This NYT article while flawed in several respects has the virtue of at least acknowledging more widely than I have seen in other MSM reporting the Indian heritage of Kamala Harris. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/world/asia/kamala-harris-india.html

First time I have seen it mentioned in an MSM story that Kamala's mother felt it was important to impart her Indian heritage and Hindu identity to her daughters:

Kamala asked her aunt in India to go to the temple and break some coconuts for her when she ran for CA AG:

The flaws in the article are mainly about how Kamala's elite family in India is airbrushed as being from Progressive Central Casting. Had Kamala been a Republican, I am not sure her privileged family background in India would have been covered so positively.

It is quite possible that a great deal of the positive attributes about her family are true. It is certainly true that in that era it was virtually unheard of for an Indian woman to go abroad for education and it takes a very education-minded father to facilitate that.

Her uncle is quoted as saying " the family never looked down their noses at lower castes and that his parents valued, above all else, education". It is unclear to me whether "lower castes" is a direct quote from her Uncle or the reporter's language but it is problematic.

A better phrasing by the reporter would have been "other castes". If it is a straight quote from her Uncle it does suggest an elitism that is in contrast to the claimed progressive attitudes of the family.

Again it could be the case that the family was both progressive and elitist (we see this combination here in the US as well) but my main issue is that if Kamala Harris was a Republican I am pretty sure her family background would be covered differently.

I am skeptical of her Aunt and Uncle's claim that the marriage of Kamala's mom to a Black man did not bother the family at all. It is IMHO quite likely that her mom was counseled not to pursue the marriage but the family acquiesced when it was clear her mom's mind was made up.

The fact that they took out an announcement in a magazine is not proof of the fact that they had no reservations. In the absence of an Indian wedding it might simply have been a way of letting people know of the fact and it might have been needed to comply with local regulations.

All in all one of the more informative articles in the MSM about Kamala's Indian family background. Even I who am better informed than most about Kamala Harris learned a new fact: that Kamala Harris took her mother's ashes back to Chennai to scatter them in the Indian Ocean.

Among the Indian American diaspora and in India itself Kamala Harris is being viewed with skepticism and suspicion because people see her stressing her Black identity as a rejection of her Indian heritage.

The fact that she identifies as a Christian is also an area of suspicion as for many in the diaspora as the risk of their children converting from Hinduism to Christianity due to the weight of majority culture is a real fear.

My two cents on this is that some of these concerns are motivated by personal insecurities of the Indian diaspora regarding their identity conflicts. Also while it is true that in America Kamala would always have been seen as Black, it is also true that she might not have been...

.... fully embraced as an Indian among the Indian-American community even if she had chosen to identify as a Hindu and favored her Indian heritage over her Black heritage. To fault Kamala for aggressively pursuing a Black identity is wrong. It was really the only choice ....

... available to her. Moreover, to be politically viable as a minority politician in America it helps to be a Christian. That is just how the world works. Just because Kamala bent to conform herself to these social realities does not mean she is an opportunist.

It is a deeply personal choice that must be respected and I would encourage the Indian diaspora and Indians in India to take a broader perspective here.