United States Senator Kamala Devi Harris on Tuesday was named running mate for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The Indian-origin senator became the first Black woman to compete on a major party’s presidential ticket. In her possible role as Vice President, she would serve many firsts: the first woman, the first Indian-American and the first Asian-American.
In the wake of the announcement, renewed interest in Kamala’s history as the daughter of immigrants has resurfaced, which includes family roots in Tamil Nadu. While Kamala’s father is Donald Harris, an immigrant from Jamaica and former economics professor at Stanford University, her mother was Shyamala Gopalan, an Indian woman, cancer researcher and civil rights activist originally from Chennai.
The 55-year-old Senator from California becomes the fourth woman to be selected for a presidential ticket, according to the New York Times.
Kamala’s parents divorced when she was young, after which she was mostly raised by her mother. Some reports suggest that Kamala maintains a distant relationship with her father.
While raising Kamala and her sister Maya, their mother did not forgo their connection to her father’s heritage, bringing Black culture into their lives, while also embracing their Indian background, the newly-announced vice-presidential pick has said in interviews. Kamala was able to have both a Black and Indian upbringing.
“My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters,” she wrote in her autobiography The Truths We Hold. “She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women.”
Some reports say that Kamala also has a love for south Indian food, including idli and sambhar. Last year, while Kamala was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, she made a video with comedian Mindy Kaling, in which the two made masala dosas together.
Harris was born in Oakland and grew up in Berkeley. She spent her high school years living in French-speaking Canada. Her mother was teaching at McGill University in Montreal. Kamala later attended Howard University in Washington D.C. before following a career in criminal justice. Shyamala, who immigrated to the US for a doctoral program at UC Berkeley, passed away in 2009 after suffering from colon cancer.
On Tuesday, Kamala’s sister, Maya, tweeted a video of Kamala speaking about her mother and the influence she had on their lives.
You can’t know who @KamalaHarris is without knowing who our mother was. Missing her terribly, but know she and the ancestors are smiling today. #BidenHarris2020 pic.twitter.com/nmWVj90pkA
— Maya Harris (@mayaharris_) August 12, 2020
In an interview, Kamala said that she and her sister would go back to India every couple of years, and she has vivid memories of her grandfather. “One of the most influential people in my life, in addition to my mother, was my grandfather PV Gopalan, who actually held a post in India that was like the secretary of state position in this country. My grandfather was one of the original Independence fighters in India, and some of my fondest memories from childhood were walking along the beach with him after he returned and lived in Besant Nagar,” she said in an interview.
Her maternal uncle Gopalan Balachandran told ANI, “It is a historic day for the Indian community.”
Our family feels happy. My sister, her mother, would have been very proud of her daughter. It is a historic day for the Indian community: Gopalan Balachandran, maternal uncle of #KamalaHarris, on her being selected as Democratic candidate for United States Vice President #Delhi pic.twitter.com/iZ1OIT61Mh
— ANI (@ANI) August 12, 2020
“Harris knows the Black American experience. She knows the South Asian-American experience. She knows the immigrant experience. She knows the aspirational power of the American dream. She is the running mate for this moment,” wrote Neil Makhija, Executive Director of IMPACT, an organisation that enables Indian Americans to run for office in the US, in an op-ed published by CNN recently.
With PTI inputs