Already bursting with pride at US vice president-elect Kamala Harris’ ancestry, India has now started digging up potential local roots for US president-elect Joe Biden.
The next leader of the US has speculated that he might have had relatives in colonial India. While there is no proof, the Biden name has become a genealogical target of investigation across the country.
A plaque commemorating 19th-century British ship captain Christopher Biden has become a popular selfie spot in the eastern city of Chennai since the US election, and a Biden family in western India says that it has become “exhausted” by calls since their namesake staked his claim to the White House.
Photo: AP
The US vote has been under the spotlight in India because Joe Biden’s running mate is the daughter of a migrant from Tamil Nadu state.
Fifty-six-year-old Harris has made much of her Indian connections and how she likes to eat “idli with a really good sambar” — typical food from the south.
Less attention has been paid to Joe Biden, who has established Irish links, but he spoke of possible Indian connections on a trip to Mumbai in 2013 when he was vice president.
Joe Biden said in a speech that he had received a letter from an Indian Biden after becoming a US senator in 1972, suggesting that they could be related.
“One of the first letters I received, and I regret I never followed up on it,” he said.
The letter said that their “mutual, great, great, great, something or other worked for the East India Trading Co back in the 1700s.”
It sparked excitement in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state, which is also home to Harris’ Indian relatives.
A plaque at St George’s Cathedral in Chennai that celebrates Christopher Biden, born in 1789, has suddenly become a local tourist draw.
“We’ve come to know the records of two Bidens — William Biden and Christopher Biden — who were brothers and became captains of the East India Co on merchant ships in the 19th century,” said Reverend J. George Stephen, the Bishop of Madras.
Stephen said that “while William Biden died at an early age, Christopher Biden went on to captain several ships and eventually settled down in Madras,” which is now known as Chennai.
Despite the speculation, there has been no confirmation that the Biden brothers are related to the 77-year-old US president-elect.
If Joe Biden does have an Indian ancestor, Christopher is considered the most likely candidate, said experts who have studied family records.
There are also Bidens in Mumbai and Nagpur in Maharashtra state who could be descendants of Christopher Biden, one of eight children of a John Biden who could be the common link.
The media attention has been overwhelming, according to the Maharashtra Bidens.
Indian media has speculated that their late grandfather Leslie wrote to the US politician.
Rowena Biden, a family member in Mumbai, said that they are not trying to establish any relationship.
“We wish Mr Joe Biden all the best for his new role as president of the USA, but we are not trying to establish any connections or linkages,” she said. “We share a last name and that’s about it.”
“All of us are well-to-do financially and have well-settled lives so we don’t need any gains — monetary or non-monetary,” she added.
Rowena Biden said that after the first reports came out about the possible links, “people started tracking us to our house and everyone in the family had to bear the brunt of it.”
The “undue limelight” had cast a shadow over “the primacy of Mr Biden’s win and our privacy as well,” she said.
China has possibly committed “genocide” in its treatment of Uighurs and other minority Muslims in its western region of Xinjiang, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China said in a report on Thursday. The bipartisan commission said that new evidence had last year emerged that “crimes against humanity — and possibly genocide — are occurring” in Xinjiang. It also accused China of harassing Uighurs in the US. China has been widely condemned for setting up complexes in Xinjiang that it describes as “vocational training centers” to stamp out extremism and give people new skills, which others have called concentration camps. The UN says that
A racing pigeon has survived an extraordinary 13,000km Pacific Ocean crossing from the US to find a new home in Australia. Now authorities consider the bird a quarantine risk and plan to kill it. Kevin Celli-Bird yesterday said he discovered that the exhausted bird that arrived in his Melbourne backyard on Dec. 26 last year had disappeared from a race in the US state of Oregon on Oct. 29. Experts suspect the pigeon that Celli-Bird has named Joe — after US president-elect Joe Biden — hitched a ride on a cargo ship to cross the Pacific. Joe’s feat has attracted the attention
The Polish Supreme Court on Friday quashed a lower court’s green light for the extradition of a businessman to China for alleged fraud, a charge he has denied, saying that he is being targeted for supporting Falun Gong. Polish authorities took Chinese-born Swedish citizen Li Zhihui, now 53, into custody in 2019 on an international warrant issued by China for alleged non-payment in a business deal, Krzysztof Kitajgrodzki, his Polish lawyer, told reporters. Following the Supreme Court ruling, the case would return to a lower appellate court for review. Kitajgrodzki told reporters that it was still not a given that his client
DELIVERING HOPE: The Japanese PM pledged to push ahead with plans to stage the Games, despite polls showing about 80% think they will not or should not happen Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga yesterday vowed to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control and hold the already postponed Olympic Games this summer with ample protection. In a speech opening a new session of parliament, Suga said that his government would revise laws to make disease prevention measures enforceable with penalties and compensation. Early in the pandemic, Japan was able to keep its caseload manageable with nonbinding requests for businesses to close or operate with social distancing, and for people to stay at home, but recent weeks have seen several highs in new cases per day, in part blamed on eased attitudes