Fact-check: Morphed image of Kamala Harris in traditional Tamilian attire goes viral

As Kamala Harris scripted history by becoming the first Asian-American, the first African-American and the first female Vice President of the United States, loud cheers reverberated from California to Tamil Nadu to celebrate her extraordinary victory.

Harris' lightning-fast political rise and her subsequent triumph mark a high point for women of colour in politics at an anxious time in American society. However, amidst all the celebrations, an image of Harris in a Madisar attire has surfaced on the Internet, filling a bunch of Indian social media users with a false sense of pride.

The claim

As soon as the Twitter users came across the said picture, they shared it fanatically in order to highlight Harris's Indian descent. In the image which has now gone viral, the 55-year-old can be seen wearing a blue sari in the traditional Madisar style.

The Madisar or Koshavam is a typical way in which Tamil Brahmin women wear the sari.

Below is a screenshot of one of many such posts:

The newly-elected US Vice President is of Indian-Tamil and Afro-Jamaican heritage as her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a cancer researcher from India and her father, Donald Harris, was an African Jamaican economics professor.

Her grandfather P V Gopalan was an Indian freedom-fighter, who became a civil servant and was assigned by the Indian government to help Zambia deal with its refugee problem in the late 1960s.

Fact-check

The picture that the number of netizens believed to be true is actually a morphed one. A Twitter user by the name Muralikrishnan Chinnadurai posted the original image to debunk the claims.

The face of the lady in the original picture has been swapped with Harris' to mislead people on social media.

Furthermore, a reverse image search showed that the actual picture has existed for a long time and has been used by several advertisers down south to promote the Madisar style.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the viral image of Harris in a blue sari is fake.

In the recently held US elections, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the country. Consequentially, Biden's running mate Harris will be taking over the second-highest office from current Vice President Mike Pence.