What exactly is Kamala Harris's Indian connection?
Throughout the election campaign, Donald Trump and many other Republicans have been attacking Harris, questioning her racial identity. This is because she is half Indian and half Jamaican. Kamala, whose full name is Kamala Devi Harris, was born as the daughter of Shyamala, a biologist from India, and Donald J. Harris, an economist from Jamaica.
Kamala Harris on Thursday created history at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago when she accepted her nomination as the US presidential election candidate. She is the first woman of color and the first South Asian American to become the presidential candidate of a major political party. She is also only the second woman in the history of the US to become a presidential candidate, with the first being Hillary Clinton in 2016.
How Republicans questioned Kamala's race
Since the start of the election campaign, Donald Trump and many other Republicans have been attacking Harris, questioning her racial identity.
As Donald Trump gets attacked today for his comments at the National Association of Black Journalists meeting in Chicago over his confusion about whether or not Kamala Harris is black or Indian, keep in mind this evidence showing she has identified as Indian.
¡ª Conservative Brief (@ConservBrief) July 31, 2024
.#KamalaHarris¡ pic.twitter.com/DN4KuGcXi9
Kamala Harris's parents
This is because she is half Indian and half Jamaican. Kamala, whose full name is Kamala Devi Harris, was born as the daughter of Shyamala, a biologist from India, and Donald J. Harris, an economist from Jamaica.
Kamala Harris¡¯s immigrant parents--Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris: pic.twitter.com/8RO8oLhxoD
¡ª Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) August 11, 2020
Kamala's mother, Shyamala, was born in Thulasendrapuram, a small village in Thiruvarur district of South Tamil Nadu. She migrated to the US in 1958 and was enrolled in graduate school in endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley. Shyamala, who went on to become a cancer researcher, married Donald J. Harris, whom she met at UC-Berkeley in 1963. The duo had two children, Kamala Harris and Maya Harris, and divorced in 1971.
¡°Don¡¯t you let anyone tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.¡± - Dr. Shyamala Gopalan pic.twitter.com/8rs0sauN9E
¡ª Maya Harris (@mayaharris_) August 12, 2020
How Kamala's mother influenced her
Throughout her political career, Kamala Harris has spoken about her mother Shyamala and the impact she had on her.
My mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan Harris, came to the United States from India alone at 19. She was a force who had two goals in life: to cure breast cancer and to raise my sister Maya and me.
¡ª Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) August 22, 2024
Her dedication, determination, and courage shaped who I am today. pic.twitter.com/ZZWS1uUGMZ
Coconut tree meme
She even described how Shyamala used a coconut tree reference, something that can be described as a typical South Indian connection in her conversations with her daughters.
¡°My mother used to ¡ª she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, ¡®I don¡¯t know what¡¯s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?¡¯" Kamala had said.
Kamala has also spoken in detail about her visits to India when she was a child to meet her grandfather, Gopalan, who was leading a post-retirement life in Madras.
AP
In her book, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, Harris described how she was strongly influenced by Gopalan¡¯s progressive views on democracy and women¡¯s rights.
Equally Indian and black
Being someone from a mixed racial background, Kamala embraced her dual identities as Indian and Black, and she even attended a Baptist church and a temple. Throughout her political career, Kamala continued to embrace her racial identity, which Trump has repeatedly questioned, asking if she was Black or Indian.
When Mindy Kaling made better Dosa than Kamala
Interestingly, at the Democratic National Convention, there was a light-hearted moment where actress Mindy Kaling joked about outing Kamala Harris as an Indian in a cooking video ¡ª making dosas.
Mindy Kaling welcomed the crowd to the DNC, joking with the audience that they might recognize her as "the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an Instagram cooking video." https://t.co/20OHIVmDXC pic.twitter.com/TWadpAx5T7
¡ª ABC News Live (@ABCNewsLive) August 22, 2024
Kaling, whose real name is Vera Mindy Chokalingam, said: ¡°For those of you who don¡¯t know me, I am an incredibly famous Gen Z actress who you might recognize from The Office, The Mindy Project, or as the woman who courageously outed Kamala Harris as Indian in an Instagram cooking video.¡±
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Bobins Abraham is the Assistant News Editor at Indiatimes. He has more than twelve years of experience in TV and digital journalism. An avid student of history and geopolitics, he is a conservationist and environmentalist at heart. He writes on environment, sustainability, human-animal conflict and more.
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