In 2019, when Kamala Harris – who became the Democratic Party’s candidate for US president this week – cooked a ‘dosa’ (a stuffed Indian crepe) and a ‘sambar’ (a lentil-based vegetable stew), assisted by Indian-American actress Mindy Kaling, it took social media by storm.
Kamala’s dosa brought smiles to people’s faces in the village of Thulasendrapuram in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu – her ancestral village.
A year later, when she became Joe Biden’s vice president, the village erupted in celebration as people set off firecrackers, distributed sweets, held special prayers, and even drew colorful ‘kolams’ (a traditional decorative art) on their doorsteps.
Now it’s not just Harris whose southern Indian roots have come to the fore in the 2024 election. Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, is also in the spotlight due to her Indian connections. She is from a family of illustrious academics in Visakhapatnam, a port city in Andhra Pradesh.
As both women are engaged in a high decibel political battle on US soil, back home in India, the US election has become a keenly watched event.
Incidentally, two other Americans of Indian ethnicity were involved in the presidential election in the primary stage: Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, whose parents emigrated from India’s breadbasket, Punjab, and who was Trump’s last competitor for the Republican Party’s nomination; and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose family’s roots are in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
Puja for Kamala
In Thulasendrapuram, the very mention of Kamala Harris brings a smile to people’s faces.
K. Kaliyaperumal, a member of the Thulasendrapuram village committee, said if Harris wins, the celebrations would be much larger than when she became vice president, comparing it to India’s recent win at the Cricket World Cup. “We are praying she becomes president,” he said.
A huge banner with Kamala’s photograph placed at the entrance of a temple welcomes visitors to the village. The banner wishes her success.
The villagers have been following the US election on TV.
“Many people hung calendars with her picture outside their homes when she became vice president,” G. Manikandan recalled. He said if Harris becomes president, the celebrations would be on a grand scale, suggesting that the euphoria has already set in.
Ever since the news broke that Joe Biden endorsed her, special pujas were performed at the temple with villagers praying for her victory.
Harris’ maternal grandfather was born in Thulasendrapuram, a village she visited when she was five. However, she has not visited since she became vice president. Nonetheless, Harris is a household name in her ancestral village.
The US vice president is the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist in California. She raised Kamala and her sister Maya as a single mother.
“I was raised eating south Indian food, lots of rice and yoghurt, potato curry, dal and of course idli,” Harris has said.
Speaking about her mother’s love for ‘idli’ (a rice cake popular in southern India), Kamala, while addressing a virtual campaign event to commemorate India’s independence day in 2020, said: “Because she wanted us to understand where she had come from and where we had ancestry.”
She joked that her mother always wanted to instill in her the love of “good idli.”
About her grandfather PV Gopalan, with whom she would go on walks in Chennai, the state capital of Tamil Nadu, Kamala said he would speak of the heroes of the Indian freedom struggle. She even spoke a few words in the Tamil language while proudly referring to various aspects of her upbringing.
Gopalan worked on the rehabilitation of refugees from East Pakistan in India. Later, he became an adviser to the Zambian president and lived in Lusaka, while his wife Rajam built a reputation for her social work. The vice president’s maternal uncle Gopalan Balachandran, a former consultant at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis (IDSA), is an academic based in Delhi.
According to Balachandran, Harris remains connected to her roots in India, both through her upbringing and visits to Chennai. Locals recall that Harris donated money to a Thulasendrapuram temple’s kumbhabhishekam (the consecration after its renovation) held in 2014. Her name is inscribed on a stone tablet containing a list of donors in the shrine premises.
She also visited Chennai along with her sister Maya after their mother died, to immerse her ashes in the sea, according to Hindu tradition.
Family of academics
The Chilukuri family in the neighboring southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is no less prolific.
Usha’s father Chilukuri Radhakrishna, a mechanical engineer, was a lecturer at San Diego University. Her mother Lakshmi was a molecular biologist and provost at the University of California, San Diego. The Telugu-speaking Chilukuri couple moved to the US in 1980.
“I have never met Usha personally but I know all about her. Her father, grandfather and great-grandfather have all been toppers and excelled in everything they did. Same is the case with Usha, who excelled academically and professionally. It runs in the family,” said Usha’s great-aunt Chilukuri Shantamma, who has been flooded with phone calls ever since J.D. Vance was picked by Trump as his running mate.
Usha’s father Radhakrishna is the youngest son of C Rama Sastry. Sastry’s younger brother, Dr. Chilukuri Subramanya Sastry, retired as professor in the Telugu Department at Andhra University in Visakhapatnam. He was a gold medalist in BA (Telugu) and the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh unit in Andhra Pradesh. His wife, retired professor Chilukuri Shantamma, lives in Abid Nagar and continues to take classes.
“I wish to convey to Usha that she supports her husband, uphold Hindu values and support Hindus in the US,” Shantamma, a gold medalist in physics, said.
At 96, Shantamma is India’s oldest teaching professor. She started teaching at the physics department at Andhra University in 1956 and officially retired in 1989, but continues to teach classes there and travels 60km every day to teach at Centurion University at Vizianagaram (in Andhra Pradesh), where she is an emeritus professor.
“Usha is following in the footsteps of her family members who were academically strong and always prioritized education,” Shantamma said, adding that she will try to invite Usha and J.D. Vance to India for “a short visit so that people can see her.”
Usha was raised in a San Diego suburb and attended Mt. Carmel High School, before graduating with a BA in history from Yale University in 2007. The 38-year-old lawyer, an expert in civil litigation, continued her studies at the University of Cambridge, where she earned an M.Phil in 2009 as a Gates Cambridge Scholar.
Usha’s contributions to her husband’s achievements have been noteworthy. She helped Vance develop his ideas about the decline of society in rural white America, which led to his best-selling novel ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, which director Ron Howard turned into a movie in 2020.
“It’s a matter of pride for us that someone with roots in Andhra could become the potential second lady of the US. It definitely feels good,” Anakala Rao, a private employee based in Visakhapatnam, said.
He says this has huge significance, with thousands of students from Andhra Pradesh studying or settling in the US. “If J.D. Vance gets elected, I am sure Usha will take care of the interests of the Telugus,” Rao says. He added that Andhraites across the world would celebrate Vance’s win. “It will strengthen ties between India and the US.”
According to Dr. Sharada Jandhyala, a doctor in Chennai and Usha’s maternal aunt, her brother Radhakrishna did his mechanical engineering from IIT Madras and his family later moved to the US. “Usha would come to our house in Chennai as a kid. I attended her wedding in the US,” she said.