Indian Village With Ties To Usha Vance Celebrates Trump Win, Dismay In Harris’ Ancestral Village (Photos)

Topline

Presidential election results in the U.S. triggered contrasting reactions in two small villages in southern India, as the residents of Vadluru—the ancestral home of Vice President-elect JD Vance’s wife Usha—celebrated President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, while those living in Kamala Harris’ ancestral village of Thulasendrapuram were dismayed by her defeat.

Key Facts

Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: We’re launching text message alerts so you’ll always know the biggest stories shaping the day’s headlines. Text “Alerts” to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here.

Key Background

Usha Chilukuri Vance was born in San Diego, California, to Telugu-speaking parents who migrated from India in the late 1970s and had roots in Andhra Pradesh. Vance hails from a family of academics; her grandfather Ramasastry Chilukuri taught physics at the prestigious IIT Madras, and the institute still has a student award named in his memory. Her father Chilukuri Radhakrishnan is a mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Madras, who later worked as a professor at San Diego State University, while her mother Laksmi Chilukuri is a marine molecular biologist and provost at the University of California, San Diego. Vance’s great-aunt, Shanthamma Chilukuri, is one of her few close relatives still residing in Andhra Pradesh. Local media claims the 96-year-old Shanthamma is the oldest active professor in the country. Vance herself is a graduate of Yale Law School.

Tangent

Harris’ maternal grandfather PV Gopalan was born in Thulasendrapuram in 1911. He would go on to become a civil servant in British-ruled India, which eventually became the Indian civil service after the country gained independence. Later in his life, Gopalan served on an Indian diplomatic mission to Zambia to help the country manage an influx of refugees from Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia) as the country fought for its independence. Harris’s mother Shyamala was one of Gopalan’s four children and she emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 19 to study at U.C. Berkeley. Harris’ name, along with her maternal grandfather’s, is inscribed on a stone tablet inside the village temple as the vice president donated to the temple in 2014 for its consecration after a renovation.

Further Reading

Kamala Harris’ Ancestral Village In India Celebrates Her Presidential Run With Prayers, Sweets And Cautious Excitement (Forbes)