Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is on the verge of being declared the winner of the US presidential elect 2020. There is significant speculation with regards to what the new administration’s policy be towards India given the fact that significant sections of the Democratic base has been overtly tilted against the current Indian government on significant matters such as Kashmir and the CAA.
As it so happens, a prominent staffer of the Joe Biden campaign, Amit Jani, is an avid supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to the official website of the NJ Leadership Program, he currently serves in Governor Phil Murphy’s Administration in New Jersey. He is also the Director of the National Asian American Pacific Islander as per his profile on Twitter.
Amit Jani has served as an adviser to the presidential campaign team of Joe Biden. In May 2019, after Prime Minister Modi secured a second term in office, Amit Jani posted a series of photos on Facebook with the caption, “Loved the energy and jubilation throughout the state on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory in the Indian national elections! Proud of Deepti Jani for all the work you did during the campaign!”
Deepti Jani is the mother of Amit Jani according to a report on News India Times from 2018. The Intercept reported that the Facebook post, which appears to have been deleted since then, had photos where Deepti Jani was identified as “Community Activist, BJP Supporter” during an appearance on TV Asia.
Amit Jani also apparently met Prime Minister Modi during the latter’s official visit to the USA in 2017. His father is reportedly one of the founders of the Overseas Friends of the BJP in the USA. Suresh Jani, who has passed away, is from the same village in Gujarat as Narendra Modi and the two met at a gathering of the RSS, The Intercept reported. A photograph in a ToI report shows Suresh Jani receiving a much younger Narendra Modi during a visit to the United States in the 1990s.
“My mother liked Modi so much that when he was leaving, she blessed him and predicted that one day he would become a great man. She gifted Modi $51 as a shaghun (an auspicious symbolic gift). Around eight years later, when he was about to be sworn in as chief minister, Modi called and asked me to connect him with my mother. He said he still remembers the shaghun and her blessings. Then my mother told him ‘You will become bigger’,” Suresh Jani told Rediff in 2014.
The appointment of Amit Jani in the Joe Biden campaign staff caused a lot of outrage from the far-left section of the Democrat party due to what they claimed were his links to a ‘far-right Hindu Nationalist party’. He was subsequently removed as the Muslim outreach coordinator but he was retained in his position as the campaign’s Asian-American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) national vote director.
