Foundational Wisdom: What Shyamala Gopalan Told Me About Her Daughter Kamala Devi Harris

I met Kamala Devi Harris at a boutique cafe — with wooden tables and benches — in downtown San Francisco. It was the fall of 2003 when she was running to become the city’s District Attorney. Harris strode into the cafe with an unmistakable aura of authority accompanied by two imposing bodyguards. Dressed in an all-black pantsuit and black turtle neck top, she looked more petite and prettier (with apologies to Barack Obama and Donald Trump) than how she appeared on television and in photographs. Plonking on the wooden bench, she leaned against the wall and put her feet across the bench, apparently happy to take a breather from the campaign stops she was making that day. 

Her answers were polite but very business-like — I was, after all, a reporter from a small community newspaper which wouldn’t have an impact on her electoral prospects. That she granted an interview at all was possibly because she was sentimental about the newspaper she may have noticed at Indian grocery stores when living in Berkeley. When the interview turned to her “Indian upbringing,” she briefly talked about her periodic visits to her grandparents in Chennai, etc., and said it would be best if I spoke to her mother for more details. She took my notepad and wrote down her mother’s number. That was that.

I met Shyamala Gopalan at her modest apartment in Oakland, California. Sitting across the dining table, over a cup of tea, Gopalan, a cancer researcher of repute, talked about her daughter’s upbringing as both an Indian and a Black girl. She described how Kamala and (her sister) Maya were just a couple of Indian kids at home, with their fondness for Indian clothes and food, particularly idli, vada, and sambar being Kamala’s favorites. Even as she spoke at length about her daughter, one couldn’t help noticing the indelible impact that Gopalan had on her children through her own life story. Looking back, I can’t but wonder if she ever thought her daughter would be running to be the President of the United States. If she did, it wouldn’t be implausible given her own audacious American journey.

Most of what I garnered that late afternoon corresponded with what Kamala Harris glowingly recounted in her memoir “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.” Harris writes eloquently about the central influence of her mother in her life and career choices. “There is no title or honor on earth I’ll treasure more than to say I am Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s daughter. That is the truth I hold dearest of all,” Harris writes, referring to the courage of a 19-year-old Indian girl who moved to America for studies, at a time when it was mostly unheard of; who defied all her traditions and culture to marry a Black man and dared to walk out of it with two small children when it didn’t work out.

Apart from periodic visits to her grandparents, uncles, and aunts in Tamil Nadu, Harris was rooted in Indian culture all through her childhood. In her memoir, Harris writes: “My mother, grandparents, aunts, and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots … we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture. All of my mother’s words of affection or frustration came out in her mother tongue (Tamil) – which seems fitting to me, since the purity of those emotions is what I associate with my mother most of all.”

It is no exaggeration that Kamala Harris’ historic journey to being a step away from the White House wouldn’t have been possible if it was not for her mother’s vision, her understanding of the racial dynamics of America, and her clear-eyed view of the role identity plays in the life of her multiracial children. “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls,” Harris writes in her memoir, alluding to the American racial reality that one percent of Blackness submerges all other identities. “She was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women,” Harris adds.

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But Harris owes her mother a lot more than a multicultural upbringing and conferring an unapologetic sense of identity. She was the source of her “foundational wisdom.” She inherits from her mother audacious idealism, purpose, and ambition. In that respect, Harris has considerable pedigree. Her maternal grandfather was deeply involved in India’s movement against colonial rule, and tutored as he was in British liberalism, which was peculiar to his generation of Indians fighting the British. And Harris credits her maternal grandmother for the crusading civic spirit that both her mother and she inherited.

As Harris sets out to keep her tryst with destiny, realizing the dreams from her mother, it will form a significant part of the larger Indian American story that began in Massachusetts in 1790 when the first recorded Indian, the “Man from Madras,” arrived in America as part of the crew of the East India Company to serve as a household servant. Now, a woman whose origin story can also be traced to Madras could well be a step away from the White House.

Sunil Adam is the editor and publisher of americankahani.com.