Indian Village with Ties to Usha Vance Celebrates Trump Victory, Dismay at Harris’ Ancestral Village (Photos)

On By Littum

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US presidential election results sparked contrasting reactions in two small villages in southern India, as residents of Vadluru – the ancestral home of Vice President JD Vance’s wife Usha – celebrated President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, while those living in Kamala Harris’s ancestral village of Thulasendrapuram were horrified over her defeat.

Key facts

Vadluru, located in the Telegu-speaking South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, celebrated the news that Usha Vance will be the next American second lady with fireworks.

The village Hindu priest had organized special prayers for a Trump victory, and he told the Hindustan Times that they hoped she would “recognize her roots and do something good for this village.”

Vance’s grandfather was a resident of Vadluru but eventually moved out, and her father Chilukuri Radhakrishnan grew up mostly in the city of Chennai before moving to the United States

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister too celebrated Vance’s achievement, saying “Usha Vance, who has roots in Andhra Pradesh, will become the first woman of Telugu heritage to serve as the second lady of the United States,” calling it a “moment of pride for the Telugu community.”

Contrasting scenes unfolded in Thulasendrapuram in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu as many residents who had prayed for a Harris victory said they were disappointed with the resultbut were nevertheless proud of her achievements.

A day before the US went to the polls, the main temple in Thulasendrapuram held a special puja (Hindu worship ritual) which was attended by a few American tourists visiting the area.

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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 comes from a family of academics; her grandfather Ramasastry Chilukuri taught physics at the prestigious IIT Madras and the institute still has one student price named in his memory. Her father Chilukuri Radhakrishnan is a mechanical engineer 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-uncle, Shanthamma Chilukuri, is one of her few close relatives still living in Andhra Pradesh. Local media claim that 96-year-old Shanthamma is the one oldest active professor in the country. Vance himself is a graduate of Yale Law School.

Key

Harris’ maternal grandfather PV Gopalan was born in Thulasendrapuram in 1911. He would go on to become a civil servant in British-ruled India, eventually becoming 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 deal with an influx of refugees from Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia) as the country struggled for its independence. Harris’ mother Shyamala was one of Gopalan’s four children, and she emigrated to the United States at the age of 19 to study at UC Berkeley. Harris’ name, along with her maternal grandfather’s, is inscribed on a stone tablet inside the village temple when the vice president donated to the temple in 2014 for its dedication after a renovation.

Further reading

Kamala Harris’ Ancestral Village in India celebrates her presidential bid with prayers, sweets and cautious excitement (Forbes)