US Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s Nagpur connection
   Date :26-Aug-2020

Leslie Biden Joe Biden_1&
        Leslie Biden                                                                                 Joe Biden
 
 
 
By Shirish Borkar ;
 
Leslie Biden, one of Joe’s distant relatives, was from city 
 
SAME surnames play an important role in people’s lives across the world. Surnames represent a ubiquitous cultural attribute inherited from an individual’s ancestors. Predominantly, they are traditionally altered for girls post-wedding. Interestingly, two unknown persons with similar surnames evoke a great attraction with each other. Curiosity arises to know each other considering ethno-cultural relatedness, common co-ancestry or genetic relatedness. Most of them are eager to know whether they belong to the same clan. This exactly happened with the US Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden alias Joseph Robinette Biden Jr, who often says on public platforms that he had Bombay connection.
 
Joe became the youngest US Senator in 1972. At 29, his popularity spread far and wide. One of the first written communications he received after getting elected to the Senate was from Leslie Duncan Biden alias L D Biden of Nagpur. Leslie Biden, who was Master of Lodge Sundar Raza No 133 (under Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons of India) in 1963, wrote to Joe Biden congratulating him on his election. Curiosity drove Leslie to communicate with Joe just to know about the Bidens in the United States. The letter reached Joe Biden via Bombay. The envelope bore a postal stamp of GPO Bombay. Joe thought that Leslie was from Bombay. After almost nine years, Leslie received a reply from Joe. The letter dated April 30, 1981 was received by Leslie’s grandchildren. Leslie, who used to run Bharat Lodge & Hostel at Kale Bhavan in Mohan Nagar, passed away in 1983.
 
Though Leslie may have claimed to be Joe’s relative probably on the basis of the genealogy chart, his grandchildren never made any such claim as they seem to be totally unaware of it. Leslie’s family was the only Bidens in the country and had settled in Nagpur for more than five decades. Daryl Nazareth, a senior member of Masonic Lodge and family friend of ‘Bidens of Nagpur,’ informed that Leslie was an Anglo-Indian. His father was a photographer. Brother Arthur went to England after Indian Independence. Leslie married a woman from Goa and they had two sons and four daughters. Leslie’s four grandchildren are Rowena and Lesie, and their cousins Ian and Duncan. On his first visit to India as the 47th US Vice-President in 2013, Joe Biden delivered a speech at Bombay Stock Exchange and narrated Leslie Biden’s story.
 
Joe Biden had said that when he was elected for the first time on the Senate from Delaware, he came to know from Leslie that they were related. He always wanted to get more information from Leslie about the Bidens from India but it remained a wish because of his hectic political life. While interacting with Indian politicos and Indian-Americans, the septuagenarian former US Vice-President often says, “He too has an India connection though distant it might be. Our mutual great, great, great grandfather was a British Captain in British India Tea Company in 1848.” ‘Bidens of Nagpur’ do not have their genealogy chart. Does the US Presidential candidate Joe Biden have one remains a billion dollar question.