During her visit to Pakistan, she had gone close to the Line of Control and complained that Kashmir was not “being talked about to the extent it needs to in Congress but also with the administration”.

Although the US and India have been drawing closer together, India's apparent neutrality in the Ukraine war and its continued purchase of oil from Russia remains a sticking point, although Washington's diplomats gloss over it.

Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, who immigrated to the US as a child, drew national attention when she said a Sikh prayer at the opening of a session of the Republican National Convention in 2016 – the first time a non-Abrahamic religion figured in a national party convention. Her Sikh religion has come up in the campaign for the chair with accusations that there has been a whispering campaign about her faith.

India has been diversifying its defence sourcing and purchases from the US have increased ten-fold between 2016 and 2021, according to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute.

A Republican lawmaker has praised the contributions of Indian Americans, who he said pay 6 per cent of taxes despite being 1 per cent of the population, as a model community who “represent some of the best citizens we have in America”

A Doha-based Taliban official Ahmad Yasir taunted Pakistan in a tweet reminding it of the surrender of nearly 100,000 of its military personnel to India during the 1971 Bangladesh War.

Despite the growing importance of New Delhi-Washington relations, the post has been vacant for two years after Kenneth Juster, who was appointed by defeated former President Donald Trump resigned

TRAC provides a breakdown by languages spoken by those whose asylum cases are pending and Punjabi speakers, who could be from India or Pakistan or elsewhere, numbered 21,961. There were 6,770 Hindi speakers, 6,315 Bengali speakers, who could be from India or Bangladesh or elsewhere, and 376 Tamil speakers, who could be from India, Sri Lanka or other countries.

The Sikhs suing the Marine Corps were supported in court by several organisations, including the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty and the American Islamic Congress

Before going to Washington, Zardari-Bhutto had made personal attacks on India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in crass terms at a news conference at the United Nations. Earlier, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had described Pakistan as the “epicentre of terrorism”.

Asked about the nature of US relations with India and Pakistan, Price reiterated his earlier contention that they stand on their own, were not a “zero-sum game” and Washington does not “view them in relation to the other”.

The 43-year-old Varadkar had done an earlier stint as prime minister – or Taoiseach, as it is formally known in the Gaelic language – from 2017 to 2020.

In January, California State University (CSU) System with 23 institutions added caste to its non-discrimination policy under the “race or ethnicity” category and that has been challenged in a federal court by two professors of Indian origin who asserted that anti-discrimination policy itself amounts to discrimination against Indian origin and Hindu staff and students.

About 215,000 people who are waiting for their Green Cards will die before their turn to get them and more than 99 per cent of them will be Indians, it said. 

With more than 32 million people of Indian origin globally, according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, Indians are the largest diaspora population in the world.