As India celebrates Joe Biden's running mate Kamala Harris, a question over China and regrets over Namaste Trump
A wave of excitement and a ripple of anxiety went through India when the US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden announced Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.
The excitement is because Harris, who is of Indian-Jamaican origin, is the first Asian-American to appear on a major party's presidential ticket; the anxiety is about the fate of India-US ties under a Biden presidency.
Harris' family history has made her popular with the Indian public, with celebrities, industrialists and even politicians celebrating the announcement.
Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in Chennai and studied in the United States for her Master's degree and PhD before becoming a breast cancer specialist. Shyamala married Donald Harris, a fellow doctorate of Jamaican origin who is a professor emeritus at Stanford University, and the pair had two children - Kamala, born in 1964, and her sister, Maya.
The VP nominee has often talked about her Indian family and has called her mother and her grandfather, PV Gopalan, two of the "most influential people in my life". Gopalan was a freedom fighter who took part in India's fight to overthrow British colonial rule.
Her mother's family still lives in India.
"There is no question about how happy we are," Harris' maternal uncle Balachandran Gopalan, an academic in the Indian capital of New Delhi, said on Wednesday.
"She is a very committed personality - committed to public service and most importantly committed to common human decency," he said.
Shyamala would often bring her daughters to India, the uncle said, and when she died in 2009 Harris returned "to immerse her ashes in the Bay of Bengal".
He added that while Harris couldn't speak Tamil, the language of the southern state of Tamil Nadu that the family comes from, "she can understand a little bit".
He believes the nomination of Kamala - her name meaning "lotus" in Tamil, as well as in Sanskrit and Hindi - was a "big deal" for Indian-Americans.
"So far they have only achieved high professional jobs, but this is one of the highest political jobs," he said.
Harris's aunt Sarala Gopalan, who still lives in the city her big sister left at 19 - Tamil Nadu's capital Chennai, formerly Madras - said the entire family was "thrilled and happy".
"A friend of mine in the United States gave us the message at 4am in the morning, and we have been up since then," Gopalan, a doctor, told news channel CNN-News18.
"She is a person who never forgets her roots and believes in family values," she told the Deccan Herald daily. "Even today she calls me 'chithi' and she has always been a caring person," she said, using the Tamil word for a mother's younger sister.
Kamala Harris, while campaigning in the presidential nomination race. Photo: Reuters
And since Shyamala is no longer alive, "we will always be available for Kamala and Maya", she said.
In a 2016 interview with the Indian website Rediff.com, her aunt Sarala Gopalan called Harris an "ambitious girl" with a "fighting spirit" who knew what she wanted to achieve.
"She is not scared of anything and will fight for everything she aims to achieve," Sarala had said, soon after Harris had won the Senate election in California. Sarala had added that Harris would "not stop there".
Harris, now 55, was the first woman of South Asian heritage to be elected to the US Senate and was the first black attorney general of California (and the first woman to hold the post).
The South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), a US-based non-profit organisation, called Harris' nomination "historic" but cautioned against shining the spotlight on her identity alone. "As exciting it is to have an Asian America in this role, identity alone doesn't guarantee a candidate has taken or will take actions that support and uplift South Asian communities alongside other Black and brown communities in the US," said Lakshmi Sridaran, the organisation's executive director.
WHAT ABOUT THE POLICIES?
Still, while her heritage is being widely celebrated, some policymakers are anxiously waiting to see what stance she will take on the policies of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been criticised by some as being increasingly nationalistic.
Particularly under the spotlight will be the communications blockade and lockdown that New Delhi imposed on Jammu & Kashmir last year, after revoking the region's special status and autonomy.
While diplomats in New Delhi have conceded there is "worry" around how a Biden administration would react to its policies, they said much depended on how Biden saw India fitting into his policies on China.
Already, Biden has criticised India's move to amend its citizenship laws. The amendments, passed last year, make it harder for Muslim refugees from neighbouring countries to gain citizenship in India while fast-tracking refugees of other religions.
An Indian soldier in Kashmir. Photo: Xinhua
Harris, in the same vein, has opposed India's actions in Jammu & Kashmir. Last September, a month after India's move, Harris had said that she was keeping a close eye on Kashmir and wanted to "remind the Kashmiris that they are not alone".
"There is a need to intervene if the situation demands. It comes under American values to raise the issue of human rights," she had said.
Harris had also criticised a move by Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar to cancel his meeting with a US Congressional panel because it included Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who had moved a resolution asking India to lift the blockade.
Harris said she stood with Jayapal and that it was "wrong for any foreign government" to dictate the participation of members in meetings on Capitol Hill.
Campaigners like Sridaran, from SAALT, said that Harris would be judged for her response on some of these issues. "It is critical for South Asians in the US to assess whether the campaign has taken a clear stance against harmful policies and actions in the subcontinent that impact the diaspora here, ie the violence of Hindu nationalism."
Former Indian Ambassador and retired diplomat Rajiv Bhatia said that a Democratic win in the US polls in November would have an impact on India-US ties. "The stance of the Democratic Party on issues like Kashmir, Pakistan and human rights is such that India should be ready to face some turbulence on these issues."
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Photo: EPA
Bhatia said New Delhi should not expect undue concessions "as she is American, she is not Indian", but said her ascent to the VP's chair would still "make a difference".
"Her Indian origin will mean we will have, in the high echelons, somebody who fully understands India's culture and what drives India."
Another factor that worries New Delhi is the perception that it might have tilted too much in favour of the Donald Trump presidency.
Last year, the Indian-American community in the US and supporters of Modi invited Trump to an event titled 'Howdy Modi', which was widely seen as Modi's attempt to help Trump gain popularity with the 4 million strong Indian-American diaspora.
In February, despite the looming coronavirus pandemic, India hosted Trump in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad for a similar public event titled 'Namaste Trump'.
A former diplomat in New Delhi, who has served in Washington DC, said such events had created a perception of "closeness".
"So, yes, it is a worry that a new presidency, shaped by a known critic of the Modi administration, might emerge. Amid that, the perception that we are close to the Trump administration will not help."
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump at the 'Howdi Modi' event in Houston. Photo: AP
THE CHINA FACTOR
Another factor many in New Delhi are watching is how the Biden-Harris campaign handles the issue of China. The US and China have been locked in tussles over trade, the treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang and the status of Hong Kong. Last month, the US ordered the Chinese government to shut its Houston Embassy, after which China followed suit and ordered the US Embassy in Chengdu to close.
Harris, in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations last year, called China's human rights record "abysmal" and said she would seek a global consensus on "confronting China" on the issue of "troubling trade practices".
Harris also backed a bill in the US Senate to place economic sanctions on individuals deemed to have violated the terms of Hong Kong's autonomy from mainland China.
However, Bhatia, the former Ambassador, said more clarity was needed on her position towards China. "We need to see whether there is a consensus in the US [across party lines] that China is the chief adversary."
Such a consensus, Bhatia added, would in turn shape Washington's ties with India.
"No matter what Washington's policies are in the new presidency, the key players in Asia will remain China, Russia and India. Depending on what the consensus is, there will be a certain kind of approach towards India as well as by India."
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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