Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina Over the years, staffers for Vice President KAMALA HARRIS often referred to her as “KDH,” a shorthand for her full name, Kamala Devi Harris. Devi, however, is not Harris’ original middle name. It’s Iyer. Two weeks after Harris was born in 1964, her parents legally changed her middle name. The alteration caught the eye of CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA, the longtime D.C.-correspondent for Times of India who has a new biography of Harris just released in India called “Phenomenal Woman” (it’s being released in the U.S. in January). The book is sympathetic—”Luckily for Kamala, self-assurance and self-belief came easily and early,” goes one passage—and treads some familiar ground. But it also offers some rich insight into Harris’ Indian heritage and her parents. The middle name change is notable, Rajhatta told West Wing Playbook, because Iyer and Devi have very different connotations in Indian culture. “It's very obvious the moment somebody says ‘Iyer,’ you know he or she is Brahmin and Brahmin is one of the highest castes in the caste hierarchy in India,” he said. Devi, by contrast, is a much more commonly used name that is also a powerful female deity. “My sense is her parents dropped Iyer to avoid any caste connotation," he said. Rajghatta said he couldn’t be sure why Harris’ parents changed her middle name, but he said it fits with their sometimes underappreciated role in Berkeley’s populist left-wing politics in the 60’s and 70’s. “Their entire circle of friends in Berkeley was leftist," he said. “The sense I got was both her mother and her father were sort of socialist.” In the 1983 book by famed black studies professor CEDRIC ROBINSON, “Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition,” he listed Harris’ mother SHYAMALA GOPALAN among the friends who helped him, for instance. The new biography, published by HarperCollins India, is also evidence of how Harris remains an object of fascination in India as the first woman of South Asian descent to be vice president. “Indians tend to sort of embrace anything which is remotely Indian, with the kind of enthusiasm which is not shared by the subject themselves,” Rajghatta said. “Kamala herself is, after all, American. She’s born here. She in fact doesn't even call herself Indian American, her primary identity is Black.” Harris has had to navigate both identities her entire life and is now trying to do so on the national and international stage, as our own ANITA KUMAR previously reported. That balancing act is also clear in her office as she brought on both Black and South Asian staffers. And it will be evident again this week as her office is planning to participate in events for Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. The vice president’s office said they are planning for the celebration but declined to elaborate. Still, some of the navigation hasn’t been smooth.. One Indian American community leader told West Wing Playbook that they were dumbfounded when talking to a senior official in Harris’ office about the holiday and the official asked: “What’s Diwali?” Harris’ office declined to comment. PSA: If you’re watching the election results come in tonight, our fabulous political reporters are doing a live chat beginning at 7pm ET. Join them here. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you EDEN TESFAYE, staff assistant at the presidential personnel office? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. Or you can text/Signal Alex at 8183240098. | 
