Indian American Nikki Haley championing fight to bring down Confederate flag

In the ongoing debate over the significance of the Confederate flag in the United States, Indian American Nikki Haley has emerged as a civil rights champion.
Haley has come a long way, from being unable to qualify to become either the white or the black pageant queen and facing ethnic slurs from her own party when standing for elections, to becoming the South Carolina Governor. She has taken up one of the most divisive issues of South Carolina by making a clarion call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the State Capitol premises, reported The Washington Post.
Haley converted from Sikhism to Christianity a long time ago, but when she ran for Governor in 2010, her political rivals used her Indian origin to tarnish her image and spread rumours that she was not Christian. After she assumed office, Haley also struggled to cope with South Carolina’s white, male-dominated establishment.
Although Haley refrained from inserting herself into racial politics for years, she has now emerged as a prominent and confident leader of the south. She says that she just could not look at her kids in the face and keep that flag up.
Over four years after assuming office, Haley has come full circle and is now seen by fellow Republicans as a sign of the party’s progress on racial issues.
The racially motivated attack in an African-American church in South Carolina that left nine people dead has brought the spotlight back to the decades-old debate over the meaning of the Confederate flag.
While supporters of the flag claim that the flag symbolises the southern culture, the naysayers contend that it is a racist symbol that represents a war to uphold slavery and oppose civil rights. (ANI)