But Nikki Haley, India Had Its First Woman Judge Decades Before Your Parents Emigrated To US

When Nikki Haley, the US’ permanent representative to the United Nations, said her mother couldn’t become a judge in India because she was a woman, the generalisation should bring out some incredulous gasps.

Haley, when asked about role of women at a meeting of the council on foreign relations on Wednesday, said, “When you didn’t have a lot of education in India, my mother actually was able to go to law school. And she was actually put up to be one of the first female judges in India, but because of the situation with women, she wasn’t allowed to sit on the bench.”

Haley was born Nimrata Randhawa to Ajit Singh Randhawa and mother Raj Kaur Randhawa, who had emigrated from India to Canada and then to the US in the 1960s. More than two decades before they emigrated, Anna Chandy, had become a munsif in Travancore in pre-Independence India. Chandy was promoted to District Judge in 1948, the year after Independence, and became a high court judge in 1959. Chandy was able to sit on the bench and function as a judge years before Haley’s parents left India. Chandy was the first woman to get a law degree in her state.

Haley is the first Indian American to be appointed as UN ambassador, a cabinet-level position in the US. The Republican leader was elected as the governor of South Carolina state in 2010.

Haley said that she is “proud” to be the daughter Indian immigrants who believe the family is “blessed” to be American.

Prefacing her answer to a question about President Donald Trump’s attempts to temporarily restrict people from six Muslim-majority countries and refugees coming to the US, she said, “I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants, who reminded my brothers, my sister and me every day how blessed we were to be in this country.”

“I do believe that the fabric of America is legal immigration. That is what makes the US so fantastic,” she said.