mother’s family has ancestral ties<\/a>. They talk about her at the local tea shop. Banners and billboards bearing her face are seen throughout the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cOur deity is a very powerful God. If we pray well to him, he will make her victorious,\u201d said M. Natarajan, the temple priest that led the prayers in front of the image of Hindu deity Ayyanar, a form of Lord Shiva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harris\u2019 maternal grandfather was born in the village, about 350 kilometers (215 miles) from the southern coastal city of Chennai, more than 100 years ago. As an adult, he moved to Chennai, where he worked as a high-ranking government official until his retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harris has never visited Thulasendrapuram and she has no living relatives in the village, but people here still venerate the family that made it big in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur village ancestors’ granddaughter is running as a U.S. presidential candidate. Her victory will be happy news for every one of us,\u201d Natarajan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The village’s sudden fame has helped bring money into the village. Recently, construction began on a water storage tank with funds donated by a local bank. Village residents say it will carry a plaque with Harris\u2019 name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harris\u2019 late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. After moving to the U.S. to study, she married a Jamaican man, and they named their daughter Kamala, a Sanskrit word for \u201clotus flower.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other than trips during her childhood, Harris hasn\u2019t visited India much \u2014 particularly not since becoming vice president \u2014 but she has often spoken emotionally about her ties to her late mother\u2019s country of birth. On Tuesday, she released a campaign video highlighting her mother, who arrived in the U.S. at age 19 and became a cancer researcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Titled \u201cMother,\u201d the video ends with a narrator saying: \u201cThis daughter of Shyamala, this daughter of the American story, is ready to lead us forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harris has often talked about how she was guided by the values of her Indian-born grandfather and mother. She has also spoken of her love of south Indian food, especially a type of steamed rice cake called idli.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harris\u2019 name is engraved in a list of donors \u2014 her aunt Sarala Gopalan gave money to the temple in her name \u2014 along with that of her grandfather. Outside, a large banner wishes \u201cthe daughter of the land\u201d success in the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Tuesday, the village temple also received rare international visitors: two American tourists and one from the U.K., all wearing black t-shirts that said \u201cKamala Freakin Harris.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Manikandan Ganesan, a villager who runs a small store near the temple, said Harris\u2019 bid for the presidency has made the village famous. He hopes Harris will eventually visit them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEven if she mentioned that she would visit our village, it would make us very happy,\u201d Ganesan said. \u201cHer victory itself will be a big source of happiness for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Village residents also prayed for Harris\u2019 victory in 2020, and set off firecrackers when she became the U.S. Vice President.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nFor women of the village, the candidate’s journey is a source of inspiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Local politician Arulmozhi Sudhakar said Harris embodies a significant step toward female empowerment in places like Thulasendrapuram, where a majority of women continue to face discrimination and gender inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFrom the time when women were not even allowed to step out of their house, to now a woman from our village contesting in the U.S. presidential election \u2014 this brings happiness for us,\u201d Sudhakar said. \u201cThe coming generations will see her as a role model to succeed in life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ABC: THULASENDRAPURAM, India —\u00a0The temple reverberated with rhythmic Sanskrit and Tamil hymns, as a Hindu priest held a flame before the god. As this tiny South Indian village gathered to pray for Kamala Harris, a gaggle of reporters jostled for space and camera angles. There’s little to distinguish the village of Thulasendrapuram from any other rural community in Tamil Nadu, except its connection to a woman who could become America’s first leader with South Asian roots. As millions of Americans vote, Harris has people rooting for her from thousands of miles away in a village surrounded by rice paddies and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43132,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43130\/revisions\/43132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}