For very different reasons, both Indians and United States (US) conservatives are emphasising Senator Kamala Harris’s Indian heritage. Especially for the very large conservative faction in India, caste and religion are assigned at birth, never to be altered. Her mother Shyamala Gopalan was born in India and raised in a Tamil Brahmin family, which likely afforded her the Indian equivalent of white privilege. What really sets Kamala Harris apart is not the caste or ethnicity of her mother, but the choices her mother made. Kamala Harris is probably a little of everything she appears to be and yet the sum of the parts is very different from the components.

Source: The Hindu August 16, 2020 03:56 UTC