India’s prime minister says Kamala Harris’s ‘success is a matter of great pride and inspiration’

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the first person of Indian descent elected to the position, as a source of “great pride and inspiration.”

“I … conveyed warm congratulations for VP-elect @KamalaHarris,” Modi tweeted Tuesday. “Her success is a matter of great pride and inspiration for members of the vibrant Indian-American community, who are a tremendous source of strength for Indo-US relations.”

I also conveyed warm congratulations for VP-elect @KamalaHarris. Her success is a matter of great pride and inspiration for members of the vibrant Indian-American community, who are a tremendous source of strength for Indo-US relations.

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 17, 2020

Modi was one of several world leaders to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden last week, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Harris’s late mother, biomedical scientist Shyamala Gopalan, was born in what is now the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. A village in the state erected banners hailing Harris’s selection in August as Biden’s running mate. A survey released in October also indicated about 72 percent of Indian Americans supported the ticket.

Foreign policy analysts told Al Jazeera last week that the Biden administration is more likely than Trump to raise concerns about human rights in Modi’s India. Violence against the nation’s Muslim minority has increased under Modi, a leading figure in the Hindu nationalist movement. His party last year passed citizenship legislation widely panned as making Muslims second-class citizens.  

“These measures are inconsistent with the country’s long tradition of secularism and with sustaining a multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy,” the Biden campaign said in a policy paper of the Indian law.