Kamala Harris:Tamil Iyer Brahmin for Sri Lanka Tamil reparation? – By Daya Gamage

Note: Kindly note that the NEW Chief of Staff for Kamala Harris is…Karine Jean-Pierre Ref: pinknews

Source:Asian Tribune

The US Democratic Party presidential candidate – former Obama vice president – Joseph Biden’s vice presidential running mate US Senator Kamala Devi Harris is far from an Americanized woman of South India’s Tamil Iyer Brahmin heritage: to date, she has proudly retained her South Indian heritage – maintaining a certain level of the Tamil tongue – that could extend her vice-presidential reach to the region. Having a chief-of-staff of Sri Lankan Tamil-heritage, there is a strong possibility that the Biden White House – if inaugurated on January 20 next year – could add Sri Lanka’s ‘national issues’ or ‘ethnic issues’, that were given less priority since the defeat of Tamil Tiger-separatism in 2009, as one of the US foreign policy planks in the form of ‘Tamil reparation’.

The Asian Tribune, having had many conversations with those who are knowledgeable of Ms. Harris’ political outlook, obtaining reports of the composition of her immediate top staff members, in-depth study of Ms. Harris’ ethnic heritage, the confirmed foreign policy planks of the Biden-Harris administration toward the Indo-Pacific region in which Sri Lanka is considered a vital ‘real estate’ in Washington’s military reach which commenced during the Obama administration as ‘Pivot to Asia’ and accelerated by the Trump administration, one could safely conclude that both Sri Lanka’s ethnic issues and raking Sri Lanka into Washington’s overall military strategy in the region may form a joint approach of the Biden-Harris administration.

Vice President Kamala Devi Harris’ Tamil Iyer Brahmin roots, Asian Tribune strongly believes, could play a pivotal role in the new administration’s approach toward Sri Lanka’s national issues. Knowledgeable of the working of Senator Harris’ Washington office, a contact of Asian Tribuneconfirmed that, as much as the Sri Lankan Tamil exodus to Tamil Nadu during the Tamil pogrom in 1983, she was, to some extent, aware of Sri Lanka’s ‘national issues’.

Her Tamil Iyer Brahmin heritage has retained throughout her life due to her mother’s strong influence. Ms. Harris’ and her extended family’s fight for civil rights can be a strong influence in her trajectory toward issues surrounding ethnicity in Sri Lanka well supported by her Sri Lankan-American top administrative person whose parents – Tamils from Jaffna – who migrated to the U.S. during 1980s Tamil pogrom.

The Asian Tribune take note of Senator Kamala Devi Harris’ senior appointments to her Washington senate office that could end up in U.S. vice presidential office in the White House should Democratic candidate Joe Biden wins the presidency this November: her chief of staff Rohini Lakshmi Ravindran Kosoglu is of Sri Lankan-origin.

Ms. Ravindran Kosoglu is the only Asian-American woman currently serving as a U.S. senator’s chief of staff. “As a woman of color in this position, I think it’s important to create a pipeline of talent,” she says, adding that diversity is an issue that Senator Harris also “feels is important.”

The daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants is a legislative and policy expert with more than a decade of Senate experience, Ms. Kosoglu, graduate of the University of Michigan and gained a Master’s at The George Washington University, got her first taste of national politics as a mailroom manager for Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan.) after she graduated. She worked her way up in Stabenow’s office to senior policy adviser, then moved on to Sen. Michael Bennett’s (D-Colorado.) office as his senior health care adviser while Congress crafted and passed Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). After seven years with Bennett’s office, Kosoglu got an offer from Kamala Harris in November 2016, then a senator-elect, to work as deputy chief of staff.

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Her father Dr. Wijeyedevendram Ravindran has been a practicing emergency room physician for well over 35 years at the Community Medical Center in Tom River, New Jersey was from Jaffna and had his primary and secondary education in a leading private school in Colombo and tertiary education also in Sri Lanka’s capital city of Colombo. He immigrated to the U.S. in early 1980s.

It needs to be mentioned here that Kamala Harris’ mother’s civil-rights activism starting in Berkeley, California in the 1960s—was often mentioned in her speeches during her presidential campaign last year as an important influence on her.

She points to her mother’s and grandfather’s support for civil rights in both countries as an important part of her heritage that made her want to enter public life.

“I come from a family of fighters,” she said in a speech at a campaign event last year.
Sen. Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris who migrated to the United States in 1958, retained ties to her Indian homeland and made regular visits to India, along with Kamala, throughout her life.

After moving to Berkeley, Calif., to study in 1958, Ms. Gopalan Harris participated in marches and sit-ins against the Vietnam War with her husband, Donald Harris, before they divorced. Her grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, used to share his thoughts on civil rights and democracy with Kamala Harris during family trips to the southern Indian city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

And her mother always considered her Iyer Brahmin heritage as pivotal to her life and her two daughters, the pinnacle of the caste structure of her native Tamil Nadu. Iyer (pronounced [ai?ar]) (Tamil: ???? is the title given to the caste of Hindu Brahmin. The complex politics of that region have caused many Tamil Brahmins to seek their fortunes elsewhere, including Silicon Valley in California. Gopalan, who died in 2009, was a medical researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

Brahmins are an important constituent of Sri Lankan Tamil minority. The Tamil Brahmins are believed to have played a historic role in the formation of the Jaffna Kingdom.

Knowledgeable of the working of Senator Harris’ Washington office, a contact of Asian Tribune confirmed that, as much as the Sri Lankan Tamil exodus to Tamil Nadu during the Tamil pogrom in 1983, she was, to some extent, aware of Sri Lanka’s ‘national issues’.

Iyer is a caste of Hindu Brahmin communities of Tamil origin. Iyers fall under the Pancha Dravida Brahmin sub-classification of India’s Brahmin community and share many customs and traditions with other Brahmins. An overwhelming majority of Iyers continue to thrive in Tamil Nadu. Tamil is the mother tongue of most Iyers residing in India and elsewhere. It is not a surprise that Kamala Devi Harris speaks Tamil although not very fluent.

Since ancient times, Iyers, as members of the privileged priestly class, exercised near-complete domination over educational, religious and literary institutions in the Tamil country. Their domination continued throughout the British Raj as they used their knowledge of the English language and education to dominate politics, administration, the courts and intelligentsia. Upon India’s independence in 1947, they tried to consolidate their hold on the administrative and judicial machinery. Such a situation led to resentment from the other castes in Tamil Nadu, the result of this atmosphere was a “non-Brahmin” movement. Onetime Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha hails from the Tamil Iyer Brahmin community.

The selection of Kamala Devi Harris as Joseph Biden’s vice presidential candidate has created history in the United States. At the outset, media in the U.S. categorized her as an ‘African-America’ unaware of her ethnic background. Now the media has played the importance of her selection to her ethnic background.

In a subsequent report Asian Tribune will present where Kamala Harris’ has positioned her in domestic and foreign policy, yet this analysis was solely focused on – given her Tamil Iyer Brahmin heritage, and her marginal knowledge of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil influence in her senate office – where Sri Lanka, which has a new administration which – in its previous rule – was confronted with ethnic issues, could fit into the policy planks in the Biden-Harris administration.

There were many parallels found to present this analysis. It is advisable for the Mahinda-Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration to give some thoughts to developing even a ‘rough’ foreign policy approach – even at this early stage – should a Biden-Harris administration emerges on January 20 next year.

Kamala Devi Harris (on the left in Sari) with her grandmother, Rajam Gopalan, grandfather
P.V. Gopalan and sister Maya. In front are Maya’s daughter, Meena, left, and Harris’ cousin
Sharada Balachandran Orihuela during a visit to Chennai, India, not so long ago. Not fluent
But she speaks Tamil.

– Asian Tribune –