Dr. Balachandran Gopalan is Sen. Kamala Harris’ maternal uncle, and you best believe that he watched his niece—who happens to be the first South Asian American vice presidential nominee in American history (as well as the first Black one)—as she debated the white-haired liar who currently holds the nation’s second-highest office.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) headed to New Delhi to see what Uncle Balachandran, 79, thought about the debate, and it’s basically the greatest thing ever. I have a slew of uncles and there’s a sweet familiarity to Uncle Balachandran’s stoic praise of his cherished niece, coupled with a glimmer of pain that his older sister, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, isn’t here to see her daughter shine.
Dr. Gopalan hasn’t hidden his pride in Sen. Harris, and Indian media found him soon after she was named as Joe Biden’s running mate in mid-August. “I knew she was quite ambitious in the sense that she always wanted to run for public office and achieve something, and that spirit she took from her mother. So this was inevitable,” he told VOA at the time. “The women in our family are extremely strong, the men not so much,” he added with a laugh before making one thing clear: “She can handle the campaign.” In the same interview, Dr. Gopalan later joked about getting cards printed that declared him to be “the favorite uncle of Kamala Harris.”
The professor’s humor was equally evident after the debate, when he reduced Vice President Mike Pence to little more than an old uncle.
CBS has more from the interview.
Two more clips of a (hatless) Dr. Gopalan can be found here and here.
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