‘My Wife Is Desi’: Abdul El-Sayed Reveals Karnataka Connection, Says Democracy Denied In Pakistan

US Senate Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed brought an unexpected India connection to a Pakistani-American Independence Day event in Michigan, revealing that his wife is “Desi” and has roots in southwestern Karnataka before speaking out about democracy in Pakistan. Speaking Sunday at the Pakistan Association of America’s annual event in Southfield, Michigan, El-Sayed said his wife is “from the other side of the partition” and comes from the southwestern part of Karnataka.

The remarks were captured in videos shared by Detroit Free Press reporter Niraj Warikoo. El-Sayed, who is running for the US Senate from Michigan, also shared a light-hearted story about how he tried to learn Urdu to impress his wife.

“I was talking to my friends, and I said,

‘You need to teach me some Urdu so I can charm my wife,’” he said. He then told the audience that the only Urdu words he knows are: “Aap ki aankhen hain bahut khoobsurat” meaning, “Your eyes are very beautiful.”

El-Sayed said he had initially assumed his wife spoke Urdu, only to discover that she spoke an “unwritten dialect” from southwestern Karnataka. “My wife is Desi. She’s from the other side of the partition,” he said.

El-Sayed’s wife, Sarah Jukaku, has roots in Bengaluru, India, where she owns an inherited rental property. In his book Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic, El-Sayed wrote that Jukaku’s parents came to the US from a village in India. Jukaku, a psychiatrist, met El-Sayed while they were students at the University of Michigan, and the couple’s relationship was featured in the university’s student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, in 2006.

Abdul El-Sayed On Pakistan’s Democracy

The Michigan Democrat’s remarks, however, soon moved from his personal connection to South Asia to the state of democracy in Pakistan. Speaking on the 79th anniversary of Pakistan’s founding, El-Sayed said democracy must be protected and that the political system should allow people to contest elections without being jailed or intimidated.

“On the 79th anniversary of Pakistan, we also have to be clear that right now, democracy is not being allowed to take its place,” he said. El-Sayed drew a comparison with Egypt, where his parents immigrated from, describing it as a country without democracy and under military dictatorship.

“The only reason I could be running for office is because I was born in these United States of America because of an accident of history,” he said. “My family immigrated to this country from Egypt, where there is no democracy. There is a military dictatorship.”

He said the histories of different communities can sometimes “rhyme” and argued that democracy is fragile. “Democracy is a precious thing. It’s a beautiful thing, and it operates on a knife’s edge,” El-Sayed said, adding that the US itself was facing threats to democratic ideals.

Reference To Imran Khan

El-Sayed also referred to the treatment of political opponents in Pakistan, saying democracy requires people to have the freedom to contest elections and participate in public life. “Democracy requires that all people get to run for public office rather than be subject to jailing and intimidation simply because they would have a voice in our public office,” he said.

Without endorsing or rejecting any particular Pakistani political leader, El-Sayed said the principle should apply regardless of one’s views about former Prime Minister Imran Khan. “And whatever one feels about the former prime minister of Pakistan, I think all of us agree that democracy only works when we have the freedom of our speech and our own freedom to be able to articulate and run for public office,” he said.

His remarks came as Pakistan’s political system remains dominated by the country’s powerful military establishment, with Khan jailed and facing multiple legal cases. For El-Sayed, the Pakistan Independence Day event offered an opportunity to connect his own family’s history with a broader argument about democratic rights.

The Democrat, who is seeking a US Senate seat from Michigan, ended the event on a lighter note, wishing the Pakistani-American audience on the country’s 79th Independence Day and saying, “Pakistan Zindabad.”