Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 6: The residents of the sleepy Indian village Vadluru in Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday burst crackers to celebrate the return of Donald Trump as the president of the United States, the disappointed people of Thulasendrapuram in neighbouring Tamil Nadu hope that the “fighter” Kamala Harris will one day stage a comeback.
Both the southern villages had stake in the 2024 US presidential elections, Vadluru is the ancestral village of Usha Vance, the wife of Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance, now the vice-president elect of the US, while Thulasendrapuram is the village of her maternal ancestors of Kamala Harris who just lost the presidential elections to Trump.
Far from Republican festivities as Donald Trump claimed US election victory, residents of Vadluru celebrated that their descendant would be the next “Second Lady” hoping to benefit from her success. Academic highflyer and successful lawyer 38-year old Usha Vance, the child of Indian immigrants, was born and brought up in suburban San Diego but those in the village of her paternal ancestors in India’s southern Andhra Pradesh state prayed that historic ties would bring improvements to their land.
“We feel happy,” said Srinivasa Raju, 53, a resident of Vadluru, a village of white-washed homes scattered amongst palm trees, more than 13,450 kilometres from the White House in Washington. “We support Trump.” Villagers had offered prayers for a Trump win, and Hindu priest Appaji said he hoped Usha Vance would do something in return.
“We expect her to help our village,” the 43-year-old priest said, dressed in flowing saffron robes, after lighting a candle at the idol of Lord Ganesh for Trump. “If she can recognise her roots and do something good for this village, then that would be great.”
Usha Vance’s great-grandfather moved out of Vadluru and her father Chilukuri Radhakrishnan — a PhD holder — was brought up in Chennai before going on to study in the United States. “Every Indian — not just myself, every Indian — we feel proud of Usha, because she is of Indian origin,” said 70-year-old Venkata Ramanayy. “We hope she will develop our village.”
She has never visited the village, but the priest said her father came around three years ago and checked on the temple’s condition. “We have already seen the governance of Trump — very good,” Ramanayy said. “Indian and American relations were very fine during the presidency of Trump.”
Little is known about Radhakrishnan’s initial years in the United States, but the film of J.D. Vance’s memoirs, Hillbilly Elegy, refers to him coming to the country with “nothing.” Usha, a practising Hindu who studied at Yale and Cambridge Universities, married J.D. Vance in Kentucky in 2014. They have three children.
But the scenario was different in Thulasendrapuram, once home to Kamala Harris’s grandfather. T.S. Anbarasu, 63, said the Democrat’s “struggle” had encouraged girls to stay in school. “She is inspiring this village,” he said. “Any school in the surrounding area, students know about Kamala Harris.”
Harris, 60, was born in California, but was often taken to India by her mother. “If she comes here, we’ll treat her like the president of the United States,” Anbarasu said. “We are still proud of her. She is like family to us. If our family members fail, we don’t discriminate against them, or treat them as a loser, right?”
The residents of the village said she was a fighter and would make a comeback. Since morning, locals were glued to television screens, monitoring election results, and many checked trends on media websites. Several residents also visited the Sri Dharma Sastha Perumal temple to pray for Harris’s victory.
However, as the day progressed, it became pretty clear that it was Donald Trump who was leading and when he eventually defeated his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, Thulasendrapuram village, which teemed with local and outside people, gradually became deserted and returned to its usual state of quietude. Two Americans and a citizen of the UK, fans of Harris, who had landed in the village the day before left the place.
J Sudhakar, DMK Tiruvarur district representative and Thulasendrapuram village leader, said, “We were hoping for her victory and had planned celebrations bigger than Deepavali. We made arrangements to burst firecrackers, distribute sweets, offer temple pujas, and host a community lunch.” “But success and failure are part of life. It was a tough fight, and you must admire her fighting spirit. She is a fighter and will make a comeback,” he added.
Other villagers shared similar sentiments, expressing confidence that Harris would continue her journey as a fighter and someday become the US president, even if it didn’t happen this time. Village resident and retired ONGC employee T S Anbasarasu said, “We cannot digest the fact that she has lost, but the saving grace is she is only 60 year old and we expect her to win the next election. But Trump is 78. We are confident she will not get bogged down by this loss and will continue her work.”
Furthermore, Anbarasu said, “Definitely we hope she will visit our village after getting elected in future…we expected her to visit our village a few years back and had sent messages to her relatives too…our village has become a tourist spot because of her.” Sudhakar noted that everyone in the village had hoped Harris, whose maternal ancestors hailed from Thulasendrapuram, would become the first woman US president.