Kamala Harris's Brahmin roots

 Biden & Harris, as they must appear, if they are to win

Kamala Harris began visiting her ancestral Chennai- or Madras as it was known then- at a time when the anti-Brahmin Dravidian movement had taken power and was firmly entrenching itself. The film industry played a big role in this dramatic reversal of fortunes for the Brahmin community. But then, after the death of the film star Chief Minister M.G Ramachandran, his mantle was inherited by a Brahmin Screen Queen- Jayalalitha- who, despite corruption charges and spells in jail, went on to dominate Tamil politics till her somewhat untimely death four years ago. It was strange to see a Brahmin lady running a State whose official ideology is almost entirely centered on anti-Brahminism.

There is something equally bizarre about the notion that Harris can represent African Americans. True, her father came from Jamaica. He had ancestors who were slaves. But, in Jamaica, a lot of freedwomen and their descendants themselves owned slaves. There is a story of a Creole who had inherited some slaves and who decided to cross over to America to build a plantation there. But, in America, by the one drop rule, he was himself classed as a slave! His descendants prospered only after Emancipation which came to America 30 years later than it did to Jamaica. What America didn't have was a notion of caste based on degree of miscegenation and whether you were owned or you owned others. Jamaica did have a notion of caste- as did Tamil Nadu. The educated elites thought of themselves as inheriting the traditions of the Colonial Masters. If they emigrated to America, they did very well because of their brain-power. Colin Powell and Malcolm Gladwell belong to this class of West Indian. Kamala Harris's mother, though more radical by reason of gender, nevertheless, belonged to its equivalent East Indian caste. When she first came to study in the US, it would have been difficult for her to get a Visa to remain. This was less true for her husband because of the way immigration quotas, not to say American Society, worked. The fact is, prior to '65, almost all Indians settled in the US had to be a 'talented-tenth' grafting on to the originally subaltern stock- i.e. taking coloured or Hispanic wives. Then came a wave of post-graduate students who became academics. This gave way to Doctors and Engineers and, a little later, Software professionals. This class was more entrepreneurial and could boast of some leading bankers, financiers and CEOs. By the Nineties, people like Kamala- born outside India- had lost a vanguard role. The dominant caste 'Andhrapreneur', who combined business savvy with professional skills, shouldered aside the older, more academic, Brahminical type of Indian American. This was reflected in a reversal of caste hierarchy. No Kamma would dream of sueing an Iyer or Iyengar for 'caste discrimination'. He has to say some other type of Naidu discriminated against him. Otherwise he'd be laughed at. One might as well say the pussy-cat is sexually harassing you.

Harris's father, like Sir Arthur Lewis, the first African descent person to be awarded a Nobel Prize, was a heterodox Academic Economist but not one with policy influence. The AID industry, abetted by well funded NGOs had disintermediated people like him from the policy space of their own countries of origin.

Unlike indigenous African American Economists- who have done an excellent job of keeping the existence of their 50 year old Journal a secret- Harris retained the Left Liberal idealism of the Sixties while working on its Sraffa type pseudo-problems. By contrast, Sowell, Loury, Fryer, etc. had a type of lived experience which motivated analytical and empirical excellence rather than scholasticism. Loury and Fryer were fallible men comfortable in their own community (whatever that might be)- perhaps too much so- I primly observe. 

But people of Harris's class were uneasy with the popular urban culture of their Islands of origin. They had differentiated themselves from the 'maroons' centuries ago. Their sons had to speak the Queen's English at home. If Daddy caught them speaking 'Rude Boy' patois on the phone, Mum would take her shoe to them. There was also an ancestral disdain of 'new money'. Commerce was disreputable. Popular culture, but also popular religion, was regarded as atavism- a dangerous return to the Jungle. V.S. Naipaul was the voice of this class. But Naipaul was a cretin.  I personally think, Thomas Sowell & Clarence Thomas represented the path of sanity. But both provoked an atavistic fear. These were  genuine Witch Doctors because they were concerned with and connected to the genuine forces that shape the world. It is safer to live in a genteel, but make believe, world. It is interesting to read Kamala's Dad's article on Malcolm X for a Jamaican newspaper. In impeccable British English, the scholarship winning golden boy, explains that X helped the riff-raff reform their lives. That's why he was killed. X was evolving into Dr. King. But the gorillas didn't want that evolution to proceed. 

Harris's mother, I want to emphasize, took a different view. She had the spirit of Mumbai not Madras. Then Madras itself changed. An unmarried Brahmin woman took power thanks to the backing of the working class who watched her movies. Popular culture was the path to women's liberation- even for 'upper caste' women. Her own unmarried eldest daughter was just 25 or 26 at the time. Can America lag behind Tamil Nadu? Of course not! The Greatest Country in the World will always lead the way! America will have a female President whose husband, or lack of husband, won't matter at all! 

For Kamala, the Tamil movies of Jayalalitha, must have been an eye-opener. They showed that histrionics is politics- otherwise, how on earth could a Brahmin woman end up heading a very macho anti-Brahmin party which glorifies the ancient Tamil warrior Kings while grading women on the basis of the supposed power generated by their degree of chastity? 

California, surprisingly, wasn't so different from Tamil Nadu. Reagan became Governor of that State, a position Schwarznegger would later occupy, before MGR became C.M of Tamil Nadu. Furthermore, Religious identities were fluid. You could be a Brahmin Baptist or a Zen Jew or a Gay Russian Orthodox Saint. But Harris wasn't exactly a 'Governor Moonbeam' type. There was a rigidity to her thinking and a tendency to be a 'free rider' on existing bandwagons. This may be no bad thing. It boosts productivity when you are young. But it also means that Harris won't supply 'blue sky' thinking. Like her maternal grandfather, who rose by merit through the ranks of the Indian bureaucracy, she may be inclined to 'work within a system' where her merits have allowed her to rise. The problem here is that 'work product' has external, structural, effects. The product may be good but the effect may be bad. Furthermore, systems break down at precisely the moment when the attempt is made to reform them. The example of Tamil Nadu shows that 'populism' can yield better outcomes than meritocratic elitism. Trump isn't exactly a laid off coal-miner or bankrupt dairy farmer. Yet it is he who has shifted focus on to those 'dying deaths of despair'. 

If Trump was an unlikely Messiah for the 'deplorables', so was Jayalaitha- a very fair skinned, English speaking, Brahmin in a State which had decided Brahmins were at the root of all evil. Jayalalitha prevailed as Trump may yet prevail. Why? The choice facing America is Clintonism- and its ability to be captured by Money and to capture those who appear to be against Money- which it has had plenty of, and...what? Something indigenous. Something 'anti-Brahmin'. Something 'blue sky'. Who knows what that might be?

I never thought the son of a Luo Economist would become President, not of Kenya, but America. I forgot that America is at least 70 percent White and has a One Percent with its head very well screwed on. In 2008, Voters thought they were hiring a nigger Sheriff to scare Wall Street straight. That was silly of them. But voting for Trump in 2016 was smart. When will ordinary Americans ever again be given a chance to elect someone as fucking unelectable as themselves?

Harris is eminently electable. She and her sister will always be making a contribution to the country that took their parents in and which allowed those parents to achieve their personal goals. They love America and love seeks to make its object great. But neither represents indigenous America. Jayalalitha did. In every caste and class is born a 'Slayer' of hearts with the type of good looks valorized at that time. In Tamil Nadu in the sixties it was plump, short, but very fair skinned, people with a wonderful command of our ancient language and stylized histrionics. 

 I think the grand-daughter of a TamBram Civil Servant will become Veep. But because I am always wrong about these things, she won't. Shame. But there it is.