Vice President Kamala Harris is currently dominating headlines after being endorsed by President Joe Biden for the upcoming presidential election. Biden has officially withdrawn from the 2024 US presidential race, leaving Harris as the most immediate front-runner within the Democratic Party in his stead. Naturally, many people are curious to know more about Harris’s background. Harris can trace her maternal roots to the southern part of India. But does Kamala Harris’ connections to India enable her to speak in the Tamil language?
Here are all the available details regarding Kamala Harris’ heritage and her association with Tamil.
Does Kamala Harris speak Tamil fluently?
The first female Vice President of the US has leveraged the Tamil language in public addresses in the past. However, it is currently unknown if she is a native Tamil speaker.
Kamala Harris was first spotted using the Tamil language in 2020 during her nomination acceptance speech. Expressing the importance of family, the seasoned politician went on to add, “Family is my uncles, my aunts, and my chittis,” as per The Seattle Times. Interestingly, the term ‘chitti’ is used in Tamil to denote one’s maternal aunt in an endearing way.
Her connection to the South Indian culture comes from her mother’s lineage. Shyamala Gopalan, Kamala Harris’ mother, hails from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, whose population is particularly famous for taking deep pride in their unique language. As revealed by the presidential candidate herself, she often visited her maternal grandparents in Chennai following the divorce of her parents in the 1970s. In her travels, Kamala Harris used to dress herself in ethnic clothing and converse with her relatives in the regional dialect of Tamil.
As a result, it is apparent that the Democrat is extremely familiar with her South Asian roots and has considerable knowledge of the Tamil language. Nonetheless, the extent of her expertise in the said vernacular remains unknown at the time of writing.
