Not just Kamala Harris, even Joe Biden has a long, historic connection with India

While Kamala Harris is being hailed for creating history and becoming the first female, Asian, US vice president, 46th US President-elect Joe Biden’s connection with India can not be left ignored. The 77-year-old, who is all set to acquire the office in a few months, has distant relatives in Mumbai. The Democrat had reiterated the same claim of his connection with India at an event in Washington saying that there are “five Bidens in Mumbai”. 

Even though nobody from Mumbai has yet claimed to be Biden’s relative, the former US vice president had told the crowd in 2015 event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of India-US civil nuclear deal. He had made a similar claim in 2013 when he was in India.

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Biden claims to receive a unique letter in 1972

At least seven years ago, when Joe Biden travelled to Mumbai during the first vice presidential trip to India under the former US President Barack Obama administration, he spoke about a letter that he had received. He had recalled at the time, that as a senator, Biden had received a letter several decades ago in 1972 by someone who shared the same last name and had asserted that both individuals were related. 

Joe Biden said, "It's an honour to be back in India and to be here in Mumbai. Off script for a second here, I was reminded I was elected to the United States Senate when I was a 29-year-old kid back in 1972, and one of the first letters I received and I regret I never followed up on it."

"Maybe, some genealogist in the audience can follow up for me, but I received a letter from a gentleman named Biden - Biden, my name - from Mumbai, asserting that we were related," he had told the Mumbai audience in 2013.

Again in 2015 in Washington, Biden claimed that his “great, great, great, great, great grandfather" George Biden was a Captain in the East India Trading Company, who decided to settle in India after retirement and even married an Indian woman. Moreover, the president-elect claimed that someone had provided him with the details including the phone numbers of the ‘Bidens in Mumbai’.

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