Usha Vance, wife of U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, is arriving in New Delhi this week as part of a high-level diplomatic visit to India바카라a tour unfolding against a tense geopolitical backdrop that includes escalating U.S.-China trade frictions and a recalibrating of the Indo-Pacific order. But even as the focus of the visit remains on bilateral talks between the Trump-Vance administration and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it is the Second Lady who has drawn outsized public interest.
This is her first formal visit to India since her husband assumed the vice presidency in January 2025. For many, Usha Vance바카라s arrival is both personal and symbolic. Born Usha Chilukuri in 1986 in San Diego, California, to Telugu-speaking immigrant parents from Andhra Pradesh, she is the first Indian American to serve as Second Lady of the United States바카라and the first practicing Hindu to hold that title. Her itinerary includes visits to key religious and cultural sites across New Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur, a route that gestures toward her spiritual heritage.
Before she was a political spouse, Usha Vance had carved out a formidable legal career. A graduate of Yale University and Cambridge, she later returned to Yale Law School and served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She went on to clerk for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit and later for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts바카라a path that placed her among the most elite legal and political circles. She practiced at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in San Francisco before stepping away from full-time legal work during her husband바카라s 2024 campaign.
Usha and J.D. Vance met at Yale Law School, and they married in 2014 in an interfaith ceremony바카라Hindu and Christian rites side by side. At the time, public voting records indicate that she was registered as a Democrat. She later changed her affiliation to Independent in 2017, and then to Republican in the lead-up to her husband바카라s Senate run in Ohio. In aligning herself more visibly with her husband바카라s hard-right positions, allies describe her as pragmatic. Critics, especially in South Asian American circles, have called out the contradiction between her identity as a woman of colour and her alignment with a populist administration that has taken a hard line on immigration, reproductive rights, and civil liberties.
Though she rarely gives interviews or speaks publicly about her politics, she is widely understood to be a steady presence behind the scenes, shaping decisions while maintaining a deliberate distance from the spotlight.
J.D. Vance has often credited her with re-introducing him to Catholicism, a conversion he has described as pivotal to his personal and political worldview. Vance has also, on several occasions, has spoken highly of her influence 바카라Usha definitely brings me back to Earth a little bit, and if I maybe get a little bit too cocky or a little too proud, I just remind myself that she is way more accomplished than I am,바카라 Vance said in an interview on the 바카라Megyn Kelly Show바카라 podcast in 2020.
This influence is especially palpable today, in India, where their visit arrives at a moment of growing ideological synergy between the American right and the Hindu nationalist establishment. The Vances바카라 meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to centre on economic ties, but their cultural itinerary바카라especially their stops at religious institutions바카라is already being read as a soft endorsement of Modi바카라s vision of a resurgent, religiously defined India. Whether deliberate or incidental, such symbolism has currency in both capitals.
In the Trump-Vance era, where nationalism and personal narrative often work in tandem, Usha Vance바카라s visit is not just a personal homecoming. It바카라s a reminder of how easily the lines between biography and politics can blur.
