Gopalan was a preliminary 19-year-old student. She had graduated early from the University of Delhi, but the trip to California marked her first time out of India, where her parents and three siblings lived.
She was alone.
Fortunately for Gopalan, she had chosen to study on a campus that was about to become the countercultural capital of the United States. There, she found a home in the vibrant Black Community of the Bay Area, which welcomed her with open arms.
“From almost the moment she arrived from India, she chose and he was welcomed into the Black community,” Harris wrote of her mother in her 2019 autobiography, “The Truths We Hold.”
“In a country where she had no family, they were her family – and she was them.”
Gopalan and Donald Harris divorced when the children were young, but they would continue to be active in the civil rights movement. Kamala Harris wrote that her mother was acutely aware that she was raising two girls who would make the general public assume that they were Black, not Black and Indians.
Harris credits her mother, who died in 2009, as one of her most important influences in her life, which, along with others, inspired her to enter politics.
But while Gopalan’s sense of civic duty may have found a new purpose in Berkeley, it was forged in India.
Gopalan’s mother and Harris’ grandmother, Rajam Gopalam, were an outspoken organizer of the community. Rajam’s husband, PV Gopalam, was a full-fledged Indian diplomat.
“My mother was raised in a household where political activism and civic leadership came naturally,” Harris wrote in her book.
“From both grandparents, my mother developed a keen political awareness. She was aware of history, aware of strife, aware of inequality. She was born with a sense of justice imprinted on her soul.”
The influential grandfather
That sense of justice was largely shaped by PV Gopalan, who worked as a diplomat to recover refugees from East Pakistan – present-day Bangladesh – in India after the partition of the country, according to Harris’ uncle, Gopalan Balachandran .
Balachandran told CNN in a phone call that his father had strong views on humanitarian issues, which affected Shyamala.
But that was not exactly what bound the two siblings together when they were younger.
Balachandran, 80, said he remembered it best that he and his sister loved pranks and would get into trouble when they were younger and living in Mumbai. He remembers his father as stinking with advice and quiet but supportive.
Gopalan’s confidence in his children proved crucial when it was time for Shyamala to move to Berkeley. Balachandran said at the time, she would have been one of the first 19-year-old single Indian woman to travel to the US to study because of conservative attitudes about the role of women in India.
But PV and Rajam Gopalan were progressive for their time. Balachandran said she offered to pay the first year, and after that, Shyamala would have to do it on her own, which she did.
“We were so happy,” Balachandran said.
Balachandran said his father was a little warmer with his grandchildren, which Harris seems to reflect in her public remarks about him.
When asked for advice, PV Gopalan would tell his grandparents, “I will give you advice, but do what you think is best, what you like best, and do it well,” he recalled. Balachandran.
“He would walk along the beach every morning with his buddies who were all retired officials and they would talk about politics, about how to fight corruption and about justice,” Harris said. “They would laugh and vote and argue opinions, and those conversations, even more than their actions, had such a strong impact on me in terms of learning to be responsible, to be honest and to have integrity.”
Harris said her grandfather was one of the “original fighters of independence in India”, but her uncle delayed the role of PV in India’s fight against the British.
‘Make Shyamala Proud’
Harris’ aunt, Sarala Gopalan, woke up in Chennai at 4am on Wednesday with the news that her niece was former Vice President Joe Biden’s choice to join her on the Democratic ticket.
She did not go back to sleep.
“The family are all very happy, all of us,” she told CNN affiliate CNN News 18.
Once Biden said he would nominate a woman, Balachandran thought it was “very, very likely” it would be Harris based on her experience and background
Balachandran said he and Harris do not talk as often, in large part because of the distance and demands of a high-ranking American politician.
He joked that people in India who call Harris a “female Barack Obama” should now call the 44th American president a “male Kamala Harris”.
When asked if he had a message for his niece, Balachandran recalled something his sister once said.
“Shyamala always said I never sit still. If you can do something, do something,” he said.
“Make Shyamala proud.”
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