Explaining Nikki Haleys Racism toward Palestinians
JUAN COLE
08/25/2020
96SHARES
Reprinted from 05/16/2018 when Haley was US ambassador to the UN and was
regularly bashing Palestinians
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nimrata Nikki Singh Randhawa Haley on
Tuesday walked out of the chamber when the Palestinian ambassador began to
speak. Palestine, like the Vatican, has non-member observer state status at
the UN. Youre not a very good diplomat if you wont even listen to what one
of the parties to a dispute has to say.
Ironically, Ambassador Haley has a great deal in common with the
Palestinians she despises. Haley seems to be a syncretic Sikh-Christian now,
but was brought up in the Sikh religion that originated in medieval north
India. Sikhism has some family resemblances to both Hinduism and Sufi Islam
but is best thought of as an independent tradition. Sikhs are largely
Punjabi speakers, though some speak Hindi. In modern India they have often
felt discriminated against by the Hindu majority and there have been several
periods of unrest.
Independent India in 1947 inherited from the British Raj a state of (east)
Punjab that was multi-cultural. The Akali Dal Party successfully lobbied in
the 1960s for a Sikh majority state of Punjab, with Hindu Punjabi and Hindi
speakers being hived off into Haryana and speakers of rural dialects into
Himachal Pradesh. It would be interesting to know how her parents thought
about the Sikh demand for statehood.
The tripartition of the former east Punjab state caused a problem in that
the whole state had Chandigarh as its capital. Chandigarh is really
niceIve been there. It was designed by the French-Swiss architect
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier. Post-1966 Punjab and
Haryana both wanted it as their capital. The Indian government reached a
compromise such that the city is the capital of both states. That sort of
arrangement is what Palestinians propose for Jerusalem, a proposal rejected
by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and also by Nimrata Haley. Does she
think Haryana should be kicked out of Chandigarh, too?
A small movement of Sikhs is still not happy and wants independence. This
movement includes Khalistan. A disgruntled Sikh nationalist serving as her
bodyguard assassinated Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, setting
off days of anti-Sikh riots and pogroms in New Delhi, which has a
significant Punjabi immigrant population. A Sikh was convicted of a 1985
downing of an Air India flight, which killed 329 persons.
Amb. Haleys family name is Randhawa. Obviously, that is a big group with
all kinds of members. Some, back in India, are members of the establishment
Congress party. But some belong to the more Sikh-centric Akali Dal Party.
Some may be Khalistanis. Even the most establishment members of the Randhawa
clan would likely agree that Sikhs are widely discriminated against. A
Paramjit Singh Randhawa, a Canada-based businessman and supporter of World
Sikh Organisation (WSO), for a long time was excluded from India on
(possibly unfair) suspicion of separatist sentiments. He may not be a
relative of Nimrata Nikki. India continues to be worried about Sikh
extremism in Canada.
1. So the first resemblance between Haley and the Palestinians are that both
come from groups that are minorities and face discrimination from the
majority. Sikhs, like Palestinians, organized around a demand for statehood
and succeeded in getting a Sikh-majority Punjab state in Federal India.
Palestinians also want a state, and if they get one at all, it is now likely
also to be in federation with Israel.
2. Haleys father and mother, Ajit Singh Randhawa and Raj Kaur Randhawa came
to North America in the 1960s, he to do a post-doc in Canada. In 1969, they
ended up in Bamberg, South Carolina, where Professor Randhawa taught a
historically Black college. Haleys sister Simran told this story:
My parents were trying to rent a home in Bamberg and the same physician so
kindly tried to help. He found a wonderful small home and we moved in. That
night he returned to take back the keys as the owners did not want an Indian
family renting their home. He found us a second home and we moved. The next
night he was back. Once again we were being evicted because of our brown
skin. He finally found a third home for us. It was owned by the mill. We
would be allowed to live there on three conditions: 1- We had to buy the
house and sell it back to the mill when we moved., 2 We were not allowed
to have any alcohol on the premises. 3 We were not allowed to have people
of color at our home. We moved in that evening.
So the second resemblance is that the Randhawas, like Palestinians in the
Occupied West Bank, faced forms of housing discrimination and were kicked
out of their home for their identity.
3. Simran also tells a story about in-betweenness:
The beauty pageant story was also of significant impact. Both Nikki and I
were in Little Miss Bamberg. However, unbeknownst to our parents, only a
black and white queen were selected. We were neither. Just before
intermission, Nikki and I were called up on stage, thanked for
participating, told we were being disqualified and given crayons and a
coloring book as the music began to play.
That is a third resemblance between Nimrata Haley and the Palestinians. She
was excluded from the pageant for being neither Black nor white.
Palestinians are also in limbo, having no state identity and being neither
Israeli nor any other recognized nationality.
But of course, the Indian-American from an immigrant family (did they come
on a H1-B visa of the sort Trump is attempting to get rid of?) has done
whatever she can to escape her past. She adopted Christian Zionism if not
all the appurtenances of Evangelicalism. She threw in with the
anti-immigrant, white nationalist Trump administration. And now she is
delighting in helping crush the Palestinians the way Indian Moghul Emperor
Aurangzeb crushed her Sikh ancestors. She even tried to whitewash Trumps
history of sexual harassment. Trumps one-time campaign manager, Steve
Bannon, once went to Silicon Valley and noticed all the Indian-American
software engineers, and is said to have wondered, Why are these people
here? Nimrata has attempted to escape her own subalternity in order to
pretend to be part of an elite that will never really accept her.
When she turns her back on the Palestinians, Perhaps she is trying as hard
as she can to turn her back on herself. If so, that act of the reinvention
and disguise of the self requires viciousness toward all who remind her of
her own marginality.