The newly elected U.S President Joe Biden had mentioned in his various speeches about a gentleman called Biden from Mumbai, had contacted him in late 1972 when he was an elected as a Senator.
The story as narrated by U.S President Joe Biden on several occasions is to describe his so-called Indian connection. During his first visit to India at the Bombay Stock Exchange, Mumbai, on July 24, 2013, as the Vice President of the US, he went on to recount his story of the ‘Biden from Mumbai.
The year was 1972 when Joe Biden was elected as one of the youngest US senators. He received a letter from Mumbai, and to his surprise, the sender was having the same last name as his.
The letter bore a name ‘Biden from Mumbai’, then known as Bombay, and the gentleman congratulated Biden on being elected as senator from the state of Delaware and notified him that they both were associated to each other.
The new U.S President Joe Biden was then 29 and was astonished to know more about the so-called Biden from Mumbai. But due to his active political life and family engagements, he was unable to follow up on the letter and get in touch with that ‘Biden’. His wish remained a wish. Even after five decades, he still wants to fulfil this wish.
Whenever the 77-year-old Joe Biden gets a chance, especially interacting with the Indian -American community and Indian Diaspora, he never fails to narrate the ‘Biden from Mumbai’ story.
He says, according to the gentleman in the letter it was mentioned that they both are connected although distantly. He further gave details about the same in his address in the event held at Bombay Stock Exchange, Mumbai, in 2013 on July 24. The letter spoke about how in the era of 1700s, their mutual, great, great, great, grandfather or something worked for the East India Trading Company and came to Mumbai.
He also joked about how this relationship makes him eligible for fighting election even in India. The audience of Mumbai burst into laughter hearing his sense of humour. It was at the above event that Joe Biden, a day after a journalist gave him the list of all Bidens residing in Mumbai.
U.S President Joe Biden again said in his address to the US India Business Council on September 21, 2015, “ The gentleman Biden from Mumbai also wrote about that their great great great grandfather arrived in Mumbai in 1848 as British Captain in the East India Tea Company, and believed to have married an Indian woman, this settling in India thereafter.
He went on saying that people there in Mumbai might have thought that he is making this up because he never followed or took any step find the Biden from Mumbai. But a reporter stood up and gave him the names of nearly five Bidens in Mumbai.
“So, show me more respect,” the present U.S President Joe Biden had then has clarified the Washington DC audience while contending his Indian connection.
In 2015, Biden further confessed to the audience that he may have in a way embarrassed the Bidens in Mumbai. According to U.S President Joe Biden, the real point in this story is that the world is very small and how this global economy is fitted for, the two largest democracies in the world.
The U.S President Joe Biden from the Democratic Party is yet to make a meeting with them even after that and regret the same.
