As Harris eyes US presidency, reaction in her mother’s native India is muted but tinged with pride

NEW DELHI (AP) — When Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president in the U.S., residents in her maternal family’s ancestral village in southern India watched in real time, setting off fireworks, holding up portraits of her and wishing her a long life.

But, four years later, as she works to become the Democratic nominee for president after President Joe Biden ended his campaign, reaction across the country has been more muted. While some residents in the capital, New Delhi, expressed pride when asked about her this week, a handful wondered who she was.

At least partially, that could reflect how Harris — who is also Black, with a father born in Jamaica — has treated her origins.

“Harris doesn’t wear her Indian roots on her sleeve, choosing instead to emphasize her Jamaican heritage,” Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, said.

As vice president, she has deployed stories of her ties to India at key moments — at times light-heartedly — but her policy portfolio has been more domestic and did not focus on relations with India, he said.

In June last year, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a state visit to Washington, Harris spoke emotionally about her ties to her late mother Shyamala Gopalan’s country of birth. She credited her grandfather P.V. Gopalan, who was a civil servant, with teaching her about what democracy means as they walked hand-in-hand on a beach in his home state of Tamil Nadu.

These lessons, she said, “first inspired my interest in public service … and have guided me ever since.”

She also talked about her mother’s influence — and how she discovered her “love of good idli,” eliciting laughter from the crowd with her reference to a dish of steamed rice dumplings, a