THULASENDRAPURAM, India — At a small temple in southern India, a group of people has been praying every day since late last month: “May Kamala Harris win this election. May she visit this temple and do good for our village.”
The community of 2,000 people, surrounded by rice fields, is the ancestral village of Kamala Harris, where her maternal grandfather P.V. Gopalan lived some 100 years ago. His daughter, Harris’ mother Shyamala Gopalan, emigrated from India to the United States, where she met and married Donald Harris, a fellow graduate student who’d come to study from Jamaica.
Some news reports say Harris, who was born and raised in California, visited Thulasendrapuram as a young child, but residents can't confirm she's ever been. (The Harris campaign did not respond to NPR's request for comment). Harris has often reflected on the importance of her childhood visits with her maternal grandfather in Chennai, but doesn't mention his village in her memoir, The Truths We Hold.
Even so, when President Biden dropped out of the U.S. presidential race last month, Thulasendrapuram politician Arulmozhi Sudhakar and her husband started organizing prayers for Harris at the local temple, with daily offerings of milk and coconuts to the deity.
The ritual attracted local and international attention. Two days after Harris emerged as the Democratic frontrunner, Arulmozhi was scheduled to give half a dozen interviews to journalists visiting her village. She turned up in a silk sari and sandalwood perfume and took the day off from her duties as an elected member of the town council.
“I can relate to [Harris'] struggles as a woman politician,” she told NPR. What she said she admires most is Harris’ ability “to smile while facing all the political challenges.”
Four years ago, when Biden and Harris were elected, residents of Thulasendrapuram celebrated with music and firecrackers. Children carried placards with Harris’ face and women drew pictures with colorful rangoli powder.
Back then, Arulmozhi put up billboards of a beaming Kamala Harris across the village, congratulating her for bringing them honor. She’s put them up this time too, only the new boards also include Arulmozhi’s own portraits.
The trustee of the local temple, S.V. Ramanan, says the spectacle is mostly for the media.
“Most of them are happy not about Kamala Harris running for the presidency, but because they are appearing in front of a TV camera,” he says of the villagers.
NPR spoke with more than a dozen people in the village, located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Most are farmers or do odd jobs in nearby towns, earning subsistence wages due to lack of employment opportunities at home.
Nearly everyone expressed joy at Harris’ candidacy but couldn’t speak much of the kind of politician she is, or what she stands for. Most didn’t know of her concern over India’s controversial decision to revoke the semi-autonomous status of Muslim-majority Kashmir, a territory where many assert an identity separate from India, or of her confession to Indian American actress Mindy Kaling that she had never before made dosas, a staple dish in Tamil Nadu.
Arulmozhi insists Harris is the “daughter of the land.”
“A mother doesn’t raise a child with any expectations,” she says. “She celebrates their achievements as her own.”
In the rest of India, Harris’ bid for the White House hasn’t evoked the kind of euphoria her vice presidency did four years ago, when many local politicians called it a moment of pride for Indians.
But one shouldn’t read too much into Harris’ Indian roots, says Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at Brown University.
“Her Black identity is bigger than her Indian identity. And that's only natural, given where she grew up,” he says.
Varshney adds that there's little evidence that, if elected president, Harris would change U.S. policy toward India. “The sweet spot India occupies is that so long as America and China are the primary adversaries, India will be seen by the United States and the West as a very important ally.”
Back in Thulasendrapuram, media attention has had unexpected benefits. Residents say that after the village appeared on TV in 2020, a local bank adopted the village for welfare works as part of its community outreach.
That kind of help is why the local librarian, R. Usha, wants Harris to win — and pay a visit.
“The roads near my neighborhood are damaged,” she says, adding that if Harris comes, authorities would no doubt roll out the red carpet. And that, she hopes, would also cover the potholes.
Vinodh Arulappan contributed to this story in Thulasendrapuram.
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