P14 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020
Election
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LIBBY MARCH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESOn the day that the United States elected its first female vice president, many people marked the occasion by visiting the graves of
two leaders of the suffrage movement, Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, N.Y.
Linking the Present to the Past
NEW DELHI — From the mo-
ment the sun came up in Thu-
lasendrapuram, a little village in
southern India, people started
stringing firecrackers across the
road. They poured into the temple.
They took colored powder and
wrote exuberant messages in big,
happy letters in front of their
homes, like this one:
“Congratulations Kamala Har-
ris, pride of our village.”
If there was one place in India
that relished the triumph of Jo-
seph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Harris,
his running mate, in America’s
presidential election, it was Thu-
lasendrapuram, the hamlet where
Ms. Harris’s Indian grandfather
was born more than 100 years ago.
Her name is scrawled on a board
by the temple. People there love
her and identify strongly with her.
For four days, Thulasendrapu-
ram’s 500 or so residents had been
waiting anxiously. They’d been
praying at the temple, draping
Hindu idols with rose petals and
strings of sweet-smelling jasmine,
and alternately searching for
good omens and checking their
cellphones for the latest updates.
On Sunday, a wave of joy burst.
“Kamala has made this villagevery proud,” said Renganathan, a
farmer, who rushed to the village’s
main temple. “She’s a great lady
and an inspiration. She belongs to
this soil.”
Although Ms. Harris has been
more understated about her Indi-
an heritage than about her experi-
ence as a Black woman, her path
to the vice presidency has also
been guided by the values of her
Indian-born mother and her wider
Indian family, who have stood by
her all her life. In several major
speeches, Ms. Harris has gushed
about her Indian grandfather, P.V.
Gopalan, who inspired her with
his stories about the fight for In-
dia’s independence.
Her mother, Shyamala
Gopalan, who came to America
young and alone in the late 1950s
and made a career as a breast can-
cer researcher before dying of
cancer in 2009, remains one of the
people Ms. Harris talks about
most.
In her victory speech in Dela-
ware on Saturday, Ms. Harris said
her mother was “the woman most
responsible for my presence here
today.”
“When she came here from In-
dia at the age of 19, she maybe did-
n’t quite imagine this moment,”
Ms. Harris said. “But she believed
so deeply in an America where a
moment like this is possible.”
Indians have been watching
this election extremely closely,
less because of Ms. Harris’s her-
itage than for what it might por-
tend for India-United States rela-tions. In the past few months, the
two countries, the world’s largest
democracies, have drawn closer.
Part of the reason is China.
Since Chinese troops surged
across the disputed India-China
border in June, sparking clashes
that killed more than 20 Indian
soldiers, the United States and In-
dia have bolstered their military
relationship, sharing more intelli-
gence and planning more coordi-
nated training exercises, bothsides motivated by a desire to con-
tain China.
How things will change under a
Biden-Harris administration is
the big question Indians are now
asking. The incoming administra-
tion is definitely much more famil-
iar with India. Ms. Harris spent a
lot of time in India as a young
woman, visiting family and devel-
oping a fondness for Indian food
and culture.
And Mr. Biden was a champion
for India in the Senate, pushing
hard for a nuclear deal between
the two nations. Mr. Biden has
also promised to allow more visas
for skilled immigrant workers,
which President Trump reduced,and Indian workers could benefit
enormously from that.
But foreign policy experts ex-
pect that the Biden-Harris team
will also be tougher on India. They
say that the policies of the Indian
prime minister, Narendra Modi,
have made life more difficult for
Muslims in the country, and while
the Trump administration has
kept quiet about changes in Kash-
mir and the passage of a new, bla-
tantly anti-Muslim citizenship
law, Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden are
likely to be more critical.
Ms. Harris has already indi-
cated that she is concerned about
the way India has tightened con-
trol over Kashmir, a Muslim-ma-
jority territory that is disputed be-
tween India and Pakistan. People
who know her well expect her to
speak up more.
“Kamala is a very strong per-
sonality who feels very strongly
about certain issues like human
and civil rights,” her uncle G. Bal-
achandran, said by telephone
from his house in New Delhi on
Sunday morning. “She may say
things if she feels India is going
against humanitarian rights.”
Most analysts believe that hu-
man rights overall will probably
get more attention under a Biden
administration, which might
make Mr. Modi nervous.
Shortly after midnight, Mr.
Modi tweeted his congratulations
to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris.
“Your success is pathbreaking,
and a matter of immense pride not
just for your chittis, but also for all
Indian-Americans,” he wrote in a
separate message to Ms. Harris,
using a Tamil term of endearment
for aunts that she herself used in
her speech accepting the vice-
presidential nomination in Au-
gust.
A handful of Ms. Harris’s rela-
tives still live in India, including
an aunt who has been in her cor-
ner for years. She once lined up
108 coconuts to be smashed at a
Hindu temple to bring Ms. Harris
good luck in a race for California
attorney general. (Ms. Harris won
that election.)
But Ms. Harris’s grandfather
left the ancestral village of Thu-
lasendrapuram, which is a bumpy
eight-hour drive from the city of
Chennai, more than 80 years ago.
She no longer has close relatives
there. Still, that’s not stopping the
village from hatching big plans.
Some people are hoping the
government will now build a col-
lege there, a wish the village has
been making for years. Others say
Ms. Harris’s ascension might
bring a better road. Or at least
some more donations for the tem-
ple.INDIA
In Ancestral Home, Joy for the ‘Pride of Our Village’
Celebrating in Thulasendrapuram, the Indian village where Kamala Harris’s grandfather was born.
AIJAZ RAHI/ASSOCIATED PRESSBy JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
and PRAKASH ELUMALAICelebrations are
mixed with questions
of what’s to come.
Jeffrey Gettleman reported from
New Delhi and Prakash Elumalai
from Thulasendrapuram, India.
Suhasini Raj contributed report-
ing from Ganjam, India.connect to it.
Yes, what Mr. Biden wears
matters, too. His aviators have
become practically his doppel-
gänger; the blue tie he wore on
Saturday night, representative
both of his party and the blue
skies to (they hope) come. Presi-
dents have always used clothing
as part of their political toolbox.
John Kennedy distinguished
himself from the generation that
came before by opting for single-
breasted suits instead of the
more formal double-breasted
styles favored by Roosevelt and
Truman.
Barack Obama did the same
by often abandoning the tie.
George W. Bush wore his cowboy
boots as a badge of origin and
attitude. Donald Trump used his
overly long, five-alarm-red ties to
signal masculinity and send
everyone down a master of the
universe wormhole.
But what Ms. Harris wears,
and will wear, could matter more.
Why should we pretend other-
wise?
(A website, WhatKamalaWore,
has already sprung up to keep
track.)
As Dominique and François
Gaulme wrote in the 2012 book
“Power & Style: A World History
of Politics and Style,” clothing,
from its earliest origins, was
developed “to communicate,
even more clearly than in writ-
ing, the social organizations and
distribution of political power.”
And when the person pos-
sessed of that power is a pioneer,
when she is defining a new kind
of leadership, understanding
those lines of communications
and how to employ them is key.
Not because she is a woman, but
because she will be the first
woman vice president.
Hillary Clinton came to under-
stand this, over a career in which
at first she seemed to dismiss
fashion and then, as first lady, to
resent it, before finally embrac-
ing it as a useful tool.
It began when she joined Twit-
ter in 2013 with a biographical
note that included the descrip-
tors “pantsuit aficionado” and
“hair icon,” along with “FLO-
TUS,” and “SecState.” When she
started her Instagram account in
2015, her first post was a photo of
a clothing rail with an assort-
ment of red, white and blue jack-
ets and the caption, “Hard
choices.” During an Al Smith
dinner before the 2016 election,
she joked that she liked to refer
to tuxedos as “formal pantsuits.”
She weaponized her clothing as
necessary.
This is an option of which Ms.
Harris herself is well aware. She
has embraced the political
pantsuit tradition presaged in
1874 at the first National Conven-
tion of the Dress Reform League,
when, as reported in The New
York Times, one attendee de-
clared: “This reform means
trousers. They are freedom to us,
and they afford us protection!
Trousers are coming.” But she
did not partake in the Crayola-
colored pantsuit tradition of the
generation before: Hillary Clin-
ton and Angela Merkel.
Though Ms. Harris has been
lauded for her love of Converse
(and talked about her Chuck
Taylors more than any other
item of clothing), and for her
Timberlands, when it comes to
professional situations, she has
usually favored a uniform of dark
colors — black, navy, burgundy,
maroon, gray — with matching
shell blouses, pumps and pearls.
Those were the suits she wore at
the Democratic National Conven-
tion and at the debates.
Often they were by New York
designers (Prabal Gurung, Jo-
seph Altuzarra), but they never
looked overly fashion. They
looked serious, prepared, no-
nonsense. She even wore a black
suit to the 2019 State of the Un-
ion, when many of her fellow
congresswomen had banded
together to wear white.
So her choice, this time, to
finally join that tradition could
not have been an accident. (Her
two young grand-nieces, one of
whom had recently featured in a
YouTube video talking about her
desire to be president, also wore
white.) It was deliberate. Not to
credit that is to give her less
credit than she is due.
Perhaps, rather, it is a signal of
what to expect. That she will go
on as she has, with practical,
elegant suits that don’t get in the
way of her day or require much
response from the peanut
gallery. (We, in turn, can get
back to Kimye.) That the details
— the pearls, the pumps, the
sneakers — will matter. And that
then, every once in a while and
when the situation and theater
calls for it, she will deploy a
sartorial surgical strike that hits
everyone where it counts.On Saturday night, when Ka-
mala Harris stepped onto the
stage and into history at the
Chase Center in Wilmington,
Del., as Vice President-elect of
the United States,
she did so in full
recognition of the
weight of the mo-
ment, and in full
acknowledgment
of all who came
before. Of the fact she is so many
firsts: first woman to be vice
president, first woman of color to
be vice president, first woman of
South Asian descent, first daugh-
ter of immigrants. She is the
representation of so many prom-
ises finally fulfilled, so many
hopes and dreams.
How do you begin to express
that understanding; embody the
city shining on a hill? For the
next four years, that will be part
of the job.
She said it — “while I may be
the first woman in this office, I
will not be the last” — and she
signaled it, wearing something
she had not worn in any of her
moments of firsts since she
joined Mr. Biden as his No. 2 (or,
indeed, in the months before
when she was running for the
Democratic nomination herself ):
a white pantsuit with a white silk
pussy-bow blouse. Two garments
that have been alternately
fraught and celebrated symbols
of women’s rights for decades,
but which over the last four
years have taken on even more
potency and power.
The white pantsuit: a nod to
the struggle to break the final
glass ceiling, stretching from the
suffragists through Geraldine
Ferraro, Hillary Clinton, Nancy
Pelosi and the women of Con-
gress. A garment in a color
meant, as an early mission state-
ment for the Congressional Un-
ion for Woman Suffrage pub-
lished in 1913 read, to symbolize
“the quality of our purpose.”
Latterly redolent with frustra-
tion; now, finally, transformed
into a beacon of achievement.
The pussy-bow blouse: the
quintessential working woman’s
uniform in the years when they
began to flood into the profes-
sional sphere; the female version
of the tie; the power accessory of
Margaret Thatcher, the first
female British prime minister.
And then, suddenly, a potentially
subversive double entendre in
the hands of Melania Trump,
who wore a pussy-bow blouse
after her husband’s “grab ’em by
the pussy” scandal.
Now, again, reclaimed.
The point was not who made
the clothes; it wasn’t about mar-
keting a brand (though, on the
subject of “building back better,”
the suit was by Carolina Herrera,
an American business). The
point was that to wear those
clothes — to make those choices
— on a night when the world was
watching, in a moment that
would be frozen for all time, was
not fashion. It was politics. It was
for posterity.
And it was the beginning of
what will be four years in which
everything Ms. Harris does
matters. Obviously, what she
wears is only a small part of it.
But in her first-ness, in her as-
cent to the highest realms on
power, she will become a model
for what that means. How, as a
woman, as a Black woman, you
claim your seat at the highest
table. Clothes are a part of that
story. In some ways, they are
how those at faraway tables
DRESSING FOR HISTORY
Message About the Past
And the Future of Politics
In a Fashion Statement
VANESSA
FRIEDMAN
CRITIC’S
NOTEBOOKKamala Harris wore a white
pantsuit with a white pussy-
bow blouse Saturday night.
ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMESMaking connections
that define a new
kind of leadership.