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US 2024: A French toast to Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris had introduced herself to Europe as Vice President of the United States from the shores of France.
Vice President Kamala Harris. / Reuters
Kamala Harris interests France. Not because the French suddenly like American politicians of Indian descent. They’d rather not have Trump in the White House.
America’s biggest European allies, the French have had a queasy relationship during the Trump presidency. Emmanuel Macron and Trump kicked off a bromance in the initial days.
Till things began to cool off.
Martin Quencez of the nonpartisan policy organization German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) was poetic analyzing the relationship going downhill.
“Macron and Trump’s relationship went from apparently friendly to more confrontational and openly mutually insulting. Macron’s attempt to influence Trump’s position on the most contentious issues— climate, the Iran nuclear deal, NATO, trade—yielded few results, and it is unlikely that a newly elected Trump would prioritize cooperation with the French president after 2025.”
Not that Macron is terribly enamored of Biden, the Democrat. He hurt France by cancelling a major French industrial agreement with Australia by signing the AUKUS deal with the latter. On Ukraine, Macron doesn’t want Biden to dump the security burden entirely on Europe. There are several other minor irritants.
So, it’s not entirely out of nothing that the French media is focusing on Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate. After all, she had introduced herself to Europe as vice president of the United States from the shores of France way back in 2021. France welcomed her, and she met several European heads of government.
True blue Le Monde carried two articles on her in recent weeks. France’s left-of-centre and trusted newspaper carried a headline in August, “Kamala Harris, a Californian conquering the East”, generous with its profile of the lady.
”Not since Ronald Reagan in 1980 has a president emerged from the country's most populous and wealthiest state. No California Democrat has ever made it to the White House.”
On October 9, Le Monde cast its net wider to look at the Kamala Harris spectacle through the larger prism of the Indian Diaspora in the United States. Its opinion article led with the headline, “In the US, the Indian diaspora has a political influence that far exceeds its demographic weight”.
The paper’s journalist, Julien Bouissou, saw a remarkable diaspora connection whichever way the presidential election goes.
“If Kamala Harris wins the presidential election in November, she will not only be the first woman president of the US but also the first president of Indian origin. If she loses, Americans will, for the first time, have a Second Lady of Indian origin. Usha Vance, wife of J.D. Vance, Donald Trump's running mate, is a confessed Hindu and vegetarian.”
For validation, Bouissou quoted the effulgent New York Times writing in July that “Indian Americans are becoming a political force”.
The Le Monde piece jumps into the diaspora pool, thrilled by its size, depth, reach and influence. It delves into the diaspora’s psyche not without a whiff of the colonial hangover as it writes:
“To explain this success, the US press readily cites the Indian elite's mastery of English, their native tongue, their familiarity with the electoral and, to a certain extent, democratic system, and the excellence of Indian higher education – the famous Indian Institutes of Technology – in the US's favorite field, new technologies.”
One rarely writes about India or the Indian diaspora without mentioning caste. Le Monde is not among the rare:
“Caste is rarely mentioned, no doubt because members of the upper castes prefer to emphasize their own merit rather than the privilege associated with their origin. Despite this, belonging to a particular caste could well explain their incredible success in the US. Kamala Harris' mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who came to the US in 1958, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and former Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi are all Tamil Brahmins, also known as "tambrams."
Of course, Kamala Harris is much more than a “tambram”, but that’s the French for you.
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