CHENNAI, India – One of Senator Kamala Harris’ brightest childhood memories was walking with her Indian grandfather on the beach.
Her grandfather, PV Gopalan, had served in the Indian government for decades, and his ritual, almost every morning, was to meet his retirement buddies and talk politics as they walked along the beach in Besant Nagar, a coastal neighborhood in Chennai, brightly painted fishing boats line the sand and Hindu temples stare out at the sea. During her visit to the United States, Ms. Harris spoke while the men discussed equal rights, corruption and the direction of India.
“I remember the stories they will tell and the passion with which they spoke about the importance of democracy,” Ms. Harris said in a 2018 speech to an Native American group. ‘When I thought about those moments in my life that had the most impact on who I am today – I was not aware at the time – but it was those walks on the beach with my grandfather in Besant Nagar that it’s a profound impact on who I am today. ”
Although Mrs. Harris has understated more about her Indian heritage than her experience as a Black woman, her path to American vice-presidential election has also been accompanied by the values of her mother from Indian mother, her Indian grandfather and her wider Indian family who have provided a lifelong support network that even extends from 8,000 miles away.
Her grandfather, who wore Coke bottle glasses and often a tie while walking, may have looked like many other Indian gentlemen with higher crusts. But he defeated the conservative stereotypes of his time, portraying a progressive view of public service and involuntary support for women, especially in terms of their education, which was years before his time.
He placed great confidence in Ms Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who came to America young and alone in the late 1950s and made a career as a breast cancer researcher before dying of cancer in 2009.
Mrs. Harris stays close to the mother of the mother’s family – her aunts and uncles can talk for hours from their homes in India about the bruises they fought in San Francisco, Sacramento or Washington, giving the impression that they had seats.
Her uncle, G. Balachandran, who lives in New Delhi, recalls her visit to Mrs. Harris in California about 15 years ago when she was the district attorney of San Francisco and took heat for not seeking the death penalty for a man accused of murdering a police officer. They considered the death penalty to be flawed on many levels, both high-profile and pragmatic: racial inequalities are one and the costs of pursuing cases are another. Despite intense pressure from police officers and some of the top politicians in the state, Ms. Harris did not return.
‘She got that from her mother,’ said her uncle. “Shyamala always taught her: let no one pass you by.”
During a later California Attorney General’s race, Mrs. Harris called her aunt Sarala Gopalan in Chennai and asked her to break coconuts for good luck at a Hindu temple overlooking the beach at Besant Nagar, where she had once been with her. grandfather ran.
The aunt put 108 coconuts – a favorable number in Hinduism – to beat. “And it takes a whole day to fix that,” she said. Mrs. Harris won the election, by the narrowest margins.
That beach is now closed. With India hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and a large part of the country still locked up, the environments that Mrs. Harris loves so fondly have been abandoned. Last week, a pair of sunny, shirtless fishermen stood ankle deep in the waves and pulled the handlines, hoping for a fish.
Because of the positions for foreign policy, Ms. Harris has stepped down as senator, she has some intruders in India. But around the country she evokes enormous pride, especially in the beach town where she traces her roots.
“That family had an incredible reputation,” said N. Vyas, a retired physician who was her top neighbor. ‘They have never talked about the great things they have done in Delhi or anything like that. They were straight shooters – down-to-earth, happy people. ”
The wife of Dr. Vyas, Jayanti, who is also a retired doctor and who was lying in the doors, shook her head with a knowing smile.
‘We are not surprised,’ she said of Mrs Harris being named the first woman of color on the presidential card of a major American party.
“Look, all the women in her family are strong personalities,” she said. “These are women who know what they are talking about and what they are saying.”
The Gopalan story began in a small village south of Chennai, named Painganadu, where Ms. Harris’ grandfather was born in 1911. In terms of India’s caste system, the family was at the top of the hip. They were Tamil Brahmins, an elite subculture known as TamBrahms.
But Ms Harris’ uncle said the family never looked down on lower castes and that his parents, above all else, appreciated education.
The grandfather left the village as a young man to take a job as a stenographer for the British colonial government. Ms. Harris wrote in her memoir that he was part of India’s independence movement, but other family members said he had never mentioned this. If he had openly campaigned, like Mohandas K. Gandhi or other freedom fighters, to break away from Britain, he might not have gotten too far with his British bosses.
After the independence in 1947, the grandfather continued as an official for the new Indian government, and the Gopalans moved a lot. Mrs. Harris’ mother, the eldest of four children, grew up as a military brat, adjusting to a new city every few years when her father was brought back.
Bright, steady and with a mellow fluffy voice that won her very singing awards, Mrs. Gopalan went to high school in Delhi and studied house science, a vague field that began with feeding and developing children. Her grandfather had higher hopes.
“What are you going to do with this homeschooling degree, entertain guests?” he pleaded, according to Mrs. Harris’ uncle.
So when Mrs. Gopalan had access to a Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley, to study nutrition and endocrinology (without anyone in the family knowing she had applied) forced her grandfather not to pay, even though it was a lot of money for an official.
“One thing he strongly believed in was that, whether it’s a son or a daughter, they should be educated equally,” said the aunt of Ms Harris, who became a well-known gynecologist. ‘I do not know whose influence it was, but so was he. He was very progressive. ”
And she added, “He would do anything for us.”
Mrs. Gopalan was only 19 when she arrived in Berkeley. A few Indians were living in the United States at the time, and they did not have many Indian friends.
“Every time I went to visit, she would say, ‘Bala, this is my neighbor and this is my old friend,’ pointing to Black Americans,” recalled her uncle, Mr. Balachandran, whose family name is Bala.
Ms. Gopalan soon fell into a civil rights scene, marched in protests, was attacked by police officers with fire hoses and once, later, racing from a violent skirmish with Ms. Harris in a stroller. Berkeley was a hive of political activity.
It was also where they met Donald Harris, a Jamaican student specializing in left-wing economic theory. He was her first friend. Mr. Balachandran robbed her of romance to “philosophical affinity.”
When the couple got married, Ms.’s grandparents brought Harris added her blessings. The interracial dimension did not happen to her, said her aunt and uncle. Mrs. Harris’ grandmother was so proud that she took out wedding announcements in The Illustrated Weekly, one of the most classic magazines of its day.
The couple soon had two daughters: Kamala, which means “lotus” in Sanskrit, and Maya, which means “illusion”. But the relationship did not last. Her mother filed for divorce when Mrs. Harris was 7 years old.
For Mrs. Gopalan, it was important to preserve her Indian heritage. She introduced her daughters to Hindu mythology and South Indian dishes such as dosa and idli, and took them to a nearby Hindu temple, where she sometimes sang. She also stayed close to her parents and flew back to Chennai, on the southeast coast of India, every few years, where her parents settled.
But as Mrs. Harris explained in her memoir, which was published last year: ‘My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters. She knew her adopted homeland Maya and I would look like Black girls. ”
Mrs. Harris is a symbol of the fluid, multicultural society that is increasingly part of the American political landscape, and she said that when she first walked into the office, she struggled with trying to present herself to others. define.
“I do not owe them,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political scientist at the University of California, Riverside who focuses on Asian-American communities. “But I think she became more comfortable talking about her identity over the course of her presidential campaign.”
The reaction to them in India is mixed. There was excitement – and newspaper articles on the front page. But there has also been suspicion.
Ms Harris has expressed her concern about Kashmir, whose central government has overthrown India last year. En she criticized the Foreign Minister after refusing to meet with an Indian-American congresswoman who was also critical of Kashmir.
Kashmir is one of the most bitter divisive issues in India. While many on the left side of India the rise of Ms. Harris celebrated, others on the right criticized her, calling her a sellout.
“It will be difficult to get an unveiled hurray because Indian politics is also polarized,” he said. Suhasini Haidar, a leading Indian journalist.
Mrs Harris has not returned to India since her mother died 11 years ago. It was her mother’s dying wish to return. Finally, Mrs. Harris returned with her ashes.
It was obvious where they were going.
On a sunny morning, Mrs. Harris and her uncle walked down to the beach in Besant Nagar, where they had been walking with their grandfather all those years ago, scattering the ashes on the waves.
Shalini Venugopal Bhagat contributed reporting.
