Adlah Chisti experienced a flash of familiarity when she saw Kamala Harris for the first time on television twenty years ago. Here was a politician whose Indian first name and skin tone like her own. The daughter of Indian Muslim immigrants was a passionate college student who noticed a lack of South Asian representation in San Francisco’s public positions. As the city’s district attorney, Harris was a rising star who was also the daughter of Indian immigrants. Chisti told The Standard, “She was the only person I could look up to growing up in San Francisco.” “We had that representation at last.”
Chisti attended law school with the intention of becoming a prosecutor, and she subsequently supported Harris’s 2016 Senate bid. Chisti, forty, is inspired by Harris’s bid to become the first South Asian-American president of the United States. She aspires to be the first South Asian-American supervisor in San Francisco’s history. In San Francisco, where East Asians and Chinese Americans have historically dominated political representation, few South Asians have been elected to public office. But during the past 20 years, the population of South Asians in the city has nearly quadrupled, partly due to the burgeoning tech sector. A new generation of South Asian political activists has been motivated by the demographic transition, and many of them are running for municipal government.
Son of Pakistani immigrants, Bilal Mahmood is an entrepreneur who aspires to be the first supervisor from South Asia. Mahmood is running against Supervisor Dean Preston in District 5, while Chisti is seeking to replace retiring Supervisor Ahsha Safaí in District 11. Supryia Ray and Parag Gupta, both South Asians who were elected to the Democratic County Central Committee in March, seem to be the front-runners in the contest for school board. Aliya Chisti, the younger sister of Chisti, is a board trustee for City College of San Francisco and is a candidate for reelection. Outside of elected office, several prominent South Asian activists are making waves. These include Sachin Agarwal, co-founder of GrowSF, and Kanishka Cheng, founder of the moderate political group TogetherSF.
Cheng, a refugee from Sri Lanka, told The Standard, “There are more South Asians living in San Francisco and in tech than there used to be.” “Identity politics is still at play, so they can only run if they have a base of support.” surge in population The South Bay and East Bay are home to the majority of the Bay Area’s sizable Indian and South Asian populations.Over 10% of the population in Santa Clara and Alameda counties is Indian, and Silicon Valley is home to numerous prosperous Indian tech executives. Last year, Indian Americans overtook Chinese Americans as the largest Asian ethnic community in the country. Six South Asians are represented in Congress, including Ro Khanna of the South Bay, who was elected in 2016.
In 2020, Harris became the first Indian American to be elected to both the vice presidency and the Senate. The Indian American community in San Francisco is making up ground. In 2000, there were only roughly 5,000 Indian Americans living in San Francisco. By 2010, the number had doubled, and in the last ten years, it has risen to 22,000, or almost 3% of the city’s population. There are perhaps 1,000 people living in Pakistan; populations in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are reportedly much smaller. According to Mano Raju, the public defender for San Francisco, the increasing population has given more South Asians the confidence to pursue opportunities in politics. Raju, a steadfast progressive, claimed that his love of public service stems from both his Indian and American ancestry. “I approach this work with an understanding of the relationship between the South Asian anti-colonial movements and the American civil rights movement,” Raju stated. “There is a lot of solidarity, in my opinion.” In 2022, Siva Raj, an Indian immigrant with experience in technology and healthcare, initiated the unprecedented recall of three school board members. He links India’s democratic system and independence movements to his political engagement. According to Raj, “Indians who were raised there or had that upbringing are not afraid to participate in the democratic process.”
Politicians with technological backgrounds A number of well-known South Asians with backgrounds in technology have chosen to work in San Francisco politics. One is Mahmood, a businessman and centrist politician. He was shortlisted for an appointment to the Board of Supervisors in 2022 along with another activist, Vikrum Aiyer, who has experience working in policy roles for internet companies. In contrast, Agarwal has experience working for Twitter and Lyft. The parents of Mahmood left Pakistan and immigrated. His father studied engineering at Stanford, where he grew up in student housing. He also frequently travelled to the Tenderloin, a popular destination for South Asian immigrants and the location of Shalimar Restaurant, one of the first South Asian restaurants in the city.
He is a candidate for the Board of Supervisors, intending to draft legislation to establish a South Asian cultural district if elected. Connecting with the community was the highlight of this challenging campaign, according to Mahmood. During Ramadan, a young person approached me and said, “Oh, I know you.” I requested that my mother vote for you. Many Indian Americans have achieved success in the private sector, particularly in technology, and AJ Gandhi, a board member of the recently formed Association for the Advancement of Asians, expressed his satisfaction that the trend had “trickled into” the public sector.
“It’s fantastic to see people with South Asian heritage becoming involved,” Gandhi remarked. He advocated for the Asian American community to concentrate on policy and practical leadership responsibilities rather than only adhering to ethnic voting patterns. Will members of one ethnic group support members of another ethnic group in elections? We have progressed past it.
