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CHENNAI, India, Nov. 8 (Reuters) – Indians set off firecrackers on Sunday and offered prayers of gratitude for the election of Kamala Harris as the next vice president of the United States, declaring that it is a proud moment for Americans of Indian descent. .
Harris, born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, both immigrated to the United States to study, made history by becoming the first woman to win the second highest office in the United States in elections.
In her ancestral village in southern India, about 8,000 km (4,970 miles) from Washington DC, children held Harris posters as people gathered at a Hindu temple to thank the gods for the victory she and the President-elect Joe Biden obtained.
The temple priests of the village of Thulasendrapuram bathed the local deity in milk and prayed. The women drew murals in the courtyard and the musicians played traditional music.
“A woman from this small village now holds one of the highest positions in America. It is a moment of pride,” said R. Kamaraj, a government minister in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, who joined the celebrations.
Harris, who visited the village when he was 5 years old, often remembers taking walks with his maternal grandfather on the beaches of the southern city of Chennai during annual trips from the US.
Those conversations with his grandfather, who was among the millions who joined the Indian independence movement, left a profound impact, Harris said in a 2018 speech.
He has been in close contact with his family in India and his uncle said he planned to attend the inauguration in January.
“It’s great (the victory). It was necessary and it was good. And the next four years will be good,” G. Balachandran, a leading defense scholar, told Reuters partner ANI at his home in New Delhi, where millions of People from all over the world watched every twist and turn of the choice.
“I knew she was going to win. So, I wasn’t tense, except I wanted the final results to come in so I could go to sleep,” he said.
In Mumbai, people set off fireworks and a group of artists painted a portrait of Biden and Harris.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who faced criticism from some quarters for tacitly backing US President Donald Trump in a mass “Hello Modi” rally in Texas last year alongside Trump, said Harris’ victory It was historic on Saturday night.
“Her success is groundbreaking and a source of immense pride not only for her chittis, but also for all Indian Americans,” he tweeted, referring to the Tamil word for aunts that Harris referred to in his acceptance speech for the Nomination of the Democratic Party.
Dozens of prominent Indians and Americans of Indian descent also took to social media to congratulate Harris, including actors Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Mindy Kaling.
Kaling tweeted pictures of Harris and wrote “Crying and holding my daughter, ‘look baby, she looks like us.”
(Additional reporting from Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai, Sunny Kataria in New Delhi; Edited by Gerry Doyle)
