Tamil-Telugu potpourri: A mini India unfolds in US presidential polls, thanks to Usha Vance and Kamala Harris

Andhra/Chennai: The 2024 presidential election is not just a fight for the US but also an emotional connection for Indians, with two South Indian women becoming the central characters of the November 5 polls.

Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, will challenge Kamala Harris, who became the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party last week after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race. Kamala Harris is expected to be officially declared as the presidential candidate by the Democrats in August.

But, interestingly, all eyes are on Usha Chilukuri Vance (wife of JD Vance) and Kamala Harris, two women with roots in South India. Indians in Andhra Pradesh and Chennai are waiting to see who wins the elections.

Usha Vance's Godavari roots

Usha Chilukuri Vance would be the possible first Indian American second lady if Donald Trump and Vance win the general elections.

Usha Vance's family hails from Vadluru village near Tanuku town in the lush, green West Godavari district. They belong to the Telugu Brahmin community of the West Godavari and Krishna districts and migrated from Andhra Pradesh in the 1980s.

Her mother, Lakshmi, is a biologist and provost at the University of California at San Diego, and her father, Radhakrishna, is a mechanical engineer from IIT Madras and a lecturer at San Diego State University.

She met her husband in law school at Yale University and later earned a master of philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Usha grew up in a religious household. In several interviews, she also talked about how her 'Meat and potatoes' husband learnt to make Indian food for her parents and appreciates vegetarian cuisine.

Usha's paternal ancestry can be traced to Chilukuri Buchipapayya Sastri (c. 18th century), who lived in Saipuram in Vuyyuru Mandal of Krishna district. Later, one family branch migrated to Vadluru near Tanuku in the West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. Usha's mother, Lakshmi, hails from Pamarru in Krishna district.

Usha's paternal grandfather, Chilukuri Rama Sastri, taught physics at IIT Madras. The institute now runs a student award in his memory. Her grand-aunt, Chilukuri Santhamma, living in Visakhapatnam, is considered India's oldest active professor at 96 years of age as of 2024.

"I am related to Usha through my husband (C Subramanya Sastry). She is the granddaughter of my brother-in-law, who worked as an IIT professor. Subramanya Sastry's oldest brother, C Rama Sastry, is Usha's grandfather. I am delighted that Usha is emerging as the spouse of a U.S. vice presidential candidate from the Republican party. I consider her a significant person. She would have had many powers. Also, she would have endured many difficulties," said Usha's grand-aunt Santhamma.

On the other side, Hindu priest Subhramanya Sharma from the local temple in Vadduru (where the Chilkuri family is said to have donated money) prays to god for JD Vance to become vice president of the United States. While Usha never visited the temple, his parents visited the temple a few years ago. Hearing about Chilkuri women, villagers now follow the couple's campaign on YouTube and Facebook.

Harris---Roots in Chennai

Another prominent figure of South Asian descent is Vice President Kamala Harris, whose maternal ancestry comes from Tamil Nadu. Her paternal ancestry comes from Saint Ann, Jamaica. She is married to American entertainment attorney and law professor Douglas Emhoff.

Kamala Harris is the first female vice president, the highest-ranking female official in US history, and the first African American and first South Asian American vice president. Harris became the Democratic Party's de facto presidential nominee last week after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 contest for the White House.

Born in Oakland, California, her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a Tamil Indian-American biologist, and her father, Donal J. Harris, Stanford University professor of economics, is a Jamaican American of Afro-Jamaican and Irish-Jamaican ancestry. Chennai was the hometown of Harris' mother, Shyamala Gopalan. She had moved to the United States from India as a 19-year-old graduate student in 1958, and she met Donal J. Harris at a college club for African-American students.

Harris has fond memories of Chennai, a city she often visited in childhood. In 2009, Harris carried her mother's ashes to the city and immersed them in the Indian Ocean waters.

Syamala introduced their children to Hinduism and took them to a nearby Hindu temple, where she occasionally sang Carnatic music. As children, Kamala Harris and her sister visited their mother's family in Chennai) several times. Harris has been strongly influenced by her maternal grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, a retired Indian civil servant whose progressive views on democracy and women's rights impressed her.

She graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She began her law career in the office of the district attorney (DA) of Alameda County before being recruited to the San Francisco DA's Office.

An Indian-American fundraiser has urged Kamala Harris to visit her mother's hometown, Chennai if elected president in the November general elections. "If she's elected, I will be pushing and saying, let's go to India. But you got to go to Chennai. You got to go to Chennai. You can go to Delhi. Delhi's fine with me. You got to do all that, but Chennai, we gotta go," Shekar Narasimhan, Chairman and founder of the Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Victory Fund, said.

"I said in one of the pieces I've written, because my mother's from Chennai and her mother's from Chennai, I said, boy, you know, to me, the dream is she's president and we are going to Chennai. And she will get an enraptured welcome, and she should," Narasimhan said.

"If Bill Clinton could get it, why would you not welcome back the daughter of the mother of your soil? So yes, there should be excitement (among Indians)," he said. "I think the negatives will always be what she does for us. How is she different than? American foreign policy should be dictated by American interests, unfortunately or fortunately. I think the same is true for Indian foreign policy. I always argue Indian foreign policy should be dictated by what's important to India," he said.

Inputs from PTI.