Kamala Harris's Indian uncle plans US visit amid global celebrations for VP

Kamala Harris’s Indian uncle plans to visit the United States to congratulate her once he receives a Covid-19 vaccine, he said on Thursday, after his niece became the first woman, first Black American and first Asian American to hold national office after being sworn in as vice-president.

The political success of Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, has been celebrated in both India and the Caribbean.

Harris’s maternal uncle, Gopalan Balachandran, said he was happy to hear Harris mention her mother, who was a cancer researcher, in her speeches. He is a senior defense scholar who lives in Delhi.

“She is a good speaker. She didn’t throw any surprise, she mentioned her mother which she does often. I was happy about that,” Balachandran said.

The 79-year-old, who had wanted to attend Wednesday’s pared-down inauguration in Washington, added that he would like to celebrate with her in person once it was safe to travel.

Harris’s parents met in California, where they had gone to study in the 1960s.

Indian media celebrated her rise to power as another sign of the success of Indians abroad.

“Namaste Madame Vice President,” ran a headline in the Deccan Herald.

The Times of India said Harris had beaten sexism and racism to make history.

Residents of a tiny village in southern India had offered a potent celebratory mix of prayers and firecrackers.

Harris’s maternal grandfather was born in the village of Thulasendrapuram, about 215 miles from Chennai in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu more than 100 years ago.

Meanwhile, in Jamaica, tears rolled down the face of Norma Walters as she watched her former schoolmate’s daughter being inaugurated on Wednesday, the Kingston paper the Gleaner reported.

Walters, who attended school alongside Donald Harris, the vice-president’s father, decades ago in the northern Jamaica community of Brown’s Town, St Ann, was emotional even though she has never met the vice-president, according to the daily paper.

She cried when Harris and Joe Biden spoke on Tuesday evening at the first national event held to commemorate now more than 400,000 Americans who have died from the coronavirus.

On Wednesday morning at the US Capitol, “when I saw them [Biden and Harris] coming in, the same thing happened, full of emotion”, Walters, an educator, said.

Although Harris is largely estranged from her father and noticeably did not mention him in her victory speech last November, Walters said the former US senator “belongs to us”.

“The name Harris is a very popular name around here, and I am so proud to know that somebody who had Jamaican roots, however tentative, has reached that particular position,” Walters said.