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NEW DELHI – From the moment the sun rose in Thulasendrapuram, a small village in southern India, people started setting firecrackers along the road. They reached the temple. They drank colored powder and wrote exuberant messages in big, cheerful letters in front of their houses, like this:
“Congratulations Kamala Harris, pride of our people.”
If there was one place in India that enjoyed the triumph of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mrs. Harris, his running mate, in the United States presidential elections, it was Thulasendrapuram, the village where Mrs. Harris more than 100 years ago. make. His name is scrawled on a board next to the temple. People love her and identify strongly with her.
For four days, the roughly 500 residents of Thulasendrapuram had been waiting anxiously. They had been praying in the temple, covering Hindu idols with rose petals and sweet smelling jasmine threads, and alternately searching for good omens and checking their cell phones for the latest updates.
On Sunday a wave of joy erupted.
“Kamala has made this village very proud,” said Renganathan, a farmer, who ran to the main temple in the village. “She is a great lady and an inspiration. She belongs to this soil. “
Although Ms. Harris has been more underrated about her Indian heritage than about her experience as a black woman, her path to vice presidency has also been guided by the values of her Indian-born mother and her wider Indian family, who have supported her all her life. In several important speeches, Harris spoke about her Indian grandfather, PV Gopalan, who inspired her with his stories about the struggle for Indian independence.
His mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who came to the United States young and alone in the late 1950s and made a career as a breast cancer researcher before dying of cancer in 2009, remains one of the people she talks about the most. Mrs. Harris.
In her victory speech in Delaware on Saturday, Ms. Harris said that her mother was “the woman most responsible for my presence here today.”
“When you came here from India at the age of 19, you might not have imagined this moment,” Harris said. “But she believed deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible.”
The Indians have been watching these elections very closely, less for Harris’s heritage than for what it might bode for Indian-US relations. In recent months, the two countries, the world’s largest democracies, have grown closer.
Part of the reason is China. Since Chinese troops crossed the disputed India-China border in June, sparking clashes that killed more than 20 Indian soldiers, the United States and India have strengthened their military relationship, sharing more intelligence and planning more coordinated training exercises, both sides. motivated by a desire to contain China.
How things will change under the Biden-Harris administration is the big question Indians now ask themselves. The incoming administration is definitely much more familiar with India. Ms. Harris spent a lot of time in India when she was young, visiting family and developing a fondness for Indian food and culture.
And Biden, even before he was vice president to President Barack Obama, was an advocate for India in the Senate, pushing hard for a nuclear deal between the two nations. Biden has also promised to allow more visas for skilled immigrant workers, which President Trump slashed, and Indian workers could benefit enormously from that.
But foreign policy experts hope the Biden-Harris team will also be tougher on India. They say the policies of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have made life more difficult for Muslims in the country, and while the Trump administration has kept quiet about the changes in Kashmir and the passing of a new citizenship law blatantly anti-Muslim. Harris and Biden are likely to be more critical.
Ms Harris has already indicated that she is concerned about the way India has tightened control over Kashmir, a Muslim-majority territory that is disputed between India and Pakistan. People who know her well expect her to speak more.
“Kamala is a very strong personality who feels very strongly about certain issues such as human and civil rights,” her uncle G. Balachandran said by phone from his home in New Delhi on Sunday morning. “You can say things if you think India is against humanitarian rights.”
Most analysts believe that human rights in general will likely receive more attention under the Biden administration, which could make Modi nervous.
Shortly after midnight, Modi tweeted his congratulations to Biden and Harris. “His success is groundbreaking and a source of immense pride not only for his Chittis, but also for all Indian Americans.” wrote in a separate message to Ms. Harris, using a Tamil term of endearment for aunts that she herself used in her speech when accepting the vice-presidential nomination in August.
A handful of Ms. Harris’s relatives still live in India, including an aunt who has been in her corner for years. He once lined up 108 coconuts to crush in a Hindu temple to bring Harris good luck in a race for the California attorney general. (Ms. Harris won that election, by the smallest margin.)
But Ms. Harris’s grandfather left the ancestral village of Thulasendrapuram, which is a bumpy eight-hour drive from Chennai city, more than 80 years ago. He no longer has close relatives there. Still, that doesn’t stop the village from hatching big plans.
Some people hope that the government will now build a university there, a wish the village has been asking for for years. Others say that the ascension of Ms. Harris could bring a better path. Or at least a few more donations to the temple.
On Sunday, herds of women in sparkly saris filled the temple, carrying buckets of freshly made sweets.
The smell of gunpowder hung in the air, of all the firecrackers.
A light rain fell.
“From the moment she announced that she was a candidate, we have been praying,” said Arul Mozhi Sudhakar, village councilor. “God has been hearing our prayers.”
Jeffrey Gettleman reported from New Delhi and Prakash Elumalai from Thulasendrapuram, India. Suhasini Raj contributed reporting from Ganjam, India.
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