How wife Usha's Hindu faith guided JD Vance, Donald Trump's VP pick

JD Vance, the Ohio Senator who is Donald Trump’s running mate for the US presidential election in November, has said that his wife’s Hindu faith has helped him immensely.

Vance, in an interview to Fox News, said his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance’s faith helped him navigate his own spiritual and professional journey.

But how did Usha’s faith help Vance?

Let’s take a closer look:

According to Deseret.com, Vance said he believed in God as a young man but did not belong to any religious group.

Vance said he did go to an evangelical church off and on.

But by 2010, when Vance entered Yale, he was completely cut-off from both church and god.

“I would have called myself an atheist,” Vance previously told Deseret News.

However, during his time at Yale Vance found himself reconnecting with the power of faith.

It was also at Yale that Vance met his future wife Usha – who graduated summa cum laude from Yale with a Bachelor’s Degree.

In 2014, when Vance and Usha got married, a Hindu priest conducted a separate ceremony.

By 2016, Vance told the website he could imagine himself joining a religious group soon.

“I’ve been going to church for the past year or so. Not as much as I should, but more than I have been. I’ve been thinking very seriously about converting to Catholicism,” Vance said.

‘Usha was very supportive’

Vance in 2018 was baptised into the Catholic Church.

He told Fox News that Usha was critical when it came to him reconnecting to his faith.

“I was never baptised. I was raised Christian but never baptised. I was first baptised in 2018. Usha was actually raised non-Christian. She is actually not Christian. But I remember when I started to re-engage with my own faith, Usha was very supportive.” Vance told the outlet.

Usha told the Fox News she grew up in a religious household.

Explaining why she supported him, Usha said, “I did grow up in a religious household. My parents are Hindu. That is one of the reasons why they made such good parents. That made them very good people. And I think I have seen the power of that in my own life. And I knew that JD was searching for something. This just felt right for him,” she said.

News18 quoted Usha as saying that she and her husband were in sync when it comes to their family and raising their children.

“And the answer really is, we just talk a lot,” she added.

The couple has three children – Ewan, 6, Vivek, 4, and Mirabel, 2.

Vance, formerly a Trump critic, has quickly developed a reputation as a MAGA firebrand in his short time on Capitol Hill.

He earned modest applause when he entered the packed convention hall for the first time Monday as Trump’s running mate.

Trump especially liked Vance’s performance on television, where he has become a fixture on conservative media. The former president also likes Vance’s looks, saying he reminded him of “a young Abraham Lincoln.”

Trump is also hopeful Vance can draw from his life story growing up in Appalachia to help appeal to Midwestern voters. Vance has experienced poverty and addiction up close in a way that is uncommon among leading Republican officials.

Vance also had another advantage: his chemistry with Trump. The first-term senator has developed a strong rapport with Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and leading MAGA figures during his recent rise in Republican politics.

Vance is an Ivy League-educated author, former Marine and businessman. He is known for his aggressive questioning of Biden administration officials.

With inputs from agencies