Thulasendhrapuram, a small village about 300km from Chennai (formerly Madras) and 14,000 km from Washington DC, is where Kamala Harris’s maternal grandparents hailed from.
Currently, the village proudly displays a large banner of Harris, 59, and special prayers are being offered to the local deity for her success. Harris and her maternal grandfather are listed as donors to the village temple, and sweets are being distributed among the villagers.
The villagers have been closely following the US presidential race, especially following Joe Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’s rise as a potential nominee. "It is not an easy feat to be where she has reached in the most powerful country in the world," says Krishnamurthi, a retired bank manager. "We are really proud of her. Once Indians were ruled by foreigners, now Indians are leading powerful nations."
There is a strong sense of pride, particularly among the women in the village, who see Harris as a symbol of what is possible for women everywhere. "Everybody knows her, even the children. ‘My sister, my mother’ - that is how they address her," said Arulmozhi Sudhakar, a village local body representative. "We are happy that she has not forgotten her roots and we express our happiness."
This excitement mirrors the celebration when Harris became vice president, with villagers taking to the streets with fireworks, posters, and calendars. They even held a communal feast featuring traditional South Indian dishes like sambar and idli, which are among Harris’s favorite foods.
Indian Roots
Harris is the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer researcher from Tamil Nadu who moved to the US in 1958. Gopalan's parents were from Thulasendhrapuram. "My mother, Shyamala, came to the US from India alone at 19. She was a force – a scientist, a civil rights activist, and a mother who infused a sense of pride in her two daughters," Harris shared in a social media post last year.
After their mother died, Harris and her sister Maya visited Chennai and immersed her ashes in the sea according to Hindu traditions.
Harris comes from a family of high achievers. Her maternal uncle, Gopalan Balachandran, is an academic, and her grandfather, PV Gopalan, was an Indian bureaucrat and an expert on refugee resettlement, who served as an advisor to Zambia’s first president in the 1960s.
“She (Kamala) has been a prominent figure for quite a while now. It’s not a great surprise. Something like this was on the cards for many years,” said R Rajaraman, an emeritus professor of theoretical physics at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University and a classmate of Harris’s mother. Rajaraman recalled meeting Shyamala again in the mid-1970s when he visited Berkeley. "Shyamala was there. She gave me a cup of tea. These two children (Kamala and her sister Maya) were there. They paid no attention," he recalled. "Both of them were enterprising. There was positivity in her mother, which is there in Kamala also."
Back in Thulasendhrapuram, villagers are eagerly awaiting the announcement of her candidacy. "Kamala's chithi (mother's younger sister) Sarala visits this temple regularly. In 2014 she donated 5,000 rupees ($60; £46) on behalf of Kamala Harris," said Natarajan, the temple priest. Natarajan is confident that their prayers will help Harris win the election.
The villagers feel deeply connected to Harris's journey despite the distance and hope she might visit them someday or mention the village in one of her speeches. Photo by Lisa Ferdinando, Wikimedia commons.