Washington: A day after Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced that he will run for US president in 2016, the way he chooses to identify himself has become the subject of a trending hashtag in India. It's called #bobbyjindalissowhite.

Jindal’s meteoric rise in the Republican Party as a conservative of color has won him many supporters in the United States. But here in India, Jindal is seen 'as a man who has spent a lifetime distancing himself from his Indian roots.'

'I’m sick and tired of people dividing Americans,' Jindal said. 'And I am done with all this talk about hyphenated Americans. We are not Indian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, rich Americans or poor Americans. We are all Americans.'

His remarks fueled a firestorm of jokes on Twitter that he is trying to pass as white despite his Indian roots.  The reason Jindal has come in for such treatment is because he’s an eloquent advocate for integration and the promise of America. They’re not making fun of his background they’re treating him like the Indian Clarence Thomas.

His argument:

Your ethnic or religious heritage doesn’t make you any less fully American. You don’t need a qualifier just because your parents or grandparents were born elsewhere. This is America, after all. For the left, being 'American' insufficiently describes you for the cultural commissars of modern identity politics.

So who’s right?:

Is a racially colorblind and ethnically integrated society America’s future? Or are we headed for a balkanized culture defined by our differences? The answer, strangely enough, could come from the way the next US Census questionnaire is worded. The Census is taken every 10 years, and the next one is scheduled for 2020. The federal government is considering taking two possible changes, and is sending out test surveys this fall.

Race or origin:

One possibility is for the question about the Census respondent’s race to be worded as asking for the subject’s 'race or origin,' with racial options as well as ethnic and national-origin choices. Another possibility is to get rid of 'race' altogether as a category. It would expand the identity portion of the Census by asking something along the lines of: 'Which categories describe Person 1?' And it would add a category for those of Middle Eastern and North African descent. That latter proposed change makes a lot of sense so much sense that it’s hard to believe the government will actually do it.