BANGALORE, India — Utah state Sen. Daniel McCay surprised everyone during a meeting with the Indian Commerce Ministry.
Ahead of an hour’s worth of discussions on the possibility of trade between India and Utah, he told Indian Minister Piyush Goyal in New Delhi, “Mera dil hai Hindustani.”
He translated his sentiments for the Deseret News.
“A small part of my heart is still Indian,” McCay recalled saying to the minister.
“(Goyal) literally stopped me afterwards and said, ‘You need to come see me,’ and gave me his card with his mobile number.”
The Utah state senator said he noticed that speaking any Hindi immediately strengthened diplomatic ties, showing the power language holds to cross barriers.
McCay learned Hindi while serving a mission for The Church of Latter-day Saints in India in 1994.
For this Utah legislator, the two-week trade mission to India — which included lawmakers, politicians and academics — was a homecoming.
A long way to India
When he received his assignment as a young man to serve in India, “I thought it was Indiana, not India,” McCay jokingly told me during an interview at the lobby of the Taj Hotel in Bangalore. He remembered feeling apprehensive.
Not a lot of American volunteers ”were ever assigned to India. It’s a very small alumni,” he said.
McCay recalled the long journey, flying first to San Francisco, then Singapore, Hong Kong and finally Madras, a city in Chennai, South India. From there, he flew to Bangalore, the mission home. After a two-day respite, he jumped on a train to go north to New Delhi.
“I learned a lot about India riding on a train,” he said of the 48-hour voyage. “I was on my own to get to Delhi. I knew I was going to be OK if I stayed on the train.”
McCay added he was “too young and dumb to be afraid. ... It was just an adventure.”
McCay was the son of a single mom, who worked hard to provide for her family, but he grew up experiencing homelessness, moving around a lot and going to 11 different schools.
“My family was really not well off growing up,” he said. “I got to India thinking that I was poor, and maybe the world owed me something.... I had this chip on my shoulder.”
It didn’t take him long to realize how fortunate he was.
“India really changed me in a lot of ways. I feel very grateful to this country for who I am, or the life that I’ve had,” he said. But “India, to me, feels like a second home.”
As a young man, the state senator spent three months in Delhi, experiencing the opportunities and challenges of one of the world’s largest cities.
He was then transferred to Calcutta, West Bengal, where he served for eight months before moving to Kathmandu, Nepal.
Americans typically visit touristy spots, like the Taj Mahal, and stay in the business areas or tech centers in cities like New Delhi and Bangalore. “But you would never see them out in the villages,” he noted.
The culture was foreign to him and he was foreign to the locals, who witnessed a six-foot-tall American in his white shirt, tie and bicycle helmet, traveling in rural parts.
The novelty eventually wore off and McCay managed to connect with the people, helping them see that they all cared about the same things, whether it was their children or their jobs.
McCay said he tried his best to assimilate into Indian culture. He studied the Gita to understand the religious practices of Hindus. What began as curiosity quickly became an influential part of his life.
“I try not to worry about the small things as much and I think that’s a very Hindu way of being,” he said. “I probably respond to stress differently.”
India’s evolution over three decades
During his latest visit to India this month, McCay observed that some things haven’t changed.
Whether it’s chaotic traffic or the need to keep up with a young and growing population, “the people, the shared interest, the common goals — it’s all the same," said the Utah legislator.
But India’s development, thanks to technological advancement, is undeniable.
“I can call an Uber here, just like I can in New York, Washington, D.C., or Salt Lake City,” he noted.
During his most recent tour of the Taj Mahal with the rest of the delegation, McCay reflected on India’s age.
Muslim powers controlled parts of the country before European nations like Portugal, English and French gained a stronghold. After independence from the British in 1947, Hindus stepped up to rule the country for the first time in centuries.
“The Taj, being one of the biggest landmarks that the world knows, is a kind of a symbol of someone else ruling India,” he remarked. This wonder of the world was built during the Mughal era, a period between the 16th and 19th centuries when a dynasty of Central Asian origin influenced the Indian subcontinent.
“You think about what that means for a country to have existed as long as India, with its infrastructure and traditions,” McCay said.
The Taj Mahal doesn’t look much different from his several visits, first as a young man, then as a newly-married man, showing his wife the country he grew to love.
“We had been married a year and my wife wanted to know why I ... had a different outlook on things,” he recalled of the second trip he took to the country in 2000 with a smile.
The state senator said he wanted her to experience it firsthand.
Coincidentally, his wife, Tawnee McCay, walked into the hotel lobby amid the interview and offered her thoughts on the initial trip to South Asia.
“I remember it felt like an assault on all of the senses,” she said of the sound of the horns and the smells and the large crowds.
“It was also just amazing to see a place that he loved so much and meant so much to him, to be able to come over and see it together,” Tawnee McCay said. “It was definitely the farthest culture I had ever experienced.”
Back then, State Sen. McCay spoke fluent Hindi. He said he picked up phraseology from music, and specifically the iconic soundtrack from the 1995 Bollywood film “Bombay,” very popular at the time he was serving in India.
He knows songs from other movies, too. Like the one he sang from the film “Shree 420″ at a Corporate Connect event in Bangalore on the second last day of the trade mission. “Mera jootha hai Japani, meri patloon Englishtani, sar pe laal topi Russi, phir bhi dil hai Hindustani,” he half-whispered into the mic. The crowd roared in glee.
The lyrics translate to “My shoes are Japanese, these trousers are English. The red cap on the head is Russian, yet the heart is Indian.”
One of the trade delegates, Guruprasad Sowle, the president and cofounder of Indus International Research Foundation and an advisory board member at World Trade Center Utah, noted at the event that in an increasingly divisive world, people like McCay play a crucial role.
“It’s important to us to get out of our bubble of our state and to be face to face with each of you,” Sowle told the crowd of at least 50 entrepreneurs. That builds trust and allows business to flow more naturally, he added.
“The last thing we want to do is get on a plane for ... 24 hours to come here to do a simple transaction and leave,” Sowle said. “We want to build relationships that last years.”
Many delegates from Utah shared this sentiment after witnessing the possibility of trade between the Beehive State and India on energy, defense, diagnostics and manufacturing.
McCay’s Hindi is a little rusty now, he confessed. But he said he sees the language barrier disappearing.
Roughly 120 major languages are spoken in India, with Hindi and English being the most used.
Nowadays, more and more people converse in English.
India, not a service project but a partner
While the trade delegation attended ministry and business meetings in Goa, a coastal city known for tourism, and Pune, an automotive and education hub, the Utah legislator visited the Latter-day Saint chapel in New Delhi.
During his first church meeting in India in the ’90s, everyone from the branch president and bishop to the men blessing and passing the sacrament were American. The talks were also given by American volunteers.
But last week’s visit was different. Indians now led the congregation.
“That part felt like a spiritual homecoming,” he said of “passing the baton.”
“It was fulfilling to see that handoff being completed,” he added.
At least four Latter-day Saint meetinghouses exist in Delhi now. In McCay’s time, there was one.
He noticed other changes, too. In the early 1990s, India was compelled to open its previously closed economy to global trade and foreign investment. At the time McCay lived in India, convenience stores only sold two major soft drinks: Thumbs Up and Limca.
Latter-day Saint volunteers like him depended on these sodas because, many times, it was a safer choice than drinking unfiltered water.
“You couldn’t get a Snickers bar,” he added. “Everything was Indian produced.”
After leaving India in 1996 and returning four years later with his wife, the Utah senator observed American brands, from McDonald’s to Coca-Cola and Pepsi, flooding the Indian market.
In the year 2025, the market is a hybrid of international and Indian brands.
McCay saw an “appetite and willingness” from businesses to work with the West.
But “tech has really changed the way India sees herself,” he noted.
Rickshaws that used gas and kerosene, and heavily contributed to emissions, switched to compressed natural gas over time and now many of them are electric.
“In some ways, India was afraid to let people in and see who she was,” he said. “Now everybody sees who she is, and I think India is proud of who she is.”
Three decades later, this South Asian country is leveraging technological innovation and fading language and commerce barriers, the Utah legislator said.
“As we talked to ministers and companies throughout this trip, it became clear that India is in a position now to partner better with the United States than it ever has,” McCay added.
He sees an opportunity for the two countries to collaborate, learn from and serve each other. “If we can have that attitude, this will be a great relationship that can endure.”