Congressman Shri Thanedar was elected to the US House from Michigan’s 13th Congressional district in 2022. He is the only Indian American in the US House of Representatives who moved to the US as a student, when he was 24; and he remains proud of his Indian heritage. In an exclusive interview from his Congressional district in Michigan, Thanedar spoke to the Times of Indiaon a range of topics from his advocacy for a strong US-India relationship to the need for immigration reforms in America and a new Congressional caucus on religious freedom for people of Indian origin that he has recently launched.Edited excerpts from the interview.
Ishani Duttagupta
Q: Earlier this year in August, you were part of the bipartisan US Congressional delegation to India; what were the takeaways from the visit?
A: The visit was an official Congressional visit, with eight members of Congress who joined. The purpose was to strengthen the US-India relationship. [Indian Prime Minister] Modiji came to America earlier, in June, and I had pleasure to escort him to the joint session of the House of Representatives and Senate. Modiji did a long and nice speech that was very well received by both sides of the aisle. After that there was renewed interest among US Congress members to recognise India’s importance and some of them expressed an interest in visiting India, that is how the visit came about. And when Modiji was in Washington DC, he and I had a one-on-one conversation for about 40 minutes at the Kennedy Center and we talked about the perception of India in the western world; we specifically talked about India’s perception in the US Congress and that often India gets criticised but not recognised for how the country has progressed in the last 75 years in terms of dealing with issues of poverty; dealing with issues of digitalisation; bringing in modern technology to the Aadhar card or the identity card making it easier for people to vote; to do banking and other areas. A lot has been done for the common person and yet India does not get recognised in the world and often the western media and sometimes even the lawmakers in the US Congress have criticised and nitpicked India. The purpose here was to have them visit India and to take a look at India as a whole and not just some problem spots and some weaknesses. All have weaknesses; the US included. All democratic countries have imperfections and we are all striving towards perfection. So I just wanted to put things in perspective.
Q: Your journey as an Indian immigrant has been an inspiring one; you went to the US as a student and later became an entrepreneur – what were the main reasons for you to take the plunge into politics leaving behind a successful business? Do you see yourself in the role of a mentor for young Indian Americans?
A: Only to the extent that my life’s experience inspires others – the thing about it was that I grew up in poverty having been born in Belagavi in Karnataka. I struggled through getting a US student visa and it was denied four times. Ultimately, I got the visa and came to US which was for me to seek economic opportunities to help my family. When I first came, I used to get $300 a month as stipend as a teaching assistant while I was working on my PhD in chemistry. I would send $75 home so my mother could feed the family and take care of the education of my brother and my younger sisters. That is the kind of perspective that I have; I was 24 years old when I came to the US and not a child. Some of the other Congress members who are of Indian origin were either born here or came when very young; I came as an adult and I have seen the life in India. When I arrived with $20 in my pocket, I didn’t know anybody – that was 1979; unlike now when almost every other family has someone in the US , back then US was very unknown. I came here not knowing anybody and was looked upon as someone foreign and not belonging to America.

And even though I got my education here; started a small business and became a US citizen; I was still looked at as an outsider. My business became very successful and I achieved my American dream with some hard work and some help. But when I looked around, I found that America, which is always portrayed as the rich nation with all the luxuries and ambience of richness – had 20% of the people at or below poverty level. People can’t take out mortgage on homes; there are homeless people in America and people who don’t have health insurance; 20 million of Americans don’t have health insurance. Many of the veterans, who have served in the army, are homeless; many of them have mental health issues but don’t get mental health services that they need. So on one end we have this powerful and richest country in the world and at the other end we have these people who cannot afford to feed themselves; people who have to make the decision whether they go and buy their medicine or heat their home or pay the rent. When I saw the discrepancy and the wealth gap; having grown up in poverty myself; I understood the struggles of people. Now that I had become very successful and my business had grown to 500 employees, revenues were great and I had created a lot of value; I looked at myself and said: is that what my life is supposed to be? Going forward do I just collect wealth or is there more purpose to my life? I saw that I could go help others achieve their American dream and with that thought in mind I decided to sell my very lucrative business, which would have continued in creating a lot of financial value; but I decided to stop there. Some of the sale proceeds, I distributed to all of my employees, I always shared my profit with them, and after selling the business I thought I wanted to take up a public service position that allowed me to help the greatest number of people. So I ran for Governor of Michigan. Nobody knew me then. People have accepted Indian Americans to be good doctors, business persons or IT professionals – but Indians are not yet accepted as mainstream high level political people. To be a governor, for an immigrant like me, who speaks with an accent and who looks different, was shocking. But initially I was actually leading the campaign among all of the candidates. Later, I had to face a lot of attacks and ended up not winning that election. But still 200,000 people voted for me to be their governor even though I don’t look like them and I don’t speak like them; which, I thought, showed the big hearts of my voters and my constituents. They trusted me because they saw my story, they saw my struggles, they saw how I had suffered when my first wife, the mother of my children, died because of mental illness. My children were just four and eight years old and I raised them as a single father. So they’ve seen my struggles with poverty and with a family member suffering through mental illness and they felt that I was the right person. When I lost that election; I thought what am I going to do now? I am not going back to business because I’ve been there and done that and I decided to run for a state representative position. I fought for that and won the election to the Michigan house. I worked hard and brought more money to my district for education; for mental health and to build new schools. Many of the schools in in low income areas, which have large Black and Brown communities, are notoriously below quality compared to the richer and affluent suburbs. I felt that every child must have same access to education and to healthcare as anybody else and that’s what I had to fight for. Decades of systemic racism has robbed people of colour of opportunities; so looking at my own personal example, I felt it was important to get good education; access to good healthcare and learning opportunities. I also helped promote entrepreneurship so people could start businesses and get the right skillsets. That is what motivated me and I did good work for the two years. And now I have a position in the nation’s Capitol as a Congressperson, representing nearly a million people. I ran for that and got elected; and here I am working in the US Congress trying to improve the quality of life of my constituents in Detroit and the neighbourhood area in Michigan’s 13th Congressional district.
Q: What are some of the areas that you are focussed on in the US House of representatives? Do you support immigration reforms?
A: The immigration issue is not a major one in my district; yet we have major corporations that need workforce and they have difficulty in getting skilled people. I am working on streamlining the green card process. Currently the green card process, with country quotas, has created a lot of hardships both for the employers because they cannot find enough skilled workforce and the families of the engineers, scientists and highly skilled people who are struggling with their immigration status. There are a number of Bills that I’m working including one that I just introduced to make PhDs exempt from the country quotas. I am working to fix the American broken immigration system because once that happens it will help the businesses and the skilled workforce. It will help the American economy and create American jobs. I also serve on the small business committee and a lot of my efforts are focussed on helping what we call the mama & papa shops such as restaurants, bakeries and dry cleaners – little businesses that need help. I’m trying to cut the red tape and streamline licensing processes and giving access to small business to grants and loans that are available for them to take advantage of. I’m also trying to promote entrepreneurship among the low income neighbourhoods and families. Another area is workforce development; after the Covid pandemic, we have a huge shortage in terms of skilled workforce and it is important that we train and give people the skills that they need to get good paid jobs. It is important that we have support apprenticeship programmes with the help of universities, businesses and non-profits. Skills development in the workforce is a big thing for me as well as affordable housing. A lot of things that I’m working on in Congress to help my constituency.
Q: You are the founder and chair of the new Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, and Jain (HBSJ) US Congressional caucus. What are the reasons behind setting up the caucus?
A: It is meant to include all of the major religions in India and the focus is religious freedom. It is meant to provide people with the ability to practise their own religion without any phobia or any kind of physical or verbal attacks and discrimination. This is a caucus for religious freedom for letting people live the way they want to live. It is a positive caucus about peace, happiness, joy and freedom. It is not meant to be against anything or anybody; but more of a positive and protective caucus

Q: What are some of the topics on the agenda of the newly formed caucus?
A: For example, the Sikhs have been misunderstood since 9/11 and have been attacked for absolutely no reason. This is because of the lack of education; hatred often comes because of the lack of education. One of the major focus areas of this caucus is education and letting American people know about these religions and about the teachings of these religions. It is to help people understand the message of peace, joy and happiness that these religions and their teachings promote and practise. Sometimes there is misunderstanding and sometimes there is deliberate misinformation and our job and goal is to fight that; to keep the record straight and to let people know that religious freedom is important. Just as the freedom to love the person that you want to love; in the same way the freedom to worship the god that you want to worship is a fundamental human right. We want to uphold that and encourage inter-faith communication and information about these religions without misinformation and without biases. Despite that, if these religions get attacked, we want to stand for the people’s religious rights.
Q: Is the ‘samosa caucus’ of Indian American representatives likely to expand soon?
A: That is certainly possible. In 1956, we had the first Indian American, Dalip Singh Saund, elected to Congress and the person after that was Ami Bera, only in 2012, who got elected from California. Even though there are 1% Indian Americans in the US, there was no representation for a long time. In 2016, three more Indian Americans got elected and I just got elected in 2022. What I would like to see is that Indian Americans, who have been very successful in education, business, science and technology, IT, medicine etc and focussed largely on economic gains; should be true Americans and also be involved in the American way of life. Not only do we need to take things from this great society and great country to benefit ourselves but at the same time we need to give back. It needs to be two-way of giving to the others in the community; especially those who are marginalised and helping lift them up. That is also our civic duty to go beyond the wealth and beyond the career, professional and financial success. We are not complete until we also give back to the country that we adopted as our own and that has given us so much. That is what my motivation is in saying that I’m going to devote the rest of my life to public service.

Q: Personally, are you still connected with India?
A: Yes, I often go to India; I went twice this year. One of the books that I wrote – The Blue Suitcase – where I talked about my story; is a bestseller and there’s always demand for me to go to India and speak to young people, which I do. The book is translated in Marathi too; it’s a language that I’m fluent in; besides I speak Kannada and I understand Gujarati and, of course, Hindi. I often go to India to speak with college students about entrepreneurship. Now I want to help the western world, especially the members of the US Congress, to understand the importance of India and why India and the US must work together and have a long-lasting and trusting relationship. India is soon to be the third largest economy in the world and on the other hand is China’s military aggression; unfair economic policies; and disrespect for intellectual property. The India-US partnership is important to effectively stand against China’s aggression. I have lived in India and I understand Indian processes very well; I would like to utilise my knowledge to work towards a strong and lasting relationship between India and America.