Kamala Harris and her deep India connection: From loving good idli to childhood memories of Chennai

The US presidential election is already proving to be historic. Joe Biden has dropped out of the race after growing demand from Democrats. As he stepped aside, he made way for Kamala Harris, endorsing his vice president to step into his shoes and take on Republican Donald Trump in the race to the White House.

Harris still has to win the Democratic nomination . But if she does she will script history – the first Indian American and Black woman to lead the ticket of a major political party. If she goes on to win the US election, she will be the country’s first woman president.

So what is Harris’s connection to India? We take a look.

Born to an Indian immigrant

Kamala Harris’ mother Shyamala Gopalan was born in southern India’s Tamil Nadu. She moved to the US to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. This is where Shyamala met Kamala Harris’s father Donald Harris.

They were both members of a Black intellectual study group, later known as the Afro-American Association, which held discussions on African history and the African-American experience, according to a report in The New York Times.

Shyamala was welcomed into the group as a person of colour. The two talked and formed a relationship in 1962.

Shyamala was only 19 when earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Delhi. She then went on to earn a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in nutrition and endocrinology at age 25, according to her obituary.

In her 2019 memoir, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey," the vice president talks about her mother’s journey from India to the US. She remembers her as a “gifted student” whose parents encouraged and supported her when “she showed a passion for science”.

In the book, Harris says that her mother’s family expected her to return to India after she finished her studies in the US and have an arranged marriage. “But fate had other plans. She and my father met and fell in love at Berkeley while participating in the civil rights movement,” the vice president says in her book. “Her marriage — and her decision to stay in the United States — were the ultimate acts of self determination and love.”

Harris says she was raised to appreciate her multi-faceted heritage, according to a report in TODAY. “My mother, grandparents, aunts and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots… Our classical Indian names harked back to our heritage, and we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture,” she writes in her memoir.

Harris’s younger sister is Maya. Their parents married in 1963 and had two daughters in 1964 and 1967. However, the couple parted ways within a few years. “By the time I was 5 years old, the bond between them had given way under the weight of incompatibility,” Harris writes in her memoir. They divorced a few years later.

The influence of her mother

Shyamala raised her two daughters as a single mother. While Harris’ father “remained a part of our lives”, “it was really my mother who took charge of our upbringing”, the vice president says. “She was the one most responsible for shaping us into the women we would become.”

Harris’s mother was a breast cancer researcher. “She had only two goals in life: to raise her two daughters and to end breast cancer,” Harris says in her memoir.

In a 2020 campaign video, Harris recalls visiting her mother’s lab with her on weekends. Watching her mother work, she says in the video, shaped her worldview of believing in possibilities, and remaining “unburdened by what has been”.

In a Mother’s Day post on Facebook in 2022, the vice president, wrote about how her mother inspired her to chase her dreams. “My mother would often say to me: ‘Kamala, You may be the first to do many things. Make sure you are not the last.’”

Harris’s family in Tamil Nadu

Shyamala’s family comes from Tamil Nadu and like her, they are all said to be achievers.

Harris’s grandfather PV Gopalan worked on the rehabilitation of refugees from East Pakistan in India. He later became an advisor to the Zambian president, reports The Hindu. His wife earned a reputation for social work.

The vice president’s maternal uncle Gopalan Balachandran was a former consultant at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA). He is an academic in Delhi, the report says.

Harris’s uncle was quoted as saying by The Hindu that Harris remains connected to her roots in India, through her upbringing and visits to Chennai.

The visits to India

During a luncheon for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June last year, Harris said that India was a “very important” part of her life and she is deeply connected to the country. “The history and teachings in India and of India have not only influenced me, they, of course, have shaped the entire globe,” she said.

She also recalled her visits to India as a child . “When my sister Maya and I were growing up, our mother would take us from the Bay Area to India pretty much every other year. The purpose of those trips were many, including that we would well understand where she came from, what produced her; so that we could spend time with our grandparents, with my uncle and our chittis; and to really understand the love of good idli,” she said amid laughter, reports PTI.

The family would travel to visit their grandparents in Chennai (then Madras). Harris would go on long walks with her grandfather on the beach along with his friends who were retired civil servants and they “would debate issues of the day”, she remembered.

Harris’s grandfather, she said, taught her lessons about “not just what it means to have a democracy but to keep a democracy”.

After her mother died, Harris and her sister visited Chennai to immerse her ashes in the sea keeping in mind Hindu traditions.

Keeping in touch with her desi side

In speeches and gatherings, Harris often talks about her Indian roots. During a campaign to commemorate India’s Independence Day in 2020, she spoke about her mother’s love for a good idli and her grandfather’s stories about the heroes of India’s freedom struggle.

During the run-up to the 2020 US presidential campaign, Harris cooked masala dosa with Indian-origin actor Mindy Kaling.

Grand celebrations in the village

Harris’s victory in the 2020 polls was celebrated in her ancestral village of Thulasendrapuramin in the Tiruvarur district of Tamil Nadu. Villagers burst crackers, distributed sweets, and drew colourful ‘kolams’ in front of their homes, reports The Hindu. Special pujas were held at a temple by villagers to thank the deity for answering their prayers.

Many people refer to her as the “daughter of the village”.

Now villagers are thrilled at the possibility of her winning the Democratic nomination and hopefully the presidential election.

K Kaliyaperumal, a member of the village committee, told Reuters, that if she were to win and become president the celebration would be much larger, comparing it to India’s recent win at the cricket World Cup which had created waves of joy in the nation.

The villagers who have been tracking Harris’s journey, hope they will find a mention if she wins. When she became vice president, many hung calendars with her picture outside their homes. They are likely to make a comeback.

With inputs from agencies