US Elections 2024: How Bengali became the only Indian language on NY ballots — ‘they settled on…’

US Elections 2024: As the world's largest economy gears up to elect its 47th president, bitter rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are locked in a neck-and-neck battle. 

When final voting in the US presidential elections takes place on November 5, the ballot papers will only have four languages other than English. Bengali is the only Indian language on the list.

New York City is legally required to provide voting materials in Bengali at specific polling sites. This mandate covers ballot papers and other essential voting resources, ensuring full language support for Bengali-speaking voters.

“There was a lawsuit about language access, and, as you know, the country of India has a lot of different languages within it. The settlement of that lawsuit required a certain population density to have an Asian Indian language. Then, through some negotiations, they settled on Bengali. I understand the limitations of Bengali being the choice, but it came out of a lawsuit,” said Micheal J Ryan, Executive Director, Board of Elections, NYC, reported PTI.

The US Board of Elections is required to provide four Asian languages to the voters. Apart from Bengali, Chinese, Spanish, and Korean are the other Asian languages that have made it to the list.

‘Know English, but…’

Several residents of the Queens area, New York, expressed their satisfaction that Bengali was selected as one of the Indian languages.

Subhshesh, a Bengali sales agent in a store in Times Square, was happy that his father, who lives in the Queens area, would get linguistic assistance when he went to cast his vote in the US polls.

“People like me know English, but there are many in our community who are comfortable in the native language. This helps them at the polling station. I am sure my father will like the idea of seeing a Bengali language ballot paper,” said Subhshesh, reported PTI.

Dr Avinash Gupta, President of the Federation of Indian Association, said it would help to get “our voices heard”. 

“It will help the Indian population to go out and vote. That is how we can get our voices heard. We are a sizable population. It is heartening to see how Indians go out and vote and even contest elections,” Dr Gupta was quoted as saying by PTI.