Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans

Congressional and Senate India Caucuses: What do they really accomplish?

Interview with House Rep. Frank Pallone, cofounder of the India Caucus

News India-Times
October 29, 2004

The Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans is often referred to as the largest caucus on the Hill, with 194 members at last count. The recently-formed Pakistan Caucus is playing catch-up with 55 legislators on the roll. Interestingly, 32 of these 55 members have their fingers in both pies, as it were, being members of both caucuses. Veena Merchant, Editor-in-Chief of News India-Times, interviewed Rep. Frank Pallone, cofounder of the India Caucus, as part of TV Asia’s ‘Capital Debates’ series presented by the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA).

A Conversation

Q. What was your first time when you got introduced to the Indian-American community?

A. I ran in 1988 for the first time and that time my congressional district was pretty much along the shore. But when we did the census and the redistricting that we do after 10-year census in 1990, they reconfigured my district and a majority of my district ended up being in Middlesex county, most notably the Edison area. So as soon as I was elected there back in 1992, for the first time of course, I met a lot of the leaders in the Indian community. I said one of the things that we can do is set up a members caucus within the House of Representatives and we can get members to join what we call the India caucus and this would be a vehicle to effectuate that.

Q. This has always confused me. What exactly does it mean for a lawmaker to be on a caucus? How many country specific caucuses do we have?

A. There are not that many. Everybody seems to think that there are quite a few, but I would say there are probably no more than 10 countries, there might be 12 or 8.

Q. But we must be a very popular country because of 440 members we have 194 on the India Caucus; 114 Democrats and 80 Republicans. What does it mean for a lawmaker to be on such a caucus? What can the community expect?

A. The purpose of it was to bring India and the United States closer; and that still is the primary purpose. It is actually called the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans.

So the caucus also includes the goals of working toward the goals and betterment of the Indian-American community as well, but it is registered within the House of Representatives as a group of members who want to get together for any purpose they can create a caucus and they register it. If you look into the official House manual, it would mention the India Caucus. But they are not all country-specific. There are caucuses for all kinds of things, you know alternative medicine caucus, there is a free trade caucus.

Q. In reality Congressman, what does it mean?

A. In theory a member could be actually anti-India and join it... Because we don’t have any thing that says that you have to pledge or do anything. The reality is that it is mostly members that are particularly interested in India and want to promote the cause that I...

Q. Does the caucus pass resolutions?

A. It can and it has, more often than not what we do is that we periodically do a letter that we would call, ‘Dear Colleagues’ (letter). For example, I would still, although I am not the chairman anymore, I was the chairman for the first six years, I am still the chairman of our Kashmiri task force. So we have this sort of subgroupings called task forces and like the Kashmiri task force we will meet may be quarterly during the course of the year. The India Caucus usually meets at least once a month. At those meetings we try to establish policies and then we will either introduce a piece of legislation that a lot of members cosponsor or we may do a ‘Dear Colleague’ which is a letter that we would send to say Colin Powell that the members could sign. Then they would circulate that letter explaining why we want them to sign. So it is all policy oriented pretty much. There may be something that is not policy but it is almost 100 percent policy-oriented.

Q. The Pakistan Caucus was just recently started, they already have 55 members and I believe there are 32 which are on the India Caucus also. How does that work?

A. Let me tell you one thing about this Pakistan Caucus. The Pakistan Caucus has existed sort of informally for a long time but it was an instrument of Pakistan embassy. In other words, it was not a members caucus. It was basically something that was established by the embassy. And it met sort of clandestinely and it wasn’t an official members’ caucus. Now I understand they may have established an official members caucus in the last couple of years... No I believe it was this year... Yes the first time... now may be it is an official members’ caucus in the way that I described the Indian Caucus, but for years it existed just as sort of an arm of the Pakistan embassy. In fact, I actually got a letter from the Pakistan embassy that was on the embassy stationary. Now you know that would never happen with India because they would not be associated in anyway.

Q. What alarms the community sometimes is these 32 members that are on both the caucuses.

A. Well in theory there is nothing wrong with that.

If an issue came up... In theory even if you are a member of the India Caucus, and I am a good example of that, you advocate peace between India and Pakistan and try to bring the two countries together in a common market, in economic union, defense union, whatever. So in theory there is nothing wrong with a person being a member of both. Now most of us don’t do that because I would not join the Pakistan Caucus myself only because I want to be a spokesperson for U.S.-India relations. Not for U.S.-Pakistan relations,.

That’s good to hear... But I don’t think you should get into the notion that it is necessarily a bad thing that you are a member of both. You know people have both Indian and Pakistan communities and they want to say they are part of both. I don’t think it is necessarily inconsistent.

Q. My question then is what can we expect from a member of the caucus. Would the member vote more in favor of the country and the community?

A. All those things describe me and describe most of the people who are leaders in the India Caucus but there are some people who are members who feel that there is nothing wrong being members of both and I would not criticize them. But I understand where you are coming from.

Q. But speaking of any specific issue, would the caucus or would you personally get involved in issues such as India’s bid to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council?

A. Absolutely sure. Those are the kinds of issues. I actually have introduced a bill, or I should say a resolution, that would have Congress call upon the Bush administration and the State Department to pursue that goal and be in favor of India be a permanent member and that’s a perfect example.

And that resolution came about as a result of one of the early meetings in the India Caucus going back may be six or seven years, I have lost track. And we circulated a letter asking members to cosponsor the resolution.

But it is hard to get it passed because the administration hasn’t taken a position. But that would be a perfect example of how we are agitating to get the State Department and the administration on record supporting India being a permanent member and we try to get more and more cosponsors to show support from the House of Representatives.

Q. On this particular measure how many from the caucus would you say supported?

A. I think that we started out with five or six members and then maybe we had 20 or 30 who cosponsored it. It depends on the issue. We are making progress on it because now Britain and I think Germany have indicated that they support India being a permanent member. So we are making progress.