Kamala Harris’s ancestral village in India holds special prayer for her victory

An unassuming village about 13,000km from Washington is observing the US presidential election with exceptional interest due to its ties with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

A Hindu temple in the vice president’s ancestral village in India's Tamil Nadu state held prayers on election day for her victory over Republican rival Donald Trump.

Life-size billboards wishing Ms Harris luck ahead of the crucial polls adorned the lanes of Thulasendrapuram, an idyllic rural haven surrounded by rice paddy fields about 350km from the state capital Chennai.

Born to an Indian mother and Jamaican father in Oakland, California, Ms Harris primarily embraced her Black identity but periodically remembered her Asian roots and her time spent in Chennai as an infant.

G Manikandan, a villager who runs a small store near the temple, said "celebrations will follow if she wins" as a large banner outside the temple wished "the daughter of the land" success.

Outside the 300-year-old Hindu temple, a black stone table features the name of Ms Harris along with major donors. According to locals, a relative made a record donation of Rs 5000 (£46.50) in her name in 2014 when she was serving as California’s attorney general.

Ms Harris’s grandfather PV Gopalan was born in Thulasendrapuram in the early 1900s and moved away from the village, first to Chennai and later to Delhi, where he worked as a high-ranking government official until his retirement.

His success paved the way for Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, to move to the US when she was 19 to study biomedical science at UC Berkeley. It was there that she met her future husband Donald Harris, an immigrant from Jamaica.

The village received global attention four years ago, when its residents prayed for victory for Ms Harris's Democratic Party in 2020 before celebrating her inauguration as US vice president by setting off firecrackers and distributing food.

"Even after her family has moved from the village, they still sponsor prayers at the temple, not giving up on their roots. That is a source of pride for us,” N Maheshwari, a grocery shop owner, told The Independent earlier in September.

While this year the excitement is muted in the village, people are still waiting with bated breaths for the election results.

Ms Harris is said to have visited the village herself when she was five years old, and in interviews has recalled memories of walking with her grandfather on the beach in Chennai. She hasn’t been back to Tamil Nadu since.

“Ms Harris was not so well known in the village until it was announced she was the vice presidential candidate [in August 2020]. This was when we started gathering information,” said retired banker N Krishnamurthy.

In an op-ed published just days before Tuesday's election, Ms Harris reflected on her Indian roots in an apparent effort to gain the support of South-Asian voters.

"Growing up, my mother raised my sister and me to appreciate and honor our heritage. Nearly every other year, we would go to India for Diwali. We would spend time with our grandparents, our uncles, and our chitthis (Tamil for aunt)," she wrote in The Juggernaut.

"My grandfather was a retired civil servant. His morning routine consisted of taking long walks on the beach with his retired buddies. I would join him on those walks and listen to stories about the importance of fighting for democracy and civil rights," she added.

Ms Harris spoke emotionally about her ties to her late mother's country of birth during prime minister Narendra Modi's state visit to Washington in June 2023.

She said her walks with her grandfather and the lessons “first inspired my interest in public service … and have guided me ever since".

She also talked about her mother’s influence and how she discovered her “love of good idli", eliciting laughter from the crowd with her reference to a staple South Indian steamed rice cake dish.

In the neighbouring state of Telangana, Hindu priests performed an 11-day-long 'yajna' or prayer ritual for Ms Harris’s electoral success.