As he inches closer to the next presidential race, American Vice President JD Vance has decided to answer the most burning question of his personal life—the question of his wife’s Hindu faith.

“My wife did not grow up Christian. I think it’s fair to say she grew up in a Hindu family but not in a particularly religious family," Vance said recently at a Turning Point USA event, before going on to explain, almost apologetically, how both he and Usha were “agnostic or atheist" when they met. “We decided to raise our kids Christian," he added, noting that their eight-year-old had his first communion a year ago, which was followed by loud applause.

Then came the call to convert: “Most Sundays, Usha will come with me to church… Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved by in church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that. But if she doesn’t, God says everybody has free will and that doesn’t cause a problem for me."

The audience erupted in applause. But underneath the applause was a revealing political calculus. The “deal" that JD and Usha Vance had as a couple, a quiet consensus built on love, tolerance, and mutual respect, was suddenly up for public scrutiny. MAGA scrutiny.

And Vance sensed it.

Instead of simply answering the question, which, notably, came from a woman of Indian origin and wasn’t about conversion at all but about acceptance, Vance felt compelled to declare that his wife was indeed raised Hindu, but not that Hindu. He wasn’t responding to the questioner; he was responding to the crowd. The MAGA crowd.

A little background on JD Vance helps explain the stakes. While Usha Vance came from a solid Hindu family with a strong, middle-class........

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