as you possibly could.”

In her book, Ms. Harris airbrushes her mother’s community from her story. The words Tamil and Brahmin don’t appear at all. At one point the senator mentions that Gopalan won an award for her singing in India, but not that it was for Carnatic music, a classical art form closely associated with Tamil Brahmins.

At one level, this omission is understandable. The senator is a U.S. politician appealing to American voters. She has no obligation to know about her mother’s ancestral community, much less to recount its story.

But the Tamil Brahmin story also undercuts many of the pieties of the U.S. left. How do you characterize America as a land of oppression when so many immigrants have clearly experienced it as a land of opportunity?

The Indian policies that spurred Tambram migration also offer a cautionary tale. Socialism, adopted at independence in 1947, created so few jobs that within two decades educated Indians began streaming to the West. Even today, the middle-class dream for many Indians begins with emigrating.

Add to this the pitfalls of identity politics. Beginning in the early 20th century, anti-Brahminism became a hallmark of Tamil politics. Numerically larger castes—Brahmins accounted for only 2.5% of the population—mobilized on the basis of group identity. In the 1960s they introduced sweeping quotas in education and government employment that forced many Tambrams to seek opportunities elsewhere.

The identity entrepreneurs who dominate Tamil Nadu politics justify reverse discrimination—7 in 10 college admissions and government jobs in the state have long been filled using quotas—on grounds of historical grievance. It’s undeniable that Tambrams had advantages, and many of their ancestors held views about social hierarchy that rightly grate on our modern sensibilities. Nonetheless, the community’s marginalization and migration is also a textbook example of the folly of pushing identity politics too far.

As the Democratic convention wraps up, many more Americans will have learned about the remarkable woman who raised Ms. Harris and her younger sister, Maya. They also deserve to learn the lesson of the community into which Shyamala Gopalan was born.

Identity politics presents risks as well as rewards. As we are learning in Chicago, biography does not necessarily provide an adequate guide for policy or governance.