“Not one of them was traditional,” said Harris, who grew close to her aunts and uncle during extended visits to India as a girl. The youngest, Mahalakshmi, an information scientist who worked for the government in Ontario, Canada, had an arranged marriage but bore no children. His younger sister Sarala, a retired obstetrician who lives outside the coastal city of Chennai, never married. Women were not expected to work at all.Īll four of his children bucked convention in their own ways.īalachandran, who earned a PhD in economics and computer science from the University of Wisconsin and enjoyed a distinguished academic career in India, married a Mexican woman and had a daughter. In post-independence India, convention destined Brahmin offspring for arranged marriages and comfortable careers in academia, government service or the priesthood - if they were men. Gopalan was a Brahmin, part of a privileged elite in Hinduism’s ancient caste hierarchy. Other family members declined to be interviewed. Much of the family’s story was related by Balachandran and his daughter. “Shyamala was quite definitely influenced by my father, and she in turn had a great influence on Kamala,” Balachandran said in a lengthy conversation in his home, a modest, semidetached apartment his father built on land he was given upon retirement. Politics Kamala Harris’ VP bid brings outpouring of pride among Indian Americans, a growing force in Democratic politicsĮthnic solidarity with Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant, could draw votes and donations for the Democratic ticket.
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