US election 2024: Kamala Harris has her hand on India's raw nerve
Indian Americans are in the spotlight in the US presidential election. Pro-Trump Vivek Ramaswamy and Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Republican Party vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, have created waves in the media. But the focus of Indian Americans is Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, a Baptist Christian married to a Jew who was born to a Jamaican-born father and an Indian-born mother.
Many see the possible victory of Harris as a victory of American Indians, even though Harris rarely talks about her Indian roots.
How Harris sees her Indian connection
Harris has rarely spoken of her Indian roots though she has spoken about her Indian mother often. In her speech in which she formally accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency, she spoke about her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, but not about India, the country she visited as a child. Chennai was the hometown of Harris's mother. The year 2009 was the last time she visited Chennai carrying her mother's ashes to scatter them in the Indian Ocean waters.
With a multi-racial background, Harris has projected her black roots more than her Asian connection. During a Q&A event at the National Association of Black Journalists, Donald Trump claimed Harris changed her racial background form Indian to black.
One reason Harris’s Indian ties may not be much of a political factor is that they aren’t a prominent part in her public persona, Sreeram Sundar Chaulia, dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs, told Bloomberg. “Unlike say Rishi
