Salman Rushdie extended his support to Kamala Harris during a virtual ‘South Asian Men for Harris’ event
New York:
Mumbai-born author Salman Rushdie supported Kamala Harris’s candidacy for US president and said he believes she is the person who can stop former President Donald Trump from dragging the country into authoritarianism.
Rushdie on Sunday extended his support and endorsement to US Vice President Harris during a virtual ‘South Asian Men for Harris’ event attended by several prominent names from the Indian-American community including prominent lawmakers, authors, policy experts, businesspeople and diaspora organizations. .
“It’s a critical moment. I’m a Bombay boy and it’s great to see an Indian woman running for the White House. And my wife is African-American, so we like the fact that a black Indian woman is running for the White House . White House,” Rushdie said.
Harris, 59, is the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee. She officially declared her candidacy after current President Joe Biden withdrew from the race for a second term on July 20. She is expected to be officially declared as the Democrats’ presidential candidate next month.
The 77-year-old Anglo-American novelist also noted that ethnicity in itself is not enough. “We wouldn’t be coming together in this way for, say, Usha Vance or Nikki Haley,” he said, referring to the Indian-American wife of Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and the former Indian-American governor of South Carolina .
Rushdie emphasized that the momentum is due to the fact that something “very extraordinary and transformative has happened in American politics” in just under a week.
“The conversation changed completely with the arrival of Kamala Harris’ candidacy and it changed with a lot of joy, a form of optimism and a positive vision and the future,” he said.
Rushdie stressed that the community has to make this work because “we cannot allow the alternative to happen”.
“This empty man, without a single noble quality, trying to drag this country into authoritarianism. This cannot happen,” he said, referring to Trump, a 78-year-old Republican.
Rushdie expressed his confidence that Harris “is the person who can prevent this. And so I’m 1,000 percent right in favor of her.” He added that star power is important in America and it could be argued that Trump’s celebrity status from being on TV for many years helped him get elected to the White House in 2016.
“Well, right now, he doesn’t look like the star. He looks like the fat old guy. Kamala looks like the superstar. And I think the charisma that she brings to the campaign could be critical in the coming weeks,” he said .
In response to a question that there are skeptics in the country who believe that America would not elect a woman of black and Indian heritage as president, Rushdie said that this may well have been an argument as recently as perhaps a decade ago, but times have changed. .
“I think the way that female leadership is viewed now is different. The way that race can become positive is a new thing. And so I think there is absolutely no reason why Kamala Harris shouldn’t win and actually win.” quite easily,” said Rushdie.
Stressing that the tide is changing, Rushdie cited recent media polls that put Harris neck-and-neck with Trump, “which represents a big jump from Biden’s last poll.”
“And it hasn’t even been a week. We can do this. We just have to believe.” Rushdie appealed to people across the country, including the writing community, to “use all the power we have, whether it’s speaking, writing, arguing, we have to win this argument. And writers are very good at arguing. So I think let’s do our best.” Noting that there are just 100 days until the November 5 presidential election, Rushdie said, “There is not a minute to waste,” as he urged “aunts” and extended families to mobilize and vote in large numbers for Harris.
With communities ranging from South Asia to the Indo-Caribbean coming together and galvanizing Harris, Rushdie described her support as very moving.
“It’s moving in the same way that in recent days these large assemblies of people have been moving. The Black Women’s Rally, the White Women’s Rally, the Asian Women’s Rally, and now this event. in our union,” he said.
Rushdie stressed that “we can’t be complacent. We have to fight this to the end because it will probably come to an end, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be the first ones through the post. I believe we can.”
The event called on all South Asian men and women to come together, raise funds, and vote for “our first female president, Kamala Harris!” The event, co-hosted by CEO and co-founder of full-service digital agency Digimentors Sree Sreenivasan, featured prominent names including Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, Harris South Asians co-founder Harini Krishnan, and Montgomery County Commissioner , Neil Makhija.
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