speaks during a hearing before Senate Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee at Dirksen Senate Office Building
August 6, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Alex Wong / POOL
/ AFP
Kamala Harris’s late mother left her native India in
1960, but half a world away from Washington the uncle and aunt of
the US vice-president hopeful follow her every move — and are very
proud.
Harris was born in California in 1964 to a Jamaican father,
economics professor John Harris, and breast cancer specialist
Shyamala Gopalan.
She was the first black attorney general of California — the
first woman to hold the post — and the first woman of South Asian
heritage to be elected to the US Senate.
Following her nomination on Tuesday as presidential hopeful Joe
Biden’s running mate, the 55-year-old is now seeking to become the
first female vice president of the United States.
“There is no question about how happy we are,” Harris’s maternal
uncle Balachandran Gopalan, an academic in the Indian capital New
Delhi, told AFP on Wednesday.
“She is a very committed personality — committed to public
service and most importantly committed to common human decency,” he
said.
Shyamala would often bring her daughters to India, the uncle
said, and when she died in 2009 Harris returned “to immerse her
ashes in the Bay of Bengal”.
He added that while Harris can’t speak Tamil, the language of
the southern state of Tamil Nadu that the family comes from, “she
can understand a little bit”.
He believes the nomination of Kamala — her name meaning “lotus”
in Tamil, as well as in Sanskrit and Hindi — is a “big deal” for
Indian Americans.
“So far they have only achieved high professional jobs, but this
is one of the highest political jobs,” he said.
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– Up since 4 am – Harris’s aunt Sarala Gopalan, who still lives
in the city her big sister left at 19 — Tamil Nadu’s capital
Chennai, formerly Madras — said the entire family is “thrilled and
happy”.
“A friend of mine in the United States gave us the message at 4
am in the morning, and we have been up, since then,” Gopalan, a
doctor, told news channel CNN-News18.
“She is a person who never forgets her roots and believes in
family values,” she told the Deccan Herald daily.
“Even today she calls me ‘chithi’ and she has always been a
caring person,” she said, using the Tamil word for a mother’s
younger sister.
And since Shyamala is no longer alive, “we will always be
available for Kamala and (her sister) Maya”, she said.
Besides her mother, Harris has said that a major influence was
her maternal grandfather P.V. Gopalan — father of Shyamala,
Balachandran, Sarala and another daughter, Mahalakshmi — a senior
Indian civil servant.
“He would take walks every morning along the beach with his
buddies who were all retired government officials and they would
talk about politics, about how corruption must be fought and about
justice,” Harris said in a 2009 interview.
“My grandfather was really one of my favourite people in my
world.”
-AFP
Read more https://swordpress.com.ng/2020/08/13/back-in-india-a-proud-uncle-and-aunt-admire-kamala-harris/