Why the Harris inauguration made me cry
Op-ed
Vikramaditya Prakash
February 1, 2021
As a first-generation South Asian immigrant, watching Kamala Harris’ inauguration made me emotional. I identified not only with her mother’s journey- which could mirror my and my daughter’s experience one day—but because of what her standing on that podium meant for me as a first generation American.
Having grown up in a family of relative privilege in India, I did not come to the United States because I wanted to leave or run away from India - I was and still am quite proud of my homeland - but because of what the American dream stood for, and still does. India first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru - a man who kept a bronze cast of Abraham Lincoln’s hand on his desk for inspiration - had already articulated as the idea of India. “We the people of India….” began the constitution of India, inspired very much by that of the United States, outlining a progressive vision of a just and equitable society, a civilization that seeks not to enshrine hierarchy and narrowmindedness, but that recognizes the gift in each one of us, regardless of color, class, race, religion, gender or economic background.
I was born into this Nehruvian vision - one of Salman Rushdie’s (in)famous ‘midnight’s children’ My father helped build Chandigarh, one of Nehru’s dream cities, intended to be “unfettered by the traditions of the past, a symbol of the nation’s faith in the future.” Nehru’s India, like the American Declaration of Independence, sought to be free from the shackles of history and enshrined a future oriented, secular, modern, democratic, and iconoclastic vision. Building this new India has not been not easy. Like the long struggles in America, by indigenous peoples, slaves, and women, India’s story was and is beset by formidable challenges and always on the brink of failure. Resources are always a challenge, and, more importantly, there are many, driven by their own compulsions, who oppose its vision. The very long fight of Indian independence and its aftermath shows us that aspirations and rhetoric face inertia of past practices and the sheer weight of societal advantages - what we call ‘white privilege’ in contemporary parlance - are threatened by change and inevitably resist progress. My generation grew up shoring up the Nehruvian vision against its detractors. We drew hope from the struggles of nations we thought were further along the path of progress. These became symbols of our faith in the future. Perhaps because of the very restricted 1960s and 70s diet of the occasional touring Hollywood drama and the image-heavy publications like Span, National Geographic and Playboy that we consumed, for my generation it was unquestionably the United States that was the symbol of this future to come, the land of unrestricted freedom and opportunity for all. And so, it was with a somewhat exaggerated sense of expectation I immigrated to the US in the 1980s, drawn by the pull of hope and aspiration, rather than the push of unrealized dreams. My American dream was the same as the Indian dream, but on steroids.
In the three decades that I have lived here and made the United States my home, I have had the privilege to live and work with some of the finest people I have ever met, each one committed the American dream in their own ways. But, along the way it has also been clear that the American dream is still in many ways just that, an aspiration that has to be defended, fought for and struggled to be realized, each and every day. With that it has also painfully obvious to me that here, as in India and in so many other aspiring parts of the world, there is absolutely no guarantee or even assurance that this dream will be realized in any significant form or that progress that has been made by sweat and suffering of so many generations will not be pulled back and even erased by countervailing interests. The setbacks that we have had to contend with in election cycle after election cycle, and certainly the experiences of the last few years that culminated in the dastardly attack on the Capitol on January 6, make clear to me that the United States that I dreamt of is far from becoming a reality, and that the aspiration of a just and equitable future, far from being guaranteed, can easily be derailed. In India today, some of the detractors of the progressive vision now yield considerable power and are actively working to dismantle what has been achieved, not just politically, but also architecturally by removing and destroying one building after another. In its place this new India seeks to build ‘world class’ structures; namely cheap imitations of the worst institutions of capitalist power in the West, modelled for instance by our recent President. But America did, and can still, stand for other ideals; that is what drew me here. And so, when a Black, Asian American woman of color took her oath of office on the Capitol steps on January 20th, it was not just her South Asian-ness that I identified with. Rather, it was the resurrection of my American dream that I as an Indian immigrant identified with, that made me emotional, and made me cry.
The author is a Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean of the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington in Seattle.
