The Rise and Rise of Kamala Harris Coincides With the Triumphal Trajectory of Indian Americans

In 2009, then-NBC CEO Jeff Zucker was blown away by a San Francisco district attorney who seemed to be going places. The New York Times had placed her on a list of the 17 women most likely to become the first female President of the United States. Zucker set aside his preference to remain apolitical and organized a NYC fundraiser to help her get elected as California’s attorney general, calling her “incredibly exciting.”  

Now, 15 years later, after having become a surprise pick as President Biden’s Vice President and having been in the limelight for three years, Kamala Harris has burst onto the national stage, generating excitement and buzz. 

Although her rare combination of Jamaican and Indian ethnicities has surprised many, Harris wrote in her 2018 memoir that her trailblazing mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, sensed that she would be viewed by her society as Black first and raised her and her sister Maya “to grow into confident, proud black women.” Her parents had met at a civil rights gathering and her mother sympathized with the movement. 

Harris later attended Howard University, drawn to it in part because Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice, had been an alum. However, her mother also encouraged her to respect her Indian roots. In a 2009 interview with India Abroad’s Aziz Haniffa, Harris stated “My mother was very proud of her Indian heritage and taught us, me and my sister Maya, to share in the pride about our culture. India is the largest democracy in the world; so that is part of my background.” 

Her respect for her heritage was revealed in the oft-memed ‘coconut tree’ anecdote. Her mother would scold the sisters and offer them perspective with a colorful South Indian expression: “You think you fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” Growing up, she visited family in Tamil Nadu and sought counsel from her maternal uncle as needed. Fifteen years ago, when her mother passed away, Harris brought her mother’s ashes to immerse in the sea in Chennai per her wishes.

Harris added in the interview, “I am very proud to know that in my success, I provide a role model for those who identify with me for reasons of culture or ethnicity or gender or profession or professional goals, or just because they see something that inspires them.” 

“I am who I am,” she told the Washington Post in 2010. “You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it.” 

In a country where nearly 15% of babies born today are biracial, Harris’ ascent parallels and epitomizes the rise of multiculturalism in the U.S. Various groups have been galvanized by identifying with one aspect of her identity or another. 

To hone in on her impact on those born in the U.S. of Indian parents, her candidacy sparked excitement and joy in the South Asian Women for Harris webinar/fundraiser that I attended in late July.  The 2nd-generation Indian-American women organizing the event felt validated by the success of someone they had admired, worked with, and championed through the years; this webinar was soon followed by impressive enthusiasm at the South Asian Men for Harris webinar I attended later that week. The #WinWithBlackWomen attracted a whopping 40,000 attendees, and White Women: Answer the Call broke Zoom records with a remarkable 200,000 participants. The Democratic machine was whirring to life after a battery replacement. 

“My mother was very proud of her Indian heritage and taught us, me and my sister Maya, to share in the pride about our culture. India is the largest democracy in the world; so that is part of my background.” 

Like Barack Obama who grew up ‘hapa’ (mixed race) in multicultural Hawaii and navigated his biracial identity with aplomb, Kamala Harris seems to have embraced her racial and ethnic backgrounds and perhaps transcended them. Now married to a Jewish-American husband and raising his two children as their beloved ‘Momala’, she seems quite comfortable relating to a wide swath of Americans. This ability to bridge divides, together with her abiding charisma, has enabled her to re-create the Obama coalition. 

James Baldwin famously disarmed journalists who kept asking him about growing up poor, being gay, or being Black, by reframing his identity as that of a writer and a compassionate human. Similarly, Kamala Harris may have been born half-Jamaican and half-Indian, as well as a woman, but she self-identifies as a former prosecutor seeking justice for “the people” (her only clients) and an aspiring Presidential candidate who asserted in her DNC acceptance speech that she would serve all Americans. 

While giving a nod to her roots, she typically eschews being boxed in by demographics by focusing on her twin goals of defeating her Republican opponent and then meeting the needs of all Americans as their President. 

In the way that seeing Mindy Kaling on TV excited young Indian girls, who saw themselves reflected in her when watching “Never Have I Ever,” the emergence of a Presidential candidate of Indian origin has sparked enthusiasm in many 2nd-generation Indian-Americans who (while mindful that this country is still prone to discrimination) seemed to view it as a sign that we have arrived. 

As Mumbai comedian Vir Das cracked some years ago, “Indians are the white people of brown people.” Our assimilation into the culture and our economic success (as the wealthiest and most highly-educated ethnic group) is now reflected in someone from the Indian diaspora’s aspiring to the highest political office in the land. 

Speaking to second-generation Indian Americans during this week’s Democratic National Convention, I heard several noting that she was quintessentially American in her capacity to be herself — whatever backgrounds she embodied and represented — and that they were pleased that a woman (of whatever background) was finally poised to become President of the world’s oldest democracy (exorcising the specter of Hillary Clinton’s brutal defeat eight years earlier). 

As her sister Maya Harris noted during the last night of the 2024 DNC, Harris’s ascendance to the top of the Democratic ticket has generated “so much electricity, so much optimism, and so much joy.” Maya Harris added that their mother, who had given both daughters classical Indian names, would be very proud and would then demand Kamala get to work. 

If we widen the aperture and consider how the past led us to the present, the success of Indian Americans (part of the ‘model minority’ which Asian-Americans are considered) can be attributed in part to those who come to the U.S. on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement. 

The Asian Exclusion Act of 1924 blocked Asian immigration (with case-by-case exceptions like Dr. Shyamala Gopalan) until it was functionally repealed through the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the Hart-Celler Act). 

Only 100 Indians per year had been allowed visas from 1924 to 1965. With the dual aims of re-establishing American dominance in the space race (after having fallen behind the U.S.S.R.) and boosting physician numbers to cover LBJ’s Medicare and Medicaid expansion, the landmark legislation abolished quotas for Asian immigrants, paving the way for thousands of Ph.Ds and MDs from Asian countries to enter the U.S. in the late ’60s and through the ’70s.

To reflect on the immigrant (1st-generation Americans) and the 2nd-generation experience, Harris’ mother was allowed into the U.S. on a visa in 1958 to study endocrinology at UC-Berkeley, met future husband Donald Harris at a Black study group meeting, and Kamala Devi Harris was born in 1964. 

Four years later, after Hart-Celler had paved the way for scientists, engineers, and physicians to enter in large numbers, my father (whose own mother was named Kamala Devi) arrived in New York on July 1st, 1968 as a medical intern. He was soon delighted to find that his new country celebrated his July 4th birthday in style each year. My physician mother arrived two years later on her visa after their arranged marriage in India. She had been the top female medical student in India and received a prize in New Delhi from Nobel Laureate C.V. Raman. They settled on Long Island while working in various New York City boroughs. I was born on the day Jimmy Carter was elected the 39th President of the United States. My sister and later my brother were born during the Reagan years. 

My life, growing up on Long Island and then attending an Ivy League college, closely mimicked Kal Penn’s in the film adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake.” 

The only Indians depicted in film and on TV in the ’80s and early ’90s I grew up in, however, were a bloodthirsty Kali worshipper (played by Om Puri) in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (a distorted depiction of Hinduism which angered and disgusted my maternal grandmother), a white actor in brownface and a faked Indian accent in the “Short Circuit” films, and the hospitable and earnest Apu on “The Simpsons.”

Not until the election of Rep. Kumar Barve in Maryland in 1990 did a 2nd-generation (U.S.-born) Indian American reach Congress.

At a private high school, I was one of four Indians in my class of 75. Being Indian made me self-conscious in college, as we were an oft-misunderstood minority, but I aimed to retain Indian values nonetheless. Now, thirty years after I matriculated in college, the Indian diaspora in the U.S. has crossed 3.5 million and we are visible in positive ways. 

We live in an era where many people love Indian food (and nearly everyone on the coast has an opinion of it). Friends want to attend Indian weddings, and one in 7 Americans has an Indian-origin doctor. Tech giants like Google and Microsoft are led by Indian-immigrant CEOs. 

In this new milieu, I have increasingly found myself proud to be of Indian origin. Outside of work, I act in a local Indian acting troupe (SETU), judge for the India International Film Festival of Boston, and participate in the national Indo-American Psychiatric Association. 

One caveat to point out is that the highly-selected people who came in the ’60s and ’70s and were slotted quickly into the upper middle class had children who became well-educated. Later, more working-class Indians arrived, on family reunification visas. More recently, software engineers were accepted in large numbers to fuel the tech boom. 

Not all Indian-Americans fit the ‘model minority’ mold, however, and this characterization also does not apply to all in the Indian diaspora. Indians in Canada and in the United Kingdom are not regarded as exceptional, as Indian-Americans sometimes are. This relates to the immigration policies of these countries, namely which immigrants were allowed in and for what purposes. The pressure to live up to the ‘model minority’ ideal can be overwhelming and unreasonable for some.  

While respecting that the community’s overall success glosses over the real struggles of many, we are, however, proud of those who have risen and made it to the highest levels of business, politics, medicine, science and engineering, law, social sciences, film and TV, the arts, and several other fields. 

As such, while recognizing that the demographics she was born into may resonate with us, Vice President Harris aims to represent all Americans as President and to rise to the moment to subdue the fascist threat and preserve American democracy. 

To quote Kamala Harris in her electric DNC acceptance speech, “We are not going back. The future is always worth fighting for. And that’s the fight we are now in.”

The future indeed seems to be female. Forward! 

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Dr. Rohit Chandra is a child and adult psychiatrist at MGH Chelsea Healthcare Center and an Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. His parents, Drs. Pradeep and Manju Chandra immigrated to and live in New York, where he and his siblings were born. He lives in Brookline, MA.