USA / Indian-origin Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden's US vice presidential running mate

Washington: Kamala Harris made history when she was picked by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his running mate on Tuesday. She is the first Asian-American on a major presidential ticket.

She is the daughter of Indian mother from Chennai, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a cancer researcher who passed away in 2009, and Jamaican father, Donald Harris, who teaches at Stanford University. The parents separated when Harris and her younger sister Maya Harris were still very young.

From Kamala’s name (Shyamala gave her and her sisters Sanskrit names to connect their heritage with their identities) to her focus on immigration and equal rights, Shyamala has had a profound influence and lasting legacy on her high-flying daughter. 

Her selection came as little surprise. With the United States in the midst of a reckoning over its history of racial injustice, Biden had increasingly been pressed to select a woman of colour. Harris, who became the Senate’s second Black woman in its history, was always at the top of the list.

But Harris did anything but keep a low profile while Biden was making up his mind. Instead, she emerged as a fierce advocate for police reform and social justice - in the Senate, in the streets, and on the airwaves, sparring with Republicans on the Senate floor and offering fiery critiques of Republican President Donald Trump.

Harris is now the first American of Indian and Asian descent to run for vice-president. She is also the first African American of a major party and only the third woman yet to run for that office, after Democrat Geraldine Ferraro and Republican Sarah Palin.

Harris became the first Indian American woman to run for US president ever - from either party - in 2019. She is also the first Indian-American Democrat to try for the job.

Harris has also served as district attorney in San Francisco.

Harris was sworn in as a United States Senator from California in 2017, only the second African-American woman and first South Asian-American senator in history. She served on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on the Budget.

She grew up in Oakland. And after earning an undergraduate degree from Howard University and a law degree from the University of California, Hastings, she a career in law in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. She became the district attorney of San Francisco in 2003.