Kamala Harris embraces her biracial roots.
WASHINGTON,United States of America.(News of the South)-American politician and a potential Democratic Vice-President candidate, US Senator Kamala Harris has embraced her Indian roots.
By Antonnate S. Mugodi
“My name is pronounced “Comma-la”, like the punctuation mark,” Kamala Harris writes in her 2018 autobiography, The Truths We Hold.
The daughter of an Indian-born mother and Jamacain-born father explained the meaning of her name and said that it means lotus flower which is a symbol of significance in Indian culture.
Early in life Kamala and her sister Maya grew up in a house filled with music by black American artists.Her mother would sing along to Aretha Franklin’s early gospel and her jazz-loving father, who taught economics at Stanford University would play Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane on the turntable.
Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris separated when Kamala was five.She was raised by her Hindu single mother who was a cancer researcher and civil rights activist. Her mother made sure her two daughters were aware of their African-American background.
“My mother understood very well she was raising two black daughters.“She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident black women,” she wrote.
“Harris grew up embracing her Indian culture but living a proudly African-American life,” wrote the Washington Post last year.
When Kamala got married to Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer, in 2014 in keeping with respective Indian and Jewish heritage she put a flower garland around her new husband’s neck and he stomped on a glass.
Kamala’s public image has been more tied to her identity as an African-American politician, especially recently during the current conversation around race and the Black Lives Matter movement in the US.
However, Indian-Americans also view her as one of their own, her candidacy suggesting a potential wider recognition of the Indian and South Asian communities in the country.
It is clear by the way that she always talks about her that her late mother was a big inspiration for Kamala.
Ms Harris said that her mother kept working right up to the moment of delivery of both her daughters.
Back in India, Kamala’s mother had been raised in a household of political activism and civic leadership.
Her grandmother never attended high school, but was a community organiser taking in victims of domestic violence and educating women about contraception while her grandfather, PV Gopalan, was a senior diplomat in the Indian government who lived in Zambia after it gained independence, and he helped settle refugees.
In her book that she is writing Kamala does not say too much about her trips to India but she writes she is close to her mother’s brother and two sisters, with whom she kept in touch through long distance calls and letters and periodic trips.
Kamala’s mother died in 2009, at age 70.
US Democratic Party activists like Shekar Narasimhan says her candidacy would be seismic for the Indian-American community.
“She’s a woman, she biracial, she will help win the election for Biden, she appeals to various communities and she’s really smart.
“Why should Indian-Americans not be proud of her? It’s a signal that we are coming of age,” she said.
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