Obama-Biden ticket has a slight 'Indian accent'

WASHINGTON: A prospective Democratic White House could have a slight Indian accent after Presidential candidate Barack Obama on Saturday chose experienced Delaware Senator and foreign policy maven Joseph Biden as his vice-presidential running mate. 

Biden, who is also chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, helped pilot the US-India nuclear deal through Congress and initiated the recent eclipse of military rule in Pakistan. He is generally intimate with Indians and the Indian sub-continent - an association even Obama claims. 

The Obama campaign broke the week-long suspense over the vice-presidential nominee with a 3 a.m text message to supporters that said, ''Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee.'' 

''Joe and I will appear for the first time as running mates this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois - the same place this campaign began more than 19 months ago,'' Obama said in an e-mail sent a little later. ''I'm excited about hitting the campaign trail with Joe, but the two of us can't do this alone. We need your help to keep building this movement for change.'' 

By then, a breathless media had cottoned on to Biden being the frontrunner through a process of elimination of other contenders. A Secret Service detail that made its way to Biden’s place past midnight gave the game away. 

Biden, who is 65 and a six-term Senator, is thought to bring enormous foreign policy experience and heft to the Obama ticket. He is especially intimate with the Indian sub-continent. Experts surmise that the region - especially Pakistan/Afghanistan - will get greater attention, with better clarity, than at any time. 

India won’t be neglected either given Biden’s leading role in pushing the nuclear deal, and his close ties with Indian-Americans. In fact, such is Biden’s familiarity with the Indian community that he once made a faux pas of Macaca proportions, but with a happier ending. 

In a 2006 campaign appearance, when he was still in contention for the presidential ticket, Biden, boasting about his strong relationship with Indian-Americans in his state, said ''You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.'' 

The remark was misconstrued as being politically incorrect, but Biden quickly put it in perspective saying it was meant to demonstrate his ''incredibly strong'' relationship with Indian-American. 

''I was making the point that up until now in my state, we've had a strong Indian community made up of leading scientists and researchers and engineers,'' Biden explained later. ''We're having middle-class people move to Delaware, take over Dunkin' Donuts, take over businesses, just like other immigrant groups have, and I was saying that ... they're growing, it's moving.'' 

''I could have said that 40 years ago about walking into a delicatessen and hearing an Italian accent in my state,'' he added. 

Most Indian-Americans in Delaware, where indeed there has been a boom in small business growth by the community, did not take Biden’s remark amiss. Many of them, especially those involved in businesses relating to motels, liquor stores, and gas stations, are Biden supporters and contributors who have held fund-raisers for him and reeled him into events like the local Navratri garba hosted by the Gujarati community. 

''He’s a great guy, very experienced. We love him,'' Pravin Patel, president of the Delaware Asian-American Business Association, said on Saturday after news broke of Biden's selection. ''He will be good for U.S-India relations.'' Patel said he and his associates celebrated the e-mail announcement at 3 a.m. 

(A Republican Senator, George Allen, wasn’t as lucky as Biden in such off-the-cuff remarks). Although he too has close ties to the Indian community in Virginia, Allen lost his Senate seat in 2006 after calling an Indian-American Democrat activist a ''Macaca'' - shorthand for ape) 

While on accents, Obama too has been subject of much positive scrutiny in the ''desi'' community for being able to pronounce ''Pakistan'' correctly. Obama also joked recently about being a ''desi'' himself and his ability to make ''daal.'' The Presidential candidate's sub-continental connection goes back to the 1980s when he had college-mates from the region and he went on a three-week visit to Pakistan during the Zia years. 

Biden also has another key South Asia connection. One of his foreign policy staffers is Jonah Blank, a Yale and Harvard alumnus, whose books include Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana through India, and Mullahs on the Mainframe, a study of India’s Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community. 

Pakistan is also certain to get extra attention under a Obama-Biden dispensation. Blank and others, under Biden’s scrutiny, have put together legislation that will result in an annual $ 1.5 billion aid package to Pakistan for 10 years, directed mostly at the social sectors at the expense of the largely military relationship pursued by the Bush administration. 

While agreeing that such aid is fungible and could enable Pakistan to divert its domestic resources to military purposes, Biden aides say such a big package will at least give Washington some leverage over Pakistan, which both Obama and Biden believe to be the most dangerous country in the world that needs to be brought back into the democratic mainstream. 

In fact, Obama’s choice of Biden locks in with their mutual view that the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, and not Iraq, is the central front in the war on terror.