New Delhi: It was the year 1956. 16-year-old Shyamala Gopalan came from Madras (now Chennai) to the capital’s Lady Irwin College to pursue a degree in Home Science. She completed her degree after three years here and then went to America. There are possibilities of the same Shyamala Gopalan’s daughter Kamala Harris becoming the President of America. At present, in the cupboard of important papers and certificates of the family of US Vice President Kamala Harris, there must be many documents of her late mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan. Among those papers, there will also be the yellowing Lady Irwin College degree.
Despite all her busy schedule, Kamala Harris must have sometimes touched and looked at her mother’s Delhi University degree. Obviously, those must have been very emotional moments.
President Joe Biden has decided to withdraw from the US presidential election race, so it seems that the next President of America could be Kamala Harris of Indian origin. Biden has supported his Vice President Kamala Harris to stand as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the presidential election.
Mother studied at Lady Irwin College
Kamala Harris’s mother Shyamala Gopalan came to study at the prestigious Lady Irwin College of Delhi University in 1956. She studied home science sitting in the red brick building of Lady Irwin College. “Kamala Harris’s mother belonged to a very progressive Tamil Brahmin family. This society also pays a lot of attention to the education of its daughters. This is very clear because they allowed Shyamala Gopalan to go to New Delhi to fulfill her dreams,” says former bureaucrat and Hindi-Tamil poet Bhaskar Ramamurthy.
Father professor and mother home maker
Shyamala’s father P.V. Gopalan was in government service and mother was a home maker. Gopalan was a typist and kept getting promotions with the help of his dedication and honesty. He lived in Madras, New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata in connection with his job. It is still not known whether Kamala Harris’s grandfather lived in New Delhi when his daughter Shyamala was studying at Delhi University.
Professor R. Rajaraman was an emeritus professor of physics at Jawaharlal Nehru University and was Shyamala Gopalan’s classmate in Tamil Nadu. He says, ‘In our class, girls and boys used to sit on different sides of the classroom. There was very little interaction between them. But Shyamala did not hesitate to talk to boys. She was full of confidence.’
After getting a degree from DU at the age of 19, Shyamala Gopalan decided to pursue higher education from the US. When the G-20 summit was being held in New Delhi last year, there was some speculation that President Joe Biden would not be able to attend the summit due to health reasons. Vice President Kamala Harris would visit Delhi in his place. At that time it was expected that she would also visit her mother’s Lady Irwin College. Of course, she would have some knowledge of the college building as Kamala’s mother would have told her about her college days. However, the possibility of her visit to New Delhi ended when Joe Biden finally came here.
If Kamala Harris visits New Delhi after becoming the President of the US, she will join the list of presidents of her country who have visited India like D. Eisenhower (1959), Richard M. Nixon (1969), Jimmy Carter (1978), Bill Clinton (2000), George W. Bush (2006), Barack Obama – 2010 and 2015, Donald Trump (2020) and Joe Biden (2023).
