Vadluru (AFP) – Far from Republican festivities as Donald Trump claimed US election victory, residents of a sleepy Indian village celebrated that their descendant would be the next “Second Lady,” hoping to benefit from her success. Academic highflyer and successful lawyer Usha Vance, the child of Indian immigrants, is the wife of Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance. While 38-year-old Usha Vance was born and brought up in suburban San Diego, 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 kilometers (8,360 miles) 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 Hindu elephant-headed deity Ganesh for Trump. “If she can recognize 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 the Indian city of 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.” Millions of Indians have made similar journeys as the Chilukuris, and according to the most recent US census, Indians have become the country’s second-largest Asian ethnicity, growing 50 percent to 4.8 million in the decade to 2020. 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 story was different around 730 kilometers (454 miles) to the southwest, 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?”
© 2024 AFP
