Nearly three months since the US election, Kamala Harris will soon make history as the first woman to be sworn in as Vice-President. As the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, Harris has made much of her historic background. And not always without controversy – the recent ‘fweedom’ gaffe being a case in point.
So who’s who in the new Vice President’s family?
The inspiration – PV Gopalan (1911 – 1998), Harris’s grandfather
Born into a Brahmin family in Tamil Nadu, Painganadu Venkataraman Gopalan joined the Indian civil service during the final decades of British rule. After independence, he specialised in the resettlement of refugees, eventually being stationed in Zambia to help with the flow of people fleeing neighbouring Rhodesia. Harris, who visited her grandfather in Zambia as a child, has spoken fondly about him as her ‘favourite person’, with the two exchanging letters during the early years of her career. He plays a central role in her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold. But was it all – well – true? One US newspaper reported that Harris’s Indian uncle had rubbished her description of Gopalan as an advocate for Indian independence. According to the paper, not only was there no record of him taking such a position, but it would have likely been career suicide too.
The trailblazer – Shyamala Gopalan (1938 – 2009), Harris’s mother
Raised in various cities across India, Shyamala Gopalan first went to the US in 1958 to undertake a masters in nutrition and endocrinology at UC Berkeley. After graduation, she forged a successful career as a cancer researcher (including being appointed to a presidential task force on breast cancer). It was at Berkeley, at a meeting about civil rights, that she would cross paths with Donald J Harris, her Jamaican-born future husband.
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