Indian-origin Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who appears to be the second contender in next year’s elections after his party’s leader Donald Trump, defended his faith as a Hindu and respectfully described how all religions teach the same lessons while elaborating on freedom of religion. Speaking to a crowd of Iowa voters at a CNN town hall Wednesday night, Ramaswamy said, “I would tell the truth and lose an election rather than win by playing political snakes and ladders.”
“If I have to end my political career, I will. But I will never pretend to convert (to religion),” he said when a woman in the crowd asked him if his religious beliefs were in contradiction with those of the Founding Fathers.
Who is Vivek Ramaswamy?
Ramaswamy was born on August 9, 1985, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Hindu Indian immigrant parents. His father, V. Ganapathy Ramaswamy, a Tamil-speaking Brahmin from Kerala, was a graduate of the National Institute of Technology in Calicut. He worked as an engineer and patent attorney for General Electric, and his mother, Geetha Ramaswamy, was a graduate of the Mysore Medical College & Research Institute. His mother worked as a geriatric psychiatrist.
Notably, since Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 US presidential election, the founder of Roivant Sciences, a pharmaceutical company since 2014, voters have expressed doubts about his religious origins while a majority of the American population is Christian.
Meanwhile, detailing the core tenets of his Hindu faith, Ramaswamy, 38, stressed that his views are aligned with “Judeo-Christian values” shared by many Iowa voters. He acknowledged, however, that he would not be “the best president to propagate Christianity.”
‘I couldn’t be ‘the best president to propagate Christianity’: Ramaswamy
Ramaswamy said his Hindu upbringing aligns with the fundamentals of Christianity, while maintaining that he studied at St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, which is a Christian school. “I’m going to tell you about my faith. My faith teaches me that God puts each of us here for a purpose. That we have a moral duty to fulfill that purpose. That God works through us in different ways, but we are always equal, because God resides in each of us. I think these are the same -Christian values that I learned at Saint-X,” he said.
“Respect your parents… don’t kill… don’t lie, cheat, steal or commit adultery. We share the same values in my faith, like Christianity,” added the Hindu. chief.
Furthermore, the father of two claimed that his task was not to propagate Christianity and added that it would not be a task given to the President of the United States. Ramaswamy said his job is to defend the “Judeo-Christian values” shared by many Iowa voters.
