What next? No, really. I want to know. What next? First SRK announces he’s releasing a movie called My Name is Khan that has to do with issues of terrorism post-9/11. Then SRK gets detained by guards at Newark airport. Now, days after SRK wraps up a publicity tour in NYC, we hear that our friend is once again in the news? Life imitating art? Stranger things have happened.

Claims on behalf of authorities that naked body scanner images are immediately destroyed after passengers pass through new x-ray backscatter devices have been proven fraudulent after it was revealed that naked images of Indian film star Shahrukh Khan were printed out and circulated by airport staff at Heathrow in London.

When I saw the headline “U.S. Congressman asks Clinton to demote Rajiv Shah,” I thought that the USAID director had done something seriously wrong. Perhaps Shah had bungled the U.S. relief efforts in Haiti, sending too much rice but not enough beans. Or perhaps he had handed a reconstruction job to an Indian-American Contractor who doesn’t do any contracting. But no, nothing of that sort.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Detroit) is calling on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to demote the official coordinating relief efforts in Haiti, Dr. Rajiv Shah, for a lack of diversity on his staff. [Link]

In his letter to Clinton, Conyers wrote: “As you know, the 42 member Congressional Black Caucus met with Rajiv Shah, the Administrator of the U.S. AID yesterday to discuss the crisis in Haiti. I was alarmed and chagrined to learn that none of the approximately dozen staff he brought with him were African American. This is so serious an error in judgement that it warrants his immediate demotion to a subordinate position at AID. It is well known  that there has long been an under-representation of minorities in key positions within the State Department. I am confident this Administration will immediately begin addressing this problem.” [Source: The Hill]

Poor Shah. Perhaps someone had told him that he’d be appearing in front of the Congressional White Caucus. Perhaps he was under the mistaken belief that race doesn’t matter much in 2010, that he just has to surround himself with qualified people. Or perhaps he took his resemblance to Obama a little too seriously and forgot to speak with the right dialect.

There’s an amusing YouTube video going ‘round the Interwebz that I thought you mutineers might enjoy. It shows the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari addressing a crowd of supporters. In the middle of a speech about democracy he interrupts himself to shout “Shaddup” to the noisy crowd. As the blog CHUP put it, “maybe the President should consider being a little nicer to people, especially those who show up at his rallies.” Hmm, somebody’s momma didn’t teach him manners. My little cousins (who aren’t allowed to say the word) would be appalled. Or perhaps Zardari is just plain sick in the head? Either way, the clip makes for a good remix, don’t you think?

(h/t Anil)

Did anyone catch the speech of Massachusetts’ new Senator-elect, Republican Scott Brown last night? I just saw the video of his speech and I think I was as shocked as anyone when he veered off-script to pimp out, I mean talk about his two daughters. But it did sound awfully familiar. Hmm, could Brown be ‘browner’ than we all thought? Who among us hasn’t heard a desi parent laud the virtues of their single child on the marriage market?

Brown, during his jubilant acceptance speech on Tuesday night, did the right thing and paused to acknowledge his family.

“As always, I rely on Gail’s love and support, and that of our two lovely daughters. So I want to thank Ayla and Arianna for their help as well,” Brown said, turning to his wife, TV reporter Gail Huff, and their daughters, Ayla, 21 - a one-time “American Idol” finalist - and Arianna, 19.

But then Brown went horribly wrong, at least in the Dad department - adding that his daughters were both “available.”

“Just in case anyone who’s watching throughout the country, yes they’re both available,” Brown shouted. [Link.]

Over at Wonkette today they were asking a real brain teaser. Which one of these is not like the others?

Hey, they do it in every single Bollywood movie or Indian channel serial drama. Why not the official Louisiana Governor’s portrait too? As a comparison, here is his official portrait from the 109th Congress (also seen in the middle left photo). Over at The Root they are wondering if Harry Reid was right?

Research strongly suggests that white voters do favor lighter-skinned black candidates. Political scientist Nayda Terkildsen studied the effect of skin color on white voting preferences in her 1993 paper, “When White Voters Evaluate Black Candidates: The Processing Implications of Candidate Skin Color, Prejudice, and Self-Monitoring.” In an experimental study, she presented a random sample of adults descriptions of “one of three fictitious candidates running for governor.” Each candidate was described in identical terms with the only difference being an attached photograph of either “a white male, a light-complected black male, or a dark-complected black male.” Terkildsen found a statistically significant effect that “black candidates were penalized by white voters based on the candidate’s race, skin color, and individual levels of racial prejudice.”

Put another way, when presented with otherwise identical candidates, white voters generally preferred the white candidate to the black candidates and the lighter-skinned candidate to the darker-skinned candidate. (Terkildsen’s analysis only looked at white voters, but perhaps Reid’s remarks will encourage someone to study the effect of skin color on candidate preferences among blacks, Latinos and Asians, too.) [Link]

I bet you, as alluded to in the last sentence, that studies will show that African, Latino, and Asian voters will either conciously or subconciously vote for the lighter skinned candidate too. Like I said, all I have to do is turn on Zee TV to prove this. So I am not going to be overly critical of Jindal for the lighting guy he chose. I am however, going to bow my head in disappointment.

With news that the failed Nigerian underwear bomber was an actual real threat, the international community is rumbling in rapid reactions. My plans of going to South Asia this next month went awry when just a couple of weeks ago India suddenly changed their visa regulations; all people holding a tourist visa to India now need to wait two months before re-entry, leaving many tourists who use India as a home base to travel around South Asia in flux. The reasoning given? American Headley’s support in the Mumbai bombing. (FYI, rules changing daily on this, so keep updated if you will be traveling soon).

In addition to heightened visa security, the world is experiencing heightened airport security as well.

TSA is mandating that every individual flying into the U.S. from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening. The directive also increases the use of enhanced screening technologies and mandates threat-based and random screening for passengers on U.S. bound international flights.[tsa]

I haven’t had to travel on an airline yet but have been following tweets of my world traveling friends and it seems that there is no consistency to airport security. I am quickly reminded of how in the post 9/11 backlash racial profiling at airports were rampant and I needed to have a special phone call made each and every time I flew because I had the classic Muslim last name. It seems like the new TSA regulations are setting up racial profiling to be acceptable all over again.

According to information currently known about the new standards, all passengers traveling to the United States from 14 countries will be subject to heightened security screenings, including full-body pat-downs and luggage searches. These countries include Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

The new standards will undoubtedly lead to the targeting of passengers from Muslim-majority countries. Rather than developing more effective policies that focus on behavior, the new standards categorically target individuals for additional scrutiny based upon ethnicity, religion, and country of origin. Moreover, the measures promote existing misperceptions about these communities as threats to security and harm the U.S. government’s reputation, both domestically and abroad, towards ensuring civil rights and equality.[saalt]

At first there was Gov. Bobby Jindal from Louisiana. Then there was Nikki Haley from South Carolina. Now, there is a new contender in the Desi-Running-For-Governor category. Hansen Clarke from Michigan announced today that he is running for Governor in 2010.

State Sen. Hansen Clarke tossed his hat in the race for the Democratic nomination for governor Tuesday, only hours after Lt. Gov. John Cherry withdrew from the race, vowing “no more excuses and no more passing the buck.” The 52-year-old Detroit Democrat, [joins] an increasingly crowded primary field…[michiganmessenger]

Clarke served six years in the House before being elected twice to the Senate. A lawyer, he also ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Detroit. [chicagotribune]

I know what you are thinking. He’s 52?!?!? At least, that’s what everyone around me is saying. I like to think Desis age well. And yes, he is Desi. Bangladeshi, to be accurate.

Hansen Hashem Clarke… was first elected to the Michigan State Senate in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. He is son of Mozaffar Ali Hashem, a Bangladeshi, and Telma Ali, an US citizen. His father was born at Sridhara village of Beani Bazar upazila in Sylhet district. [newnation]

An only child, Hansen Clarke grew up in a working class neighborhood on Detroit’s lower east side. His father passed away when he was only eight years old and his mother supported the family with a job as a school crossing guard. Food stamps helped fill in the gaps. [michigansenate]

In 2007, Hansen went with the Bangladeshi American Public Affairs Committee (BAPAC) to Bangladesh. Here’s a video of him speaking to his father’s village on that trip and it seems like he’s trying to build a partnership with Bangladesh (though how much of it is campaign talk, who knows).

As we close out 2009 and head in to the holidays I wanted to provide a quick update on three desi candidates who have a shot at making big headlines in 2010. The first one is my cousin Manan Trivedi who is running in the PA-6th. He has quickly gone from a relatively unknown contender to a candidate that has lined up a string of endorsements, including from some figures who un-endorsed his opponent and switched to him:

It looks increasingly as if Democrats have a dogfight on their hands in suburban Philadelphia’s Sixth Congressional District.

Rep. Chris Carney (D., Pa.) announced yesterday that he was endorsing Manan Trivedi, a Reading doctor and veteran of the current Iraq war, in the primary. Carney is the first member of the state’s congressional delegation to back Trivedi.

Carney praised Trivedi’s “admirable dedication to service.”

Former Inquirer editorial writer Doug Pike declared his candidacy in April, hoping to cinch the nomination with personal wealth and a pile of endorsements. Since Trivedi entered the race in September, after leaving the Navy, the two have battled for support and cash. [Link]

I remember some pretty harsh comments from folks in my first thread about Trivedi. They claimed giving cash to someone with low name recognition just because they were desi was like throwing the money away. Manan has been proving that when you have good ideas and know how to communicate them, people will listen and shift their support to you, despite your low name recognition. Enough people have now heard his ideas and switched support to him that he has been gaining real momentum. South Asians for Obama just endoresed him as well. He is out almost every night speaking to folks in the community and fundraising. I spoke to him late last week and he told me that the donations to his campaign have made a difference but that the next two months will be critical as far as raising enough cash to remain competitive.

I have been struggling and failing to find an appropriate way to respond to Glenn Beck’s latest insanity. MediaMatters has the video and the almost unbelievable quotes, which about 1.2 billion people are likely to deem to be offensive and tasteless, from a recent Beck broadcast:

For those not able to stomach watching the actual video, the choice quotes are as follows:

And also, in our research that it took us, oh about 40 seconds, we figured out that some of that money here in America winds up in the pocket of a skilled doctor that helps off-set the 20 years of schooling that he endured and the loans he took out. And - you’re not going to believe this one, Karlyn - some of that money seems to go to the 1 million SEIU workers in the healthcare industry that make slightly more here than in India. Because, you know, they have an American lifestyle, maybe a couple of cars, great union benefits, and homes with something that we in America like to call flush toilets. (link)

Quite separately from the nasty slur about India in this quote, Beck’s logic completely escapes me. If anyone can actually make sense of what he is trying to say, I would be curious to hear it. I think this is an elaborate way of saying Americans shouldn’t do medical tourism in India, but rather pay premium rates for procedures not covered by insurance, because some of the money they might be giving a surgeon will somehow go to SEIU workers? (But what’s all this about loans and so on? Is he aware that Indian students bring millions upon millions of dollars into American higher education?)

But of course, the real stunner in this ‘bit’ from Beck is the following:

I don’t want a discounted doctor. I don’t want discounted wages. I don’t want any of this stuff. If I wanted to live in India, I’d live in India. I want not the Indian lifestyle, I want the American lifestyle. I’m sure, no offense to India, I’m sure it’s beautiful and everything. I’ve heard especially this time of year, especially by the - you know that one big river they have there that sounds like a disease? Come on, it does. I mean, if somebody said, ‘I’m sorry, you have a really bad case of Ganges,’ you’d want Cipro.” (link)

While the earlier rant directed at medical tourism, incoherent as it was, had some salience to the health care debate, this bit of assholery is just utterly gratuitous.

I’m looking forward to the day this guy falls back into obscurity. A few months ago, left-leaning activists launched a campaign to get Beck’s advertisers to pull back from his show. While they were successful, it hasn’t done anything to slow him down. Beck’s provocations are working: his rating continue to be high, no matter how many times he’s mocked by comedians and spat at by bloggers. It’s hard for me personally to get newly outraged when this guy has been, for months, comparing President Obama to Hitler and the like.

Still, the level of offense these statements could provoke in India itself, if the comments end up being covered in the Indian media (hint hint), could make things interesting for Beck. (Here’s a tip for any Indian journalists reading this: Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, also owns Star TV… Hmm…)

The biggest story in India this week appears to be the central government’s agreement to allow a new state to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh, called Telangana. The new state will include the tech-powerhouse city of Hyderabad, and will be predominantly Telugu-speaking. One news article I read put the estimated population of the new state at 35 million people.

Here is what the new state will look like

I have known of agitations for a separate Telangana state for awhile, though I must admit I do not know the history in depth, and would be glad to be enlightened by readers who know the region better than I do. However, Wikipedia does offer a few helpful background facts. First, the region that will become Telangana was, during British colonialism, part of the Princely State of Hyderabad, and was only formally merged into Andhra in 1956 — and even then, the merger was controversially imposed by the central government. The agitations for a separate state have been going on for at least 40 years; in 1969, 400 people were killed in agitations for a separate state of Telangana.

I had earlier thought that language was a factor in the demands for Telangana, but in fact language is not mentioned by supporters of this movement, since Telugu is spoken in the other half of Andhra as well. Rather, the focus seems to be on access to irrigation and economic opportunity (see this interview). Are there other factors that people know of?

The news has resulted in the mass resignation of Congress Party-allied MLAs in the other part of Andhra Pradesh, suggesting that the Central Government may not be able to easily sustain its promise to create Telangana without making lots of new promises to the other half of the state. That, or we might see one of those major regional political realignments in Indian politics that can cause seemingly strong governments to fall. (Incidentally, the BJP had promised to create a Telangana state when it was in power, but was unable to do so. However, during the BJP’s five years in power it did create three new states in northern India.)

The news is also expected to give a new boost to other statehood agitation movements in other parts of India; Gorkhaland is one that is often mentioned.

Do you support the creation of Telangana? Isn’t it possible that acceding to these statehood movements in India might lead to a further weakening of an already weak central government? Also, do you think these movements might feed a sense of monoculturalist ‘separateness’ that could make the region a less inviting place for people from different ethno-linguistic backgrounds who happen to live there?

Everyone (well every guy I know) seems to be talking about the Walden-esque profile of former TARP Czar Neel Kashkari in Sunday’s Washington Post. The article/profile is a thing to behold. More a short story than article really. It is difficult to ascertain whether the author is satirizing an Icarus-like fall from grace with her ridiculously over-the-top description of Kashkari’s self-exile into the woods, or whether she is being earnest. If the former, “bravo” I say. You have brilliantly portrayed our South Asian male, 30s-mid-life-crisis angst. If the latter, then…well, where to begin? The stubble would be a good place. A man’s stubble, more often than not, has a good story behind it:

He wears no coat though it’s freezing, shines no light though it’s near midnight, carries no shotgun though he’s tramping on the pine-needled tracks of black bears….

The moon hits his stubble, which is six days old. And the sweater he hasn’t changed in three or four days. His BlackBerry — he can’t kick it — rang once today. A year ago in D.C., it buzzed every few seconds. All night, he’d roll over to its bluish glow. His Treasury Department assistant slept with hers, powered up, on her pillow. [Link]

The article goes on to describe a young and gung-ho aerospace enginerd, who first goes into the heart of Wall Street, and then on to Oz (a.k.a. Washington D.C.) with his powerful mentor. They had me hooked at the aerospace enginerd part. Kashkari is a man we can all get behind. He is the everyman in a $700 billion story. But our hero begins to learn that Oz is nothing but a shimmering illusion and all the knives are soon drawn upon him:

Congress savaged him. Wall Street Journal editorials doubted him. His home-town buddies urged him to use the money to buy the Cleveland Browns and fire the coaches. His wife spoke to him so rarely, she described them as “dead to each other.” He lost sleep, gained weight and saw a close adviser, Don Hammond, suffer a heart attack at his Treasury desk. On May 1, after serving seven months under Presidents Bush and Obama, he resigned. [Link]

Sandhya wrote a post last year related to Bhopal last year, so perhaps it isn’t necessary to go through the particulars of a case that most people know about. Still, it seems important to acknowledge that today is 25 years to the day since the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal broke down, resulting in the release of massive amounts of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas, which killed about 30,000 people and injured thousands more (more than 500,000 people claimed damages). For those unfamiliar with the story, here is a detailed chronology of events.

As many people are aware, the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) was an American company. The plant was technically operated by its subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), which was 51% owned by UCC at the time of the disaster.

In one of the strangest, and most fateful, twists in the legal history of the Bhopal disaster, a U.S. District Court decided in May, 1986 that UCIL was an Indian company (“a separate entity, owned, managed and operated exclusively by Indian citizens in India”), and therefore any litigation regarding the Bhopal disaster should be done in India. The decision by the District Court was upheld on Appeal.

The transfer of legal authority — in effect, the U.S. justice system saying, “hey, this is not an American company, so it’s not our problem” — significantly weakened the damages that were likely to be rewarded. Indeed, the final damages, reached in an out of court settlement, was only $470 million. When all was said and done, that came out to $2,200 for each person killed, and about $500 for each person injured. Neither UCIL nor UCC ever had to acknowledge culpability, or take responsibility for cleaning up the still polluted site of the Union Carbide Plant. A Dow Chemicals executive later stated that the amount “is plenty good for an Indian.” Even with the conversion to Rupees, I can’t see how $500 is a significant help for a person who may be living with a debilitating injury, with children who are born, even years later, with serious congenital birth defects associated with (still) poisoned groundwater. It’s not “plenty good”; it’s laughable.

A commenter on Sandhya’s earlier thread mentioned the Sambhavna Clinic, which was built specifically to care for victims of the disaster. There is a “donate here” button; if you have a couple of bucks to spare, you might use it.

Finally, Suketu Mehta has a column up in the New York Times today. He does lament that Dow Chemicals hasn’t done anything to help clean up the site. But what he doesn’t mention is that the reason for that is that the U.S. justice system washed its hands of the mess in 1986, and the Indian Government, which is the only entity that today has any legal responsibility to do anything for anyone in Bhopal, meekly accepted it.

What are your thoughts today? Have you read anything insightful or enlightening with regards to the Bhopal disaster in recent days?

If you haven’t already, peep The Daily Show’s take on the White House Gate Crashers. (Jon Stewart regarding Michaele Salahi, “Is that lady fondling our vice president’s man boobs?”)

Andrew Sullivan has a blog post comparing the Indian and U.S. political situations today, citing an anonymous reader. The reader’s main point is that the current infighting within the U.S. Republican party might be seen as resembling the BJP’s own internal chaos in India:

Perhaps the Democrats can look to India for reasons to be optimistic. At this time, the BJP is in electoral ruins, aided by their rank and honest fundamentalism. They’ve been smashed by Congress for two elections in a row and the report on Ayodhya is about as damning as can be. In response, the hardcore base is working to eliminate anyone who can lead them out of the wilderness. Just as in the GOP, this is done in a pursuit of ideological purity. The only difference is the religion being espoused. (link)

This seems like a viable parallel for a minute, but only for a minute. First, the recent report on Ayodhya, which I blogged about recently, doesn’t seem politically significant; it’s more of a symbolic event. As the reader continues, the parallel starts to seem really shaky:

The RSS, which provides the ideological grounding of Hindu nationalism, as well as a significant section of the ground game, has forced Jaswant Singh out for the simple act of praising the founder of Pakistan. They’ve warned all other moderates to basically shut up and toe the party line. No one seems to remember that the BJP became nationally popular thanks to a pragmatic program of economic growth, reducing corruption, and downplaying Hindutva. Again, the moderates in the party are bemoaning these trends, and warn that divisive communalism may lead to short term electoral gain, but will ultimately lead to total marginalization. No one is listening.

I question the reader’s understanding of what happened during the 1990s. Yes, the Congress Party was widely seen as deeply corrupt and incompetent after the disastrous decades of the 1970s and 1980s. But as I understand history, the BJP actually gained quite a bit of popular momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s, specifically through communal rhetoric focused on issues such as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and Shahbano.

Update: I’m watching the news, right now. Fox 5 DC is reporting that Michaele was never a Redskins Cheerleader. The Secret Service visited the couple’s winery this morning, but the party-crashers were not there. The Salahis DID meet Obama via a receiving line, Tuesday night. The Secret Service owned their failure in a strongly-worded statement today; the news said that they are considering pressing charges.

::

Before it occurred, the State Dinner was all anyone could talk about, here in Washington, D.C. After? We’re still talking about it— and yes, contrary to what some SM commenters think, State Dinners are a big deal. I will admit that my perception is perhaps tainted; I don’t just live inside the Beltway, no, I am surrounded by the chattering class and bold-faced names because I live in Georgetown, home to many elected officials, the journalists who cover them, and the staffers who serve them. So here? The State Dinner Mattered, with a majuscule “M”.

Fashion mattered. Etiquette mattered. The food mattered. Most of all, the “rules” mattered, because following them was how we guaranteed a successful event. One rule which was broken, in what many here see as a daring move to differentiate the Obama administration from those which preceded it? Serving food from the same culture of the guest who was honored:

…the Obamas shook things up by serving, among other dishes, Indian food to an Indian delegation, typically a no-no.

“You wouldn’t try to outdo the Indians; that would not be typical,” said Anita McBride, who served as Laura Bush’s chief of staff and took pains to praise Mrs. Obama as moving in a new direction. “It’s the perfect combination of American food with a nod to the visiting country.” [nyt]

It wasn’t just American food, it was a personal statement by the first African-American president. They may have started with “elite” arugula, but they also served collard greens. Who better to strike such a delicate balance, and to take a considerable risk, than a world-class chef with a seriously cross-cultural back story?

They selected a guest chef, Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit in New York, an American citizen who was born in Ethiopia, reared in Sweden and cooks up melting pots of flavors and cuisines. [nyt]

While the culinary “rule” was broken without repercussions, a different, more serious bout of rule-breaking is what has my city (and the world, really) uttering a collective “WTF?” As almost all of you may know by now, two fame-loving, local “socialites” crashed the State Dinner.

We are now less than twelve months away from the next big election, the 2010 Midterm Elections. Another election? I know, I know. It feels a little too soon. But on November 2, 2010 elections will be held for at least 36 of the 100 seats for US Senate, all 435 seats for the US House of Representative, and a Governor’s race in 36 states.

This election is particularly significant because there are six South Asian candidates running for a seat in US Congress. To give a little context, the first person of Indian origin to hold a congressional seat was Dalip Singh Saund (D-CA) who served representing California from 1953-1967. the next one didn’t get elected until almost 50 years later. It was Bobby Jindal (R-LA), who served from 2004 - 2007, after which he got elected as Governor for Louisiana.

Here’s the congressional candidate run through: Raj Goyle (D-KS), Manan Trivedi, (D- PA), Ami Bera (D-CA), Ravi Sangisetty (D-LA), Reshma Sejauni (D- NY) and Surya Yalamanchili (I-OH). And they are all YOUNG, ranging in age from 27 to 40 yrs old.

Raj Goyle - Kansas, 4th Congressional District

Represents the 87th District of Kansas House of Representatives since 2007. Attorney and a lecturer at Wichita State University. (Past SM post here.)

Raj graduated from Duke University and then Harvard Law School where in addition to his legal studies, he founded a technology company with two classmates that taught him the importance of entrepreneurship.After law school, Raj clerked for a federal judge and then as an advocate for better schools, improved voting rights for the disabled, and as an expert on homeland security issues. [rajforkansas]

Dr. Amerish ‘Ami’ Bera - California, 3rd Congressional District

Physician and former chief medical officer of Sacramento County’s Primary Health Care system.

The core planks of my campaign are as follows - We must build a health care system that has a compassionate baseline that is available and accessible for every American. Second, we must rebuild our educational system to teach students to think and make sure it’s flexible enough to allow for many career paths, from trades, to technology, to college. Third, we must create an economy that rewards employment and creates career pathways that allow for a secure and sustainable future over a lifetime. And last, we must have an environmental and energy policy that builds for generations to come. [ssvms]

Reshma Saujani - New York, 14th Congressional District

Lawyer, community activist (and former SAAVY board member!)

She’s the daughter of immigrants who fled from violence in Uganda, and has degrees from Harvard and Yale. Saujani reportedly interned in the White House at the same time as Monica Lewinsky. By the age of 28, Saujani had established herself politically as an effective fund-raiser for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. At the time, she was quoted as saying, “I’ll be into active politics myself in a few years. I hope to become a Senator someday.” [nyobserver]

It has been a couple of weeks now since Republicans upset the Democrats in the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races. Both of these states went for Barack Obama in 2008. There were two simple explanations debated among the pundit class (although in politics the reality is never simple): 1) The incumbent in New Jersey and the democratic nominee in Virginia were exceptionally poor candidates. One (Corzine) was very unpopular and the other (Deeds) was just too unpolished a candidate. 2) Independents are very discontent with Obama and this is a sign that the country is turning toward Republicans and Republican ideals

A writer at the little-known Washington Examiner culled the polling data and has come up with another theory: it’s the Indian American voters swinging that is responsible:

As I drilled down in http://www.nj.com/politics/map/ the election results by city, borough and township, I saw that Christie carried Woodbridge Township by a 51%-42% margin and Edison Township by 49%-45% margin. These are the largest jurisdictions in the county, with about 100,000 people apiece, and Woodbridge was the political base of Jim McGreevey, who was elected governor in 2001 and resigned in 2004 after it was revealed that he had made his male lover head of the state homeland security department. Then I recalled that Middlesex County these days has an unusually large percentage of residents, 18%, who classify themselves to the Census Bureau as Asian. That’s one of the highest figures outside Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay area. And according to these figures from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey Edison township’s population is 36% “Asian only,” as compared to 49% “white only” and 7% Hispanic, while. Woodbridge township’s population is 19% “Asian only,” as compared to 66% “white only” and 15% Hispanics. The two township’s “black only” percentages are 10% and 9%. In other words, Asians are the largest and most visible minority in Edison and Woodbridge Townships—and are apparently largely of one source, Edison in 2000 had the highest percentage of Indian-ancestry residents, 18%, of any jurisdiction with more than 1,000 Indian-ancestry residents in the nation. Following it on the list were Iselin (part of Woodbridge Township), Plainsboro Township (in southern Middlesex County, adjacent to Princeton), Dayton (a part of South Brunswick Township in Middlesex County) and Avenel (part of Woodbridge Township).

What I think we are looking at is an upscale Indian cluster, around the pharmaceutical, scientific and technical firms in central New Jersey. These people appear to be upscale demographically; the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey reports that Middlesex County foreign-born residents (48% of whom are Asian, 26% Hispanic and 6% black) have a higher percentage of over-$75,000 earners than Middlesex County native-born residents, a higher percentage in management and professional occupations, a lower percentage of people in poverty, higher mean earnings, and nearly twice as high a percentage with graduate degrees and more likely to be in married couple families.

All this evidence strongly suggests that Republicans made gains and Democrats suffered significant losses among Asian, and specifically among Indian-American voters, in Middlesex County. This upscale group, ready enough to vote for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008, seems to have been repelled by New Jersey’s high taxes and big government under Jon Corzine. There should be some lessons here for Republicans generally—and for Democrats as well. [link]

If this is true then I blame Corzine for not showing up to the parade. The article also points out the following with regards to the Virginia race:

Plus, down in Virginia, Fairfax County, which is 16% “Asian only” and which like Middlesex County voted 60%-39% for Barack Obama, voted 51%-49% for Republican Governor-elect Bob McDonnell. McDonnell campaigned heavily in Fairfax’s immigrant communities and clearly made some inroads there. [link]

There is of course another, equally dramatic, conclusion one can make using the statistics cited by the author of this article. Maybe Asian American voters just didn’t show up to vote. It was an off-year election. Even if that is the case, it goes to show you just how important the South Asian American electorate is becoming in many parts of the country. By NOT showing up to vote our community can swing the outcome of an election.

As one commenter pointed out yesterday, despite getting invited to the Democratic National Convention, Sepia Mutiny was NOT invited to the State Dinner last night. We are human here in the bunker. We hurt and feel slightly slighted. I think I should have have been invited so that I did not have to suffer the indignity of spending hours at Stubhub.com…just hoping in vain. As I alluded to in my post yesterday, an invitation to a state dinner is a big deal. So is not getting an invite. This is especially true if you are widely seen as the current elder statesman of Democratic Indian American Politics. A source tells me that Kumar Barve feels like he got hit by a bus (or thrown under it).

First elected in 1990, and re-elected three times—in 1994,1998, and 2002, Delegate Kumar P. Barve, age 48, is the Majority Leader in Maryland’s state legislature and is the longest-serving elected official of Indian origin. He represents a district with a population of 110,000 in Montgomery County, Maryland. He is known for his self-effacing sense of humor, and deep commitment to his community. [link]

It can’t simply be because he was a Hillary Clinton supporter. Other D-Punjab friends were invited. [update: Reader Subodh Chandra corrects me: Barve endorsed Obama. However, he was close with Clinton and also part of Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council. It seems highly unlikely that the omission of Barve was a mere oversight. Given his endorsement of Obama, the mystery deepens.]

This post is mostly targeted at our hard-core political junkie readers/insiders. What do you think is going on here? Anonymous tips to me are welcome: abhi [at] sepiamutiny.com

I cannot claim credit for the eye-rollingly bad title. It appears that this is the media’s favorite play on words for this occasion. They really get a [spicy] kick out of their cleverness. The Beltway is all atwitter today in preparation for the state dinner in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit. Many have quipped, and I agree, that it looks like a big Indian wedding tent has been built on the White House lawn. Like out of Monsoon Wedding:

The Chef: Marcus Samuelsson of NYC’s Aquavit

The Menu: Top Secret…for now. Samuelsson reportedly did not create the menu, he is just cooking it. Manmohan is vegetarian though so expect there to be several vegetarian offerings. You can follow the latest on the menu @ObamaFoodorama

The Guest List: ~400 titans of the Beltway and Hollywood, including Oprah, AR Rahman, Bobby Jindal, Nancy Pelosi, HRC sans WJC, and…Deepak Chopra. Thus far no sign of Rajan Zed on the invite list. God I hope not. And what about Padma Lakshmi. Who, if not her, will opine on the quality of the food? Er, as long as there are no hamburgers on the menu, I mean.

So what is a state dinner all about anyways? Ken Adelman at WaPo explains:

State dinners are less “symbolic signaling” than “political greasing.” Sure, they indicate who is important - those invited are on the A-List of Washington’s socialite “plum book” - and what is important - cellist Pablo Casals for the Kennedys and Country & Western music for the Bushes.

Beyond that, however, relationships are heightened and debts are deepened by State Dinner invitations. That’s more critical, since personal relationships are central to achieving results in politics, as in most endeavors of life. House Speaker Sam Rayburn once quipped that anyone who couldn’t size up another person in five minutes “doesn’t belong in my profession.” That clueless fellow probably doesn’t belong in many other professions, either. [link]

Politico.com has a convenient live feed set up for those that want to follow.

Over the weekend Gawker drew attention to this Craigslist posting:

I’m working on a memoir, set in 1983, when I lived with Obama for a year.

The memoir is about my life and about what New York was like in 1983, and how we lived then, but Barack is obviously a player in the story. This is not a tell-all, it’s a friendly, gentle and literate book.

I work full time in a highly visible career and would like to work with a research assistant to help me stay focused.

This is you:

You live in Manhattan and can visit the Village frequently.
Your living situation is stable, as is your personal life.
Your income is stable.
You can work with a six month window. (ok, maybe a year. it depends.)
You are a fantastic and empathetic listener.
You’re creative and imaginative and a fine writer. You can shape material.
You don’t drink or use drugs. No psychological disorders I have to deal with.
You are in a graduate writing program at NYU or Columbia.
You want an opportunity to work on a visible book.
You are dependable, timely, punctual and highly motivated to succeed.

This is an internship, not a paid position.

I have already begun, finally, this week, after thinking about it for a the last year. Now is the time. My agent is waiting on the first 100 pages. Let’s go. [Link]

When I saw this post my first thought was, “is it Sohale Siddiqi?” How interesting would that book be? More importantly, would it be a better seller than “Going Rogue?” Anyone else have any guesses based on the time-frame in the ad and what you’ve read in Obama’s autobiographies? Even if this turns out not to be Siddiqi, I think at least one of his former desi roommates should write a book!

Remember last month when I blogged about how President Obama signed the executive order to reinstate the Asian American and Pacific Islander Advisory Commission and White House Initiative? You know, when Penn Masala sang at the White House?

Well, Kiran Ahuja has just been named Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

This federal-wide effort was first established in June of 1999 by President Bill Clinton… The office will be housed in the U.S. Department of Education and include a Federal Interagency Working Group (IWG) co-chaired by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke.

Kiran has a rich history of leadership in government, public policy and AAPI communty advocacy. Most notably, she was the Founding Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF). [aapimomentum]

I first met Kiran when we were both sitting together on a panel after the 2004 elections. She was sincere and genuine, her personality reflecting a precision and knowledge reflecting a strategic firmness. I have no doubt that she will be the new voice of change needed to truly shift the political paradigm inside the beltway, with regards to how our AAPI communities are organized.

For almost twenty years, Kiran Ahuja has dedicated herself to improving the lives of women of color in the U.S. Well-known as a leader among national and grassroots Asian and Pacific Islander and women’s rights organizations, Kiran served as the founding Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum from 2003-2008….Kiran grew up in Savannah, Georgia, where her understanding of race, gender and ethnicity was formed as a young Indian immigrant. She attended Spelman College and worked for Georgia’s first African American Congresswoman since the Reconstruction.[aapimomentum]>

Congratulations Kiran! We look forward to what you bring!

I suspect I’m about to set a personal record for question marks used in an SM post.

As a South Asian-American and diasporic blog, SM has hosted numerous conversations about Sri Lanka and related communities. I’ve been involved in many of those conversations—first as a lurker, then as a commenter, and finally, as a writer, journalist, and blogger. No matter my role, it seems that the bigger the Internet gets, the scarier it is for people to talk about Sri Lankan/diasporic politics (or any polarized issue). Off- and online, as like finds like and people reinforce their own beliefs, entrenched polarization makes it hard to listen, hard to talk, hard to *stay *for the very real pain on multiple sides. Sometimes it’s easier to check out. And people do. But don’t we deserve better than that? Is it possible that there might be a little… nuance? What’s a person in the middle to do?

Well, here’s my attempt: I’m one of several individuals behind a new multi-ethnic Sri Lankan diaspora group called Lanka Solidarity.

On November 4th, the movie Vincent Who? will be making it’s Los Angeles premiere. This documentary was developed and produced by the folks over at Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, and if you are in Southern California I highly recommend that you come.

Over 25 years ago, the hate crime murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit galvanized the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. This new 40-minute documentary, winner of the Media Award from the National Association for Multicultural Education, looks back at the movement that started from the case and asks how far we have come and how far we still need to go.[apap]

The story of Vincent Chin’s horrible murder is an important historical event marking how hate crime policies developed for the APIA community. The movie traces the event and how little is remembered about this landmark case. Chin’s story is one that as South Asian Americans, we can all relate to. Every few months it seems another story of a hateful crime against a South Asian comes through the Sepia Mutiny bunker. It feels repetitive to write stories about hijabs getting pulled, brass knuckle beatings, or the murder of 26 yr. old Satendar Singh for being in a park. But these are the stories occurring in our community that deserve to be told.

Today also marked another historical landmark for hate crimes. After ten years of opposition and delay, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

[The legislation makes] it a federal hate crime to assault people based on sexual orientation, gender and gender identity. The new measure expands the the scope of a 1968 law that applies to people attacked because of their race, religion or national origin. The U.S. Justice Department will have expanded authority to prosecute such crimes when local authorities don’t.[huffpost]

Yes, I know. I apologize for the very annoying title of this post. I am sure a lot of you saw this article making the rounds this morning. It is about South Asian donors (Indian Americans in this case) stepping-up to donate to the candidates they support around the country. My cousin was one beneficiary of such donations:

On the last day of the third quarter, Democrat Manan Trivedi hosted a fundraiser for friends and family — his extended network of “Uncles and Aunties” — that raised $10,000 in two hours at the Lantern Lodge, an Indian-American-owned restaurant and hotel in southeastern Pennsylvania.

As one of three higher-profile Indian-American candidates running for Congress next year, Trivedi estimates that 20 percent to 25 percent of the $127,500 he raised in the first three weeks of his campaign for Pennsylvania’s 6th district open seat came from his connections to the Indian-American community. And he said he’s only begun to tap into the affluent ethnic network, which has recently become fertile fundraising ground. [Link]

Money from desis alone is never going to be enough, and it should never be the only place a candidate reaches out, but it sure as hell seems to make a difference. In this case it was the difference between being forced out of a race that had barely begun vs. the opportunity to gain momentum and endorsements after a strong initial fundraising total. The best example of the desi dollar coming close to enabling an upset was Ashwin Madia’s race last year in Minnesota:

After Iraq War Veteran Ashwin Madia (D) lost a competitive open-seat race in the 2008 cycle to now-Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.), it wasn’t clear when the next viable candidate would come along.

Madia raised about $2.4 million for his race. His fundraiser, Pandit, estimated that 25 percent to 30 percent of that money was from the Indian-American community.

Pandit said many Indian-Americans look to the Jewish community as their model for political activity.

“I think sort of emulating the Jewish community is what we’re doing right now,” Pandit said. “Our goal is where they are now, we’re aspiring to get where that community is. We don’t have the history of being in this country that a lot of Americans do.” [Link]

Twenty-five years ago (jeez…has it been that long?) many of our parents were up in arms over the portrayal of Hindus in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They talked on the phone to their friends ahout it, wrote letters of complaint, etc. Now, scenes from that film are regularly referenced in pop culture. Even a Jewish Seder dinner can be an occasion for a good “Kali Ma” joke:

And Manish asked me by email the other day (to paraphrase), “couldn’t they have picked someone less Temple-of-Doomish to invite to the White House Diwali ceremony?” Compare here.

It would definitely have been some sight if the Hindu Priest, Narayanachar Digalakote, had gone “Kali Ma” on Obama. Some probably expected it. Here is Fox News’ picture of the day from that day. Fox News viewers enjoy pictures of Obama bowing.

Remember when the large stimulus bill was passed earlier this year and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal came out against Obama? For a while he even made headlines by refusing to accept some of the stimulus money. What has happened to him since then? Whatever else you want to think about Jindal, he is undeniably intelligent. After Obama, he might be, intellectually speaking, among the smartest of elected officials in the country. Jindal knows when to hold and knows when to walk away. After the “Kenneth debacle” he smartly walked away from the limelight. Let Pawlenty and Palin and Huck go all Icarus. The shrewd ones like Jindal and Romney (and maybe even George Allen) will fly under the radar, biding their time (for the record, Huntsman is my 2016 dark horse).

Jindal knows that there is no way he has a shot in hell of being president in 2012 or even 2016 unless he has a record as a successful governor (cough cough…Sarah Palin). You know what you need to deliver to your people in order for them to consider you a successful governor? Healthcare reform. From his op-ed in WaPo last week:

A majority of so-called Republican strategists believe that health care is a Democratic issue. They are wrong; health care is an American issue, and the Republican Party has an opportunity to demonstrate that conservative principles work when applied to real-world problems…

Republicans must shift gears. Conservatives should seize the mantle of reform and lead. Conservatives either genuinely believe that conservative principles will work to solve real-world problems such as health care or they don’t. I believe they will. [Link]

The people of Louisiana want healthcare reform. They also want continued post-Katrina assistance. By cozying up to Obama he sacrifices some love from the Republican base for a whole lot more of everything else he needs to be successful as governor. But just who is playing who here?

The last day of a month is often a crucial milestone for a fledgling campaign, given that its when the party insiders count up the dough. I would like to use my cousin’s campaign as an illustrative example of what you need to do to break in to a race and then remain in it past the first cut (see previous SM entry on Trivedi campaign here).

Since entering his PA primary race against fellow Democrat Doug Pike, Manan has been trying to raise cash in order to have a respectable fundraising figure by the end of September cut-off. He entered the race late due to the fact that he was barred by law from running until his military service was complete. Since then however, he has picked up a major endorsement from Bob Roggio, the democratic candidate who lost in 2008. On October 1st a lot of local politicians and donors are going to look at the Roggio endorsement, look at Manan’s fundraising totals, and look at what kind of local reaction he has been generating through his policy ideas. After analyzing these three factors a bunch of donors may come off the fence and support him…or throw their support behind Pike. On the policy front Trivedi released a statement earlier today:

Have you been watching all the craziness surrounding the health care reform debate in Washington? The Senate Finance Committee just failed to pass the public option. There are too many lies and not enough reality. This is exactly why I need to get down there, why we need a physician’s voice in Congress. I will fight for a healthcare system that is more efficient, brings costs down and covers all Americans. And, I will not back down from ensuring that everyone has a choice of private insurance or a Medicare-like public health insurance option.

An overwhelming majority of physicians like myself support a public option because we deal with real family members who become sick with real illnesses. These cases aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet or a topic for discussion around a boardroom table. [Link]

On the money front, the campaign has raised over $35,000 the last time I heard. They believe a notable amount of it came from SM originating traffic. I am curious to learn if any SM readers are involved in this race (on either side) and if any have donated (to either side). Manan tells me they are working around the clock on a final fundraising push to make it into the next round. A little more cash may propel them into contention. If you would like to donate or volunteer for the campaign, particularly if you are passionate about healthcare reform, then you can visit Trivedi’s website to learn more.

UPDATE: Remember how I warned in my last post that you should beware anonymous comments singing the praises of a candidate? Pike’s campaign manager just got busted [for anonymous manipulation of blogs](http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/30/786774/-Community-Trust).

If you are involved in a campaign for another South Asian American candidate somewhere in the country, please share your experience with me via email (abhi [at] sepiamutiny.com). I would love to blog about it.

…So much so in fact that the Republican congressman from South Carolina yelled “lie” when President Obama made the following statement earlier tonight:

“There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally,” President Obama said. [Link]

Yelling at the President during a joint session of congress is pretty much unheard of. What is this the British Parliament? Even McCain condemned the outburst.

There is fiction and there is truth. Here is FactCheck.org’s take:

The bill is designed to exclude those immigrants, though some Republicans have called for more explicit bans on funding for illegal immigrants and have claimed the bill will funnel money to illegal immigrants.

FactCheck.org described those claims as “false” and noted that one version of the legislation already includes an explicit bar on federal funding for illegal immigrants’ health care. [Link]

Joe Wilson should be a familiar name to Indian Americans. He is the former co-chair of the House India Caucus. Here is an excerpt from a 2003 interview:

Q. One of the criticisms of the Caucus over the years has been that all members like to proudly declare how large the Caucus is whenever they attend some Indian American function, but when it comes to real tangibles, there are not more than a handful of members who are really committed and involved. Is this something you hope to change during your tenure in terms of resurrecting or to be more charitable, rejuvenating the Caucus?

A. It will be. In fact, on my election I had a number of members of Congress tell me that they wanted to become more involved. Over and over, I have had topnotch and very enthusiastic members of Congress tell me they want to become involved. We will be more active and again a reason that we are going to become more active is not just because of a change in leadership but because the Indian American population of the U.S. has become more active and better organized itself.

I have been waiting all summer to do this post and would have posted yesterday (right as the gag was lifted) if not for the fact that I was en-route back from a vacation. My cousin Manan officially hopped in to the race for U.S. Congress from the 6th district of Pennsylvania as a Democratic candidate. This district stretches from the northwest suburbs of Philadelphia into Mennonite country toward the middle of the state where Manan grew up (Fleetwood, Pa). The incumbent here is Republican Jim Gerlach, but he is set to vacate the office at the end of this term to run for Governor. Thus, it is an open seat that the DCCC really really wants in a district that leaned Obama in 2008.

This is a new kind of political post for me here on SM because it’s the first time I have “skin in the game” with regards to a candidate I am writing about. What I can tell you about Manan is that he regularly reads Sepia Mutiny and sends me tips all the time on various political stories. While practicing medicine at UCLA he also took policy classes with our blogger Taz and he earned a Mater’s degree in Public Policy. He is pretty much a health care policy wonk that just finished a stint with the Surgeon General of the Navy’s Office. Oh, he is also a medical doctor and a Marine Devil Doc that served on one of the first ground units to enter into Iraq in 2003. He treated (on both sides) a lot of the worst kinds of injuries that you might expect to see when you are on one of the first units in to a war. Manan received the Combat Action Ribbon and his unit also received the Presidential Unit Citation.

“I was raised in this district by working-class parents and experienced what many families are going through now with the loss of their jobs and their pensions. But I also learned the importance of serving others and working hard for things that matter. These principles have guided my career, from the battlefield to the emergency room,” said Trivedi.

“I am now prepared to serve my community in a new capacity: in the halls of Congress. We have some big challenges facing our nation. Our health care system is broken, we’re engaged in two wars, and our economy continues to struggle. I know how to get things done under extremely difficult situations, and my direct experience with these challenges will give the working families in my district a strong and credible voice in Washington,” Trivedi concluded. [Link]

Fame just isn’t what it used to be. On Friday, New Jersey Police stopped Bob Dhillon Dylan for suspicious activities, i.e. walking around in a minority neighborhood in the rain and looking at a house for sale, and refused to let him go until he produced identification.

Then today, as Phillygrrl reported, SRK was detained at Newark. But at least he got privileged treatment, they let him make a phone call after an hour, and the Indian government was able to step in. (This isn’t going to help suppress rumors that it was all a publicity stunt for his film)

But what happens to people who aren’t famous? Let’s say they’re Muslim, Brown, Pakistani and working for the US government? Then it seems you can be detained and not even the government agency you’re working for can get you out:

Rahman Bunairee is a Pakistani journalist who works as a contract reporter for VOA’s Deewa Radio and for a privately-owned Pakistani television station. The 33-year-old planned to join VOA [Voice of America] in Washington for one year, and arrived at Dulles Airport on Sunday with a visa issued by the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. It is not clear why he was detained and why he is still being held in U.S. custody… The journalist, whose home was destroyed by the Taliban last month, was taken into custody on Sunday. [link]

Does incumbent NJ Governor John Corzine have a lock on the state’s “desi vote?” Well apparently he didn’t take the time to build a float and enter it into the Indian Independence Day Parade in NJ over the weekend (but instead sent U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone in his stead). His opponent, the slightly-ahead-in-the-polls Chris Christie did enter a float (although Rose Parade this was not):

The presence of GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie’s float at the Indian Independence Day Parade on Sunday came as a broadside to Democrats who didn’t field a rival “Corzine” four-wheeler in what is generally a Democratic Party safe zone.

As reported over the weekend on PolitickerNJ.com, Sheriff Kim Guadagno, the Republican lieutenant governor candidate, stood front and center behind the parade’s main banner before going back and climbing aboard Christie’s campaign mobile, where she and her sons waved to the crowd.

A 19th District candidate float commanded by Peter Kothari likewise contributed to a sense of GOP dominance. [Link]

You know who wasn’t happy about this float? New Jersey Assemblyman Upendra Chevy-Cola Chivukula:

“Perhaps the presence of the GOP Lt. Gov. Candidate Kim Guadagno caused a media buzz because it is rare to see Republican top brass at Indian-American events,” Chivukula said. “There was a very strong presence of Democrats at the Indian Independence Parade as a demonstration of our party’s long-standing commitment to diversity, not one that surfaces only at election time.

“As the only South Asian lawmaker in the New Jersey General Assembly, I say this with conviction and from experience.” [Link]

Hottest rumor of the day (passed to me from co-blogger Anna)? Twenty-nine year-old Jay Goyal is being considered by Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio for the soon-to-be-open Lt. Governor position. I blogged about Jay just last month, speculating he’d make a run for Congress. This wouldn’t be a bad gig either. Strickland is reportedly looking for “someone with considerable youth and a like-mindedness on issues.” From Ohio Daily:

OhioDaily has learned that Governor Ted Strickland’s search for a Lt. Governor may be nearing completion and his short list includes at least two members of the House leadership team : Mansfield-area Representative Jay Goyal, and Toledo-area Representative Matt Szollosi. Goyal is the House Majority Whip and Szollosi serves as the Speaker Pro Tempore.

In 2006, Goyal became the first Asian-American elected to the Ohio Legislature, and at his current age of 29 would likely become one of the youngest (if not the youngest) Lt. Governors in the country. In addition to serving as Majority Whip, Goyal is Vice President of Goyal Industries, a manufacturing firm in Mansfield specializing in metal fabrication and transportation equipment. His full bio appears on his campaign website here, but it doesn’t mention that Bibi Magazine, “the largest-circulated South Asian fashion magazine in the country,” named Goyal as one of the Bibi Sexy 7 : the 2007 Sexiest Men of the Year. [Link]

“I had Pakistani roommates in college who were very close friends of mine. I went to visit them when I was still in college; was in Karachi and went to Hyderabad. Their mothers taught me to cook,” said Mr Obama.

“What can you cook?”

“Oh, keema … daal … You name it, I can cook it. And so I have a great affinity for Pakistani culture and the great Urdu poets.

According to Dawn, it was the “first-ever one-on-one interview by any US president to the Pakistani media.” One lobbyist takes credit for making it happen.

Kal Penn e-mailed me this week. That’s right. THE Kal Penn. When I went to check my personal gmail account two days ago there was an e-mail from “Kalpen S. Modi” sitting in my inbox. I gotta admit. I got slightly Desi girl giddy.

Dear Friend [he called me friend!],

Last month, President Obama unveiled United We Serve, an extended call to service challenging all Americans to help lay a new foundation for growth in this country by engaging in sustained, meaningful community service.

To encourage participation in service this summer and beyond, the Serve.gov website features a volunteer matching platform called All For Good that allows people to search for volunteer opportunities based on location and interests … The Administration is seeking to further engage the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and amplify outreach efforts in the cause of volunteerism.

Kalpen Modi, Associate Director, White House Office of Public Engagement

I shortened the letter a bit, and as you may have guessed, it was a mass e-mail Kalpen sent. Not a personal one to me. All the same, the e-mail basically told me two things.

1. Kalpen Modi is now officially working in the White House.
2. Kalpen Modi might actually be doing some real work for the AAPI community. How could I tell? On Thursday’s conference call presenting the campaign to community leaders, Modi hosted it. Quite professionally. And nary a pot reference.

As I blogged about a couple of days ago, the Republican party sees the health care health insurance debate as “Obama’s Waterloo.” They intend to break him. As part of that campaign they have been circulating the following flyer which they title, “House Democrats’ Health Plan.” The purpose is to try and communicate that the Democrats’ plan is a hot mess that will be the end of the world. Scary things like “IRS” are prominently highlighted. It is by no means the Republicans alone that put out unhelpful propaganda like this, but this example is a particularly disgusting commentary on how far our political discourse has sunk:

Click for higher res image

My eagle-eyed friend Ankur, a physician, spotted that the icon of the doctor in the bottom right corner looks like a desi woman. She does to me too (but it makes no difference even if she is Hispanic for the following point). Now take a look at the yellow box with the arrow feeding in to the doctor. It reads “Cultural and Linguistic Competence Training.” This training is important because it allows doctors to better serve under-served minorities. However, the implication here is flipped. The woman is a minority so a mere glance would imply that the Democrats’ health care plan would use taxpayer dollars to teach language skills to foreign doctors. Or cultural skills maybe? The entire poster is a menu of scare tactics but this one is particularly ill-conceived. I wonder if AAPI has any opinion about this.

In the new issue of World Affair’s Journal Scott McConnell, co-founder and editor-at-large of The American Conservative, pens an intriguing and provocative essay investigating the effects our increasingly multicultural society will have on the future of U.S. Foreign policy. In particular, he cites the growing influence of the Mexican-, Asian-, and Arab-American communities, as well as the unforseen and lasting effects of the 1965 Immigration Act in reshaping our “nation’s identity.” A new identity is emerging that is taking us away from the messianic and interventionist view our nation had adopted for the past 70 years:

… the backers of the 1965 act did not imagine huge demographic changes: there would be, they claimed, some modest increase in the number of Greek and Italian immigrants but not much else. The sheer inaccuracy of this prediction was already apparent by the early 1970s. The 1965 Act allowed entry of immigrants from any country, so long as they possessed certain job skills or family members living here or had been granted refugee status themselves.

The family reunification provision soon became the vital engine of immigrant selection. By the 1980s, it had greatly increased numbers of Asians and of Hispanics—the latter mostly from Mexico. The European population of the country was now in relative decline—from 87 percent in 1970 to 66 percent in 2008. If immigration continues at present rates (and barring a long-term economic collapse, it is likely to), by 2040, Hispanics will make up a quarter of the American population. If that does not guarantee a somewhat different foreign policy, there is also the prospect of a substantial expansion of America’s once miniscule Muslim and Arab populations. [Link]

The author summarizes that at the beginning of the 20th century America was “hyphenated nation” and that our multi-polar society had the effect of tempering our foreign policy ambitions, especially when contemplating entry into a conflict. Even at the beginning, our founding fathers, most notably Washington, believed that America had a special destiny and that we would eventually populate the entire continent and run our experiment of freedom and democracy free from the baggage of past conflicts in the old world. That isolationist view was later fortified by the fact that immigrants coming to the U.S. from different European communities, with competing viewpoints, served to some degree as a system of checks and balances in the 19th century. Pearl Harbor had the effect of sweeping away differences between the views of different European-American groups and helped forge what the author refers to as a “national identity” (“national white identity” might be more appropriate).

…America’s intra-European divisions began to melt away quickly after Pearl Harbor, as military service became the defining generational event for American men born between 1914 and 1924. The mixed army squad of WASP, Italian, German, Jew, and Irish became a standard plot device for the popular World War II novel and film. The Cold War generated a further compatibility between ethnicity and foreign policy. East European immigrants and refugees emerged to speak for the silenced populations of a newly Stalinized Eastern Europe. Suddenly, all the major European-American groups were in sync. Italian-Americans mobilized for mass letter-writing campaigns to their parents and grandparents warning of the dangers of voting Communist. Greek-Americans naturally supported the Marshall Plan. [Link]

I have just been too busy this summer to write about my favorite topic: desis in politics. Politics waits for no man however, and there is much afoot. First, most have heard by now that the Republicans want to make healthcare reform “Obama’s Waterloo.” If that be the case who better to play the part of Gebhard von Blücher than the exiled Kenneth the Page Governor Bobby Jindal? The healthcare policy wonk is back baby:

“Governor Jindal has seen enough,” said Curt Anderson, a consultant for Jindal. “As a health-care policy expert, he strongly believes that the House Democrat[ic] plan would be a disaster for the long-term health of the American people, and the long-term health of the economy.”

That Jindal is adding his voice to the chorus of Republican critics of Democrats’ approach to President Obama’s chief policy priority — Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele will offer his own critique today at the National Press Club — is evidence that the youthful governor sees a role for himself in the national policy debate despite a rocky introduction to the country earlier this year.

Jindal, who is widely regarded as one of the rising stars within the Republican party, was chosen to deliver the party’s response to Obama’s February address to Congress. His performance was, to be charitable, weak and turned him — briefly — into fodder for the late night talk shows due to his resemblance to one Kenneth the Page. [Link]

If I was an angel on Jindal’s shoulder I would tell him to keep a low profile. There is no need to be the Republican casualty of the week this far in advance of ‘12. And speaking of Republican casualties, how is Nikki Randhawa-Haley surviving the Sanford debacle? Not so bad as far as the money goes. She is hanging in at a respectable third place:

U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett — The congressman from Oconee County raised $500,000 in the second quarter; cash on hand, $975,011.

State Rep. Nikki Haley — The Lexington state representative raised $204,000 in the second quarter and now has $193,555 cash on hand.

Attorney General Henry McMaster — McMaster, of Columbia, raised $232,490 in the second quarter after raising $300,000 in the first quarter. McMaster ended the quarter with $1.1 million in cash on hand. [Link]

Recent reports indicate that Barrett’s campaign (or those tangentially associated with it) may be using dirty tricks against Haley.

The Indian presence at yesterday’s Bastille Day events in Paris commemorated the sacrifices of Indian soldiers who fought and died in World War I and symbolized the current economic, military and political ties between the two nations. But the images of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as chief guest and the Indian troops who marched in the annual military parade, including a group pictured to the right led by a Sikh officer, also brought to mind the French law that continues to keep Sikhs out of public schools and prevents them from getting drivers licenses or serving in the military or public office.

Overlooked back in 2004 when France enacted the so-called French headscarf ban forbidding any conspicuous religious symbols in state schools or government offices, the tiny Sikh community of France has been fighting the law in and out of the courts since then (previous SM coverage).

…Maria.

As soon as word of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s adulterous affair with an Argentinian mystery woman hit the streets, Indian American gubernatorial candidate Nikki Randhawa-Haley pulled any association with him off of her website. Sanford who? Never heard of him. Did you check under the bus?

Hmmm, just a week ago some were intimating how close a professional relationship the two had:

Since there’s no question who S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford is backing for governor 2010, the only real suspense left is this: at what point does First Lady Jenny Sanford start getting jealous?

Seriously, Sanford’s abiding affection for third-term Lexington Representative Nikki Haley continues to manifest itself, as the governor blasted out an e-mail to several thousand of his closest friends this morning telling them Haley was “worth getting to know.” [Link]

Our party is in free fall. How do we attract more minorities to the conservative movement? I have a brilliant idea!

There was a lot of hype this week about President Obama’s address to the “Muslim world” that he delivered some time Thursday early morning in Cairo. I looked upon this delivery with skepticism - as a Muslim in America, to me the Muslim world is here, not there. Being Muslim is a faith, not a region. As if reading my mind, The White House released the following video.

One of the questions that I did have about President Obama in regards to the Muslim community was how there was a lack of representation in his administration. We all know Israeli army serving Rahm Emanuel is his Chief of Staff, and with that appointment, it was pretty clear that the Palestine-Israeli conflict was not going to be resolved for the next four years. What we see in the video is three prominent Muslims (two of them Desi) serving in the White House administration, yet, it still seems to me that their positions are not high profile enough to influence international and domestic policy.

I’m not totally bashing on the President for his Muslim politics. In fact, Obama’s speech today does take a surprising amount of ownership over the power the United States has inflicted on the “Muslim world.”

We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world – tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam. [newyorktimes]

Australia is a country with strong cultural pressures to conform; Aussies are rewarded for fitting in rather than standing out in all areas except for athletics. It’s known as the tall poppy syndrome, as in the tall poppy gets mowed down. In the USA, there’s a different saying, one about squeaky wheels, and I’m glad to say that desis in Australia seem to be following the American model.

This weekend, at least 2,000 Indians protested in Melbourne, blocking traffic on a busy street for almost 20 hours to protest the large number of crimes and assaults against Indians in the last year and the lack of police interest or response. The demonstrations started at Royal Melbourne Hospital where Sravan Kumar Theerthala was lying comotose after having been stabbed with a screwdriver at a party.

Latest available police figures say 1,447 people of Indian origin were robbed or assaulted in Victoria state in 2007-2008, although students from the country say they have risen since then. Many of the most serious cases occurred in the western suburbs of the state capital Melbourne, where police estimate Indians account for about 30 percent of all robbery and assault victims. [link]

Police have denied any racial motivation, saying the students were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They have said the crimes were “opportunistic”, with Indian students seen as “soft targets”. [link]

In addition to the protests in Melbourne, there was a strong diplomatic response. Manmohan Singh has called the Australian PM, and the Indian and Australian Foreign Ministers are holding talks on the matter. The diplomatic engagement was accompanied by a vigorous thapad by BigB who turned down a honorary doctorate offered by the Queensland University of Technology, saying “Under the prevailing circumstances I find it inappropriate at this juncture, to accept this decoration.”

Sri Lanka last night scored a major propaganda coup when the UN human rights council praised its victory over the Tamil Tigers and refused calls to investigate allegations of war crimes by both sides in the final chapter of a bloody 25-year conflict. In a shock move, which dismayed western nations critical of Sri Lanka's approach, the island's diplomats succeeded in lobbying enough of its south Asian allies to pass a resolution describing the conflict as a "domestic matter that doesn't warrant outside interference".

So not fun. This post may strike you as a strange way for the ethnomusicologist to start her stint as a guest blogger here, but bear with me. Given the news this week, this question has been on my mind, and I need to get it off my chest before I start blogging about all the other things dear to my heart—- music, movies, food, art, driving my parents crazy with my music major, and living at 6200+ ft above sea level in a pristine Alpine desert climate. Rest assured, there’s time for all of that.

Over the past few months, I have noticed that many people (ok, I’ve especially noticed one) have used the term “genocide” to describe what has happened to the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka. The word is a strong one, evoking the most heinous acts that can be committed against humanity. Tamil civilians have indeed suffered in the civil war over the past two decades, but echoing Amardeep earlier this week, I’m uneasy with the term.

Maybe Democrats need to take a page out of the Republican playbook (via Asian Pacific Americans for Progress).

South Carolina State Representative Nikki Haley has just announced she’ll be running for Governor of the Palmetto State. Not only that, but as the preferred candidate of Republican Governor Mark Sanford, who is being term-limited out, Haley will have a lot of muscle behind her candidacy.[apap]

Looks like Nikki calls herself an an Indian-American, but there is little other reference to being Desi on her site.

Since becoming the first GOP Indian American in the nation to win a State House seat in 2004, Nikki has been named Chairman of the Freshman Caucus (2005), and Majority Whip (2006). In 2008, Nikki was re-elected by the largest margin of any state representative with a contested general election in South Carolina.

Born in Bamberg, S.C., Nikki graduated from Clemson University with a B.S. degree in accounting. Nikki currently serves on the board of directors for Mt. Horeb United Methodist Church Medmission. She is a member of the Lexington County Chamber of Commerce, Lexington Rotary Club, National Association of Women Business Owners, West Metro Republican Women, Lexington County Republican Party and the NRA.[nikkihaley]

First Bobby Jindal and now Nikki Haley. I’m surprised that not only is it the Republican party that is supporting South Asians into Governorship, but that they are in South Carolina and Louisiana. These are hardly states where I would imagine people of color gaining popular votes into leadership roles. I’m not sure what her chances are, but I have to say it is good to see a Desi woman vying for political power, even if she’s an NRA member. Question is, when will the Democrats start supporting Desis vying for higher political power as well?

Last week Burlington Rep. Kesha Ram (D) completed her first session in Vermont’s legislature. At 22 she’s the youngest member of the House and a recent graduate of the University of Vermont where she was student body president. When the state legislature is in recess she teaches preschool. A Los Angeles native with a father from India and a Jewish mother, Ram is the only person of color in the House.

You may have seen MTV’s Kesha Ram Rocks The House when she ran for office last year. Her campaign sought to energize young voters, who in the 18-25 age range make up 50 percent of her district’s voters. Progressive opponents attacked her choice to run as a Democrat, arguing that it would hamper her ability to speak for her constituents.

Update: I just noticed this interview with Kesha Ram over at Wiretap Magazine, Young and Elected: Kesha Ram.

A few weeks ago, when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in town, it was reported that he asked President Obama for his autograph…for his daughter Amrit Singh who works for the ACLU (see our previous posts):

How big an international star is President Obama? Even other world leaders want his autograph.

When Obama met with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this afternoon, the soft-spoken leader noted that his daughter wanted his American counterpart to autograph something for her. [Politico]

Amrit is the ACLU lawyer that has been leading the suit to obtain yet-to-be-released pictures that reportedly show the abuse of terror suspects in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Obama administration reversed its stance that previously agreed to allow the release of these damning pictures. Now Obama says “I changed my mind.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which argued for the photos’ release, expressed outrage and said the decision “makes a mockery” of Obama’s campaign promise of transparency.

“It’s absolutely essential that these photos be released so the public can examine for itself the torture and abuse that was conducted in its name, and so that high-level officials who authorized or permitted that abuse can be held accountable,” ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said.

The human rights group Amnesty International said it was disappointed. [Link]

I realized five years ago, when the Congress Party came back into power after everyone had seemingly given them up for dead, that Indian politics is way too complicated to try and predict, especially from the outside.

Still, I wonder if readers have been coming across insightful articles or websites that explain what is happening in individual states or regions of the country, or analyze trends in a useful way. If so, could you put your recommendations in the comments below?

Here are two things I’ve read in the past day that I thought were interesting: the New York Times, on Narendra Modi, and Soutik Biswas, at the BBC, on why the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai is not likely to be a national election issue.

This time around, it seems impossible to read too much into what is happening on any given day. Nor does it seems necessary to pay all that much attention to the to and fro between the Congress Leaders, the BJP leaders, and third front leaders. It doesn’t seem particularly consequential in terms of how people vote. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing remotely similar to the glut of daily tracking polls we had in the U.S. with the elections last year, nor are there websites like 538.com, which synthesized all the polling data coming in. (Are there such polls and websites? Have I simply been missing them?)

It does seem clear that the steady, incremental shift from national to regional politics is continuing in the current election. On the one hand, that is bad, because it means that whatever government comes to power at the center will be inherently weak and coalition-based. On the other hand, that weakness at the center can also be a good thing in terms of maintaining overall stability — not always easy in a country with 1 billion people. Even if a far-right or far-left party comes into power next month, they will not be able to do anything too drastic for fear of losing coalition support.

Second, it seems like “Hindutva” has seemingly lost some of its force as a national issue. The BJP and its allies might still prevail, but they’re playing the “nationalism” card more than the communal card.

Third, caste politics seems to be more prevalent than ever. I find that to be one of the most depressing and deadening things about Indian politics.

Fourth, Varun Gandhi is Ram, Shashi Tharoor is on bail, and Sanjay Dutt’s daughter in New York is pissed at him.

Here are some excerpts related to Pakistan, from President Obama’s 100 day press conference last night:

QUESTION: Can you reassure the American people that, if necessary, America could secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and keep it from getting into the Taliban’s hands, or worst-case scenario, even al Qaeda’s hands?

MR. OBAMA: I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure, primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.

We’ve got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.

I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not because I think that they’re immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan; more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and don’t seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services, schools, health care, you know, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of people.

And so as a consequence, it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the — the loyalty of their people. So we need to help Pakistan help Pakistanis. And I think that there’s a recognition, increasingly, on the part of both the civilian government there and the army, that that is their biggest weakness.

On the military side, you’re starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally. And you’re starting to see the Pakistani military take much more seriously the armed threat from militant extremists. (link)

What do people think of this statement? I have a couple of thoughts below.

In his weekly internet address Obama announced today that he wanted to make cuts to all the departments in his government and streamline government spending. He also wants to “promote innovation.” Therefore, as one step, he has named Aneesh Chopra as his Chief Technology Officer (start at min 3:50 in the video below):

Aneesh is being pulled from Virginia, courtesy of Obama’s BFF Tim Kaine.

Aneesh Chopra is currently Virginia’s Fourth Secretary of Technology serving Governor Tim Kaine. In this capacity, he leads the Commonwealth’s strategy to effectively leverage technology in government reform, promotes Virginia’s innovation agenda, and fosters technology-related economic development with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship…

Secretary Chopra was awarded the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) 2007 State Leadership Advocacy Award, and was also recently named to Government Technology magazine’s Top 25 in their Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers issue, which recognizes the 25 individuals they believe help set the standard for using technology to improve government. [Link]

It’s election season again in India, and with an 80% reduction in Bollyflix released this year (a side effect of the finance crisis), the real action is in political ads. Recently, Congress bought the exclusive rights to play Jai Ho at its rallies for a whole year, much to the dismay of the BJP which objected that “Anyone should be able to use the song. ‘Jai Ho’ should not belong to any one; it belongs to the country.” [link]

Congress wasn’t just interested in playing the original song, it actually redid the whole thing, gutting the original and producing a muzaked easy-listening patriotic version for use in a political ad:

The BJP struck back with Bhay Ho, a dark tale of international terror:

Both of these clips hint at what a mainstream Indian studio would have done with Slumdog, assuming that they had been interested in the concept at all.

Shashwati recently sent me links to these dueling Israeli PSAs about military service that are set in South Asia and far more amusing than Zohan. (Why did I watch that? Why?)

The first clip uses shame to try to discourage draft evasion, the second restages the first but uses shame to encourage conscientious objection. The setting is a bunch of Israeli tourists in an “Indian” teahouse discussing what their military service was like to try to impress a generic shiksa (blond in the first clip and brunette in the second). Each clip starts the same - a waiter offers cha and this touches off reminiscences about how “in the army the entire unit would have shared just this much tea.” And it ends with the same moral, do the wrong thing and you’ll embarass yourself in front of the girl.

Too hard to find your name on the voting rolls? Do ‘American’ poll workers have a difficult time understanding how to spell your ethnic name? Time to change that name - or so Rep. Betty Brown suggests…

A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.” The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?” [chron]

Ohnoshedin’t. She’s not even suggesting that people take on easier to pronounce nicknames, but legally changing names to make it easier for immigrant Americans to have access to voting. For realz?

Watch Ramey Ko duke it out with Ms. Brown in the above video.

One of the mistakes of some coverage of extremist movements in different parts of the world is the presumption that ideologies are simply generated and transmitted in a vacuum: those people are just crazy, and you can’t change them. In fact, with the consolidation of Nazi Power in Germany after 1933, and, more recently, with the events leading up to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 (see this), the specific medium through which extremists propagated their ideas — namely, the radio — mattered a great deal.

Radio also figures keenly today in some of the most unstable regions of Pakistan, an issue explored in depth in a story in this month’s issue of Himal Southasian, “Mullah Radio.” In some regions of Pakistan, including the Swat Valley and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), militant Islamists have been particularly effective in spreading their message via FM radio. One key figure is a guy named Maulana Fazlullah:

[Maulana] Fazlullah set up an illegal FM radio station, known as Fazlullah FM, broadcasting on 92 megahertz. The technology to do so was not only quite affordable, costing as little as PKR 15,000 (less than USD 200); it was also completely portable, thus allowing its owners to easily outpace the authorities’ attempts to shut them down. Despite the broadcast’s relatively small coverage area (it was at first unable even to reach the rim of the Swat Valley), Fazlullah’s nightly tirades against the Americans and then-President Pervez Musharraf quickly earned him a degree of fame among the locals, who dubbed him the ‘Radio Mullah’. (link)

The particular ins and outs of Radio Fazlullah are also worth attending to:

Earlier today in my Google News feed, I was surprised to note a story in the Indian news about Shashi Tharoor’s campaign for a Lok Sabha seat in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Tharoor, whom we’ve written about relatively often at Sepia Mutiny, was until 2007 the Under-Secretary General of the United Nations. He is currently 53, which makes him practically a baby in Indian Political Years; he could certainly have a significant political career ahead of him in India if things work out. The nation-wide Parliamentary elections start in India next month.

Tharoor is running as a Congress Party/UPA member. He has started a bilingual website to articulate his campaign platform. Here is his recent announcement at the Huffington Post, explaining roughly what he’s trying to do:

On Thursday night, 19 March 2009, the Indian National Congress party announced my nomination as its candidate for the Lok Sabha (the Lower House of Parliament) at the forthcoming General Elections. I will contest from the capital of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram (known more familiarly as Trivandrum).

It’s a huge turn in my life and involves a further “reboot” two years after leaving the UN. The seat is currently held by the Communist Party of India, which has nominated its general secretary. There are also candidates from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a former Congress Member of Parliament, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as well an independent candidate who has already outspent the rest of us and whose posters have been plastered across the city. Rumours are circulating of a sixth possible entrant into the fray. Psephologists would have about as much accuracy as astrologers in predicting the outcome of such a complex contest.

Thiruvananthapuram is only about 40% urban - the rest of the constituency, stretching to the southernmost tip of the country, is rural, and includes a large coastal community dependent largely upon fishing. As I embark on this voyage, every cliché about sailing into uncharted waters and choppy seas applies to me. (link)

There’s a fascinating set of Hindu Nationalist Greeting Cards from the 1990s over at Tasveer Ghar, with an accompanying essay. All of the cards were made for New Years, and intended to be used used on Diwali and Vikram Samvath. My favorite two are below.

The card on the left is a Diwali card celebrating the first Indian nuclear bomb explosion, and yes, that is a lingam in the center of the explosion.

The poem at the back of the card tells the reader that “Today, the nation’s sleeping pride has woken up …. Shiva’s third eye has opened, and the World-destroyer has woken. … The nation’s sleeping pride has woken up.” [link]

The card on the right depicts “Mother India calling her sons to fight against capitalism, Islam and Christian missionary activities” [link]:

The primary dangers represented in this New Year card are cultural domination (Westernisation); the alleged threat to Indianness from ‘alien’ religious practices of Christianity and Islam (conversion and separatism), and the politics of economic globalisation (capitalism as colonising practice) [link]

You can imagine what they must think of Bobby Jindal.

Last week, the Oklahoma House passed H.B. 1645 which states that you can’t cover your head in your driver’s license photo for any reason:

Hats, head scarves, head garments, bandanas, prescription … glasses … are strictly prohibited and shall not be worn by the licensee or cardholder when being photographed for a license or identification card.

It means that religious Sikhs, Jews, Muslims and others who wear religious head covering will have to choose between their faith and their ability to travel.

The legislation was proposed in a fit of pique, after the Oklahoma Department of Transportation reversed itself and allowed a young hijabi woman to have her license photo taken with her head scarf on and her face clearly visible, but without her hair showing.

Represenative Rex Duncan was so incensed by this that he took over a different bill, with a different purpose, and “hijacked it” to create requirements that the bureaucracy says it doesn’t need, that it will have to defend in court, and that don’t really make a lot of practical sense.

Why don’t I think the bill makes sense? Imagine that I actually did what the law wanted (which I wouldn’t, I would leave the state) and got my photo taken with a naked head. Do you think that a cop would find it easier to recognize me with my glasses and turban from a photograph of me with my hair down and my beard unfurled, man on the cross ishtyle? How about the TSA person at the gate at Tulsa airport?

The bill is also inconsistent. If the legislature seriously believes that hair is a critical part of identification, this is what they would have to do:

• Mandate no toupees or hairplugs or extensions — sorry, Represenative, but you have to go baldy now
• Mandate no changes to facial hair
• Mandate no changes in hair color or style — sorry Represenative, but your wife can’t color that grey out, and your daughter who had long brown hair can’t drive now that she has short pink hair unless she had the photo taken with the short pink hair, in which case you have to live with it from now on
• Mandate that any time somebody does change hair color or style they have to have their photo retaken
• Apply the bill retroactively, so that everybody whose appearance has changed at all since their photo was taken has to get a new ID

Can you imagine? The hairdresser’s lobby would kill that bill deader than a combover on a red carpet!

Here’s a petition in opposition to the bill. Right now, the bill is in limbo, since the Senate sponsor has backed down after talking to the transportation bureaucracy and finding out that they don’t actually want these changes. I’m hoping the pressure keeps it that way, and that they recognize that they will face opposition if they proceed with their hair-brained (sic) scheme.

I was hesitant when I heard 60 Minutes was doing an interview with Governor Bobby Jindal because frankly, I didn’t think I could take sixty minutes of the sing-songy voice we heard on Tuesday night. But Jindal’s segment is only 12 minutes long. So I watched. And was a little bit impressed. Don’t believe me? Here, watch for yourself.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m juxtaposing this clip with his speech earlier this week, but I actually kind of liked watching it. The segment shows him as an ethical, straight-edge, god-fearing, son-of-immigrants, birthed-his-third-child-himself family man. I think it was smart of him to do this interview so soon after the disastrous performance earlier this week, but I’m just not sure enough people watched it to nullify the effect.

It was interesting how Jindal and his wife tried to downplay the Indian factor when approached with questions of race. When asked if he felt any racial tension while being raised in Baton Rouge, he said he didn’t feel any and “they accept you based on who you are.” When asked about if his family maintained any Indian traditions, the couple responded, “Not too many. We’ve been here for so many years. We were raised as Americans.”

Personally, I think that maintaining Indian traditions is completely American and you should not have to marginalize one for the other. We are all Americans with a hyphenated back story. But I also think the question was poorly asked and I wonder if the couple would have responded differently if it was a Desi reporter asking the question with more nuance. I also wonder how much of what they say to media is political posturing verses what they feel about identity behind closed doors.

Overall, I think it was a decent bio-fluff interview with no real hard hitting questions from 60 Minutes. We didn’t learn too many new Jindal facts, though Manish listed some here. But I think what this interview did for me was remind me that there’s a brown* guy in politics gunning for Obama’s seat in seven years. But from the other side. And my kind of brown*. And that is kind of… remarkable.

*I say brown. Republicans say beige. Can someone explain to me why he’s the “beige hope”, not “brown hope”?

For the last few years, every time I hang out with my crew its like “what’s up Macaca?” Or “Macaca puleez.” If one of them is acting ignorant I have to bust out with this derogatory term that we have appropriated from the Man and made our own. The distinction is clear: I love me my South Asian people. But I hate macacas.

Ok ok, I’m just kidding…and ripping off Chris Rock’s material a bit.

A few days ago one of our commenters made the following observation: “slumdog” is the new “macaca.” Bobby Jindal’s primetime response to Obama was given about 48 hours after Slumdog Millionaire mopped up at the Oscars. The most watched speech ever given by an Indian American occurred only two days after a huge audience watched a large cast of Indians take centerstage at an event embodying American culture. I think the combined effect of the two is greater than many people realize. Over the span of 48 hours desis literally dominated the airways. And, of course, that can be a double edged sword when you are a minority

On many websites and blogs, liberal commenters, who immediately pounced on Jindal’s poor performance to discredit his “rising star” hype, used the term “slumdog” to describe him. It wasn’t limited to liberals though. Conservative commenters and bloggers did the same exact thing. After Allen used it in Virginia, the term “Macaca” was denounced almost immediately, and to the best of my knowledge was never widely used by non-desis again. I get the feeling “slumdog” is going to have some legs, however. See this exchange today between the new Chairman of the RNC and a Guardian Angels founder turned conservative radio host Curtis Sliwa:

Did Steele say “friggin’ awesome?” The Republicans have publicly stated that part of their strategy to come back from the wilderness has to be to aggressively court the urban youth vote:

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party’s principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

The RNC’s first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party’s image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times. [Link]

If this is part of his strategy I think he should fire whoever is advising him. Is it just me or does Steele come across like an old white guy trying to sound like he can speak like a young black guy?

Mainly I would like to hear from our readers. Have any of you been called “Slumdog,” even jokingly, in the past few days? Were you okay with it or did it bother you?

Last night’s speech was a disaster, and key shares plunged in response this morning, demonstrating that recent declines will prove difficult to reverse.

The speech in question, however, was Jindal’s and the shares in question were “Jindal stock” on the Intrade prediction market.

While Obama got a 17% bump in response to his speech, critics were less kind to Jindal, comparing him to Steve Urkel, Kenneth from 30 Rock, and Mr. Rogers. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and most other conservative commentators (1, 2, 3) panned his performance, leaving people wondering whether he has done serious harm to his chance of running for President some day:

“it’s difficult to imagine him now as Obama’s 2012 opponent. Jindal not only didn’t live up to his advance billing, he proved that he needs a lot more seasoning before he gets a prime time slot.” [link]

I agree that Jindal did poorly (who doesn’t?) but I’m not yet ready to say he has ruined his shot at becoming the GOP candidate. While Krauthammer compares Obama to Reagan as a communicator, it is easy to forget how much Obama stumbled in finding his voice even a few years ago, and how hard he had to work to find a style that worked well for him.

Jindal is young, and, as Abhi pointed out, has plenty of time ahead of him. Plus, the GOP field is so weak right now that it gives him time to grow and develop. Jindal may be down, but I wouldn’t count him out.

Ok folks, tonight we will try a second attempt at “Cover it Live” which Anna debuted on SM to cover the Oscars on Sunday night. I have had zero practice at this and am totally winging it so I aplogize if it doesn’t work out. If it fails then you can revert to leaving comments in the comments section as usual.

It has been all Jindal all the time since this past weekend no matter where you turn. First, check out his appearance on Meet the Press where he explains why he is going to refuse (some of) Obama’s stimulus money that was bound for his peeps in Louisiana:

Later tonight he will be giving the official Republican rebuttal to Obama’s unofficial State of the Union speech. The Republican party is clearly positioning him as the face of the opposition going in to 2012. The question I want to examine in this post is very narrow. “Is Jindal’s early visible opposition to a popular President and his rejection of money for his state going to help or hurt his presidential ambitions?” I say it will ultimately hurt him and below are the reasons why.

This ain’t yo daddy’s GOP no more. Not only is the Chair of the RNC a black man (Michael Steele, who owes his victory to the majority-minority terroritories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Marianas and American Samoa) but Jindal is the new televised face of the party, set to issue its rebuttal to Obama:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, widely seen as a potential 2012 GOP presidential contender, will deliver the Republican response following President Obama’s nationally televised Address to the Nation on Feb. 24, Republican congressional leaders announced in a joint statement today. [Link]

Has the GOP decided to embrace multiculturalism as a demographic necessity? Was 2008 the last year that contenders for the top RNC spot will send out CDs of such chart topping hits as “Barack the Magic Negro,” and “The Star Spanglish Banner”?

Not exactly. Nativists remain both a significant constituency within the party and a significant source of amusement for those of us outside of it, offering insights like:

“Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.” [Link]

Here are two Obama tunes to get you humming as you drink your Sunday morning coffee or chai.

We’ve blogged here about Bollywood Obama and I’ve written about the Japanese town of Obama’s boppy theme song “Obama is beautiful world.” Now, a couple of young musicians in Surat—Chirag Thakker, Jayesh Gandhi and Anita Sharma—have welcomed Obama into their hearts with this catchy song that praises our new president.

We have dedicated this song to Obama and uploaded it on Youtube, so that the world could see our attempts to honor him. His down-to-earth personality, faith in Lord Ganesha and great respect for Mahatma Gandhi made us feel that he is very close to us,” said Chirag, adding that they have used names of Lord Ganesha and Gandhi in the song. [full story]

The song has elements of a bhajan (the lyrics have devotionalism), but also features the djembe, which the artists chose to include in honor of Obama’s African heritage! The video is granted, a bit amateur, but it also has subtitles (so that Obama can understand it) and was shot in various parts of Surat, including the banks of the Tapi river and the city’s municipal gardens. Overall, the three artists devoted three months to it from start to finish.

I was going to wrap up this entry, but then found this Punjabi poem by California based poet and singer Pashaura Singh Dhillon. I was moved. But then again, I get weepy pretty easily these days.

William Dalrymple has a must read book review of Ahmed Rashid’s “Pakistan in Peril Descent into Chaos,” in the New York Review of Books that I should summarize for SM readers. Man Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga has published a short story in The New Yorker this week titled, “The Elephant” that I should also critique. Finally, Foreign Policy magazine has an article about how India scuttled Richard Holbrooke’s potential involvement in the Kashmir conflict that I know would make for a great debate on our site. But honestly, I am just tired of trying to front like I am smart or something. Instead, I just want to blog this trashy clip from my girl Tyra Bank’s show earlier this week. It features a desi guy that now goes by the porn-king sounding name “Shawn Valentino.”

Part 1

Part 2

The first thing I am going to do is to re-do my SM business card now and put a picture of me blogging shirtless on it. I’ve “traveled the world.” I am “open minded.” I just want to “teach other people to be comfortable with themselves,” too! This guy really is a guru. He has convinced me too stop pretending to be something I am not. From here on out its business time all the time.

President Obama hit the ground running today, his first acts designed to remove some of the moral stain on our nation:

In the first hours of his presidency, President Obama directed an immediate halt to the Bush administration’s military commissions system for prosecuting detainees at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. [Link]

Not only that, but guess who the new lead prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay is? David “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH” Iglesias:

Fired New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias will be a lead prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba when and terror trials resume there, he told a New Mexico television station this morning.

The move has doubly powerful symbolism: Iglesias is recently famous for being fired for refusing to compromise his political independence, but he knows Guantanamo Bay well: He was the Navy defense lawyer played by Tom Cruise in the film, “A Few Good Men,” one of three who defended marines at the naval base.

Iglesias, a Naval reservist, said he’d been activated as a Judge Advocate General “prosecuting terror cases out of Guantanamo.” [Link]

Shutting down Gitmo and appointing an attorney fired by Alberto Gonzales wasn’t enough though. Obama then asked Osama bin Laden’s driver’s lawyer (the oft-blogged about on SM, Neal Katyal), to serve as the Deputy Solicitor General of the United States:

It’s good to see that the grownups are back in charge at the Justice Department…

Neal Katyal, the Georgetown Law professor who successfully challenged the military trials in Guantanamo while representing Osama bin Laden’s driver, will be deputy solicitor general. He’ll join Elena Kagan, the dean of Harvard Law School, who has been nominated to be Solicitor General. [Link]

This puts Katyal one step closer (although it is doubtful it would happen in the next four years) to having a serious shot at becoming the first desi appointed to the SCOTUS. What is more likely is that Kagan will eventually be appointed to SCOTUS and Neal will take over as the main man. The thought of Nina Totenberg regularly quoting a Katyal argument (as he jousts with Roberts or Scalia) on NPR as I drive to and from work excites me to a level that is uncomfortable to admit.

I’ve never been to an inauguration, despite my decade in D.C. So, I set out on a special Presidential Inauguration bus route, via my special Presidential Inauguration Metro card, which took me to the security perimeter. From there I walked in frigid temperatures to get to the Presidential Inauguration Metro train which would, it turns out, NOT take me to my intended destination.

Due to crowd control concerns, WMATA quickly shut down two train stations while I was underground, in transit, and packed in so tightly with other would-be attendees, that I felt assaulted every time someone moved an elbow. Everyone was aware of a different station which had been closed earlier; they announced it was unexpectedly reopening just as we pulled away from it. Too late. At this point, they had closed the last three stations at which we could have exited and we were well past the stop we needed. I started to worry about logistics as previously cheery train inhabitants cursed under their breath.

I hastily exited the Metro the moment I was able to, and I still ended up on the wrong side of the Capitol building. I had just over an hour to trudge through brutal, 11 degree weather, while attempting to avoid idling charter buses spewing exhaust, forbidding barricades, chaotic Police checkpoints and of course, thousands of people who were alternately shivering in their Uggs or shouting “Woooo! Obama!”.

The only thing I could think about was how I was thisclose to missing the whole point of the day, the whole point of the last two years, and it was all because of my bad luck with Metro. I tried to be mindful and prepare myself for the worst; if I was too late to get through security or move through the sludge of confused people faster than one mile per hour, I could say that I tried. That I had experienced the cold and the crowds and the optimism which was muffled by scarves, earmuffs and gloves. Que sera, sera…

I barely expected to make it to my rooftop viewing party in time for pomp and circumstance. I certainly did not expect to see a copy of Obama’s speech before he delivered it. And I definitely did not expect to be in tears when our new President recognized a faith which I respect, but don’t practice.

One thing at a time.

The benediction at Barack Hussein Obama’s inauguration was given today by Rev. Joseph Lowery:

Joseph Echols Lowery (born October 6, 1921) is a minister in the United Methodist Church and leader in the American civil rights movement.

Lowery was pastor of the Warren Street United Methodist Church, in Mobile, Alabama from 1952 until 1961. His career in the civil rights movement began in the early 1950s in Mobile, Alabama. After Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955, Lowery helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. He headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, an organization devoted to the desegregation of buses and public places. In 1957, with Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and subsequently led the organization as its president from 1977 to 1997. [Link]

Without a doubt the most striking paragraph of the benediction (the full text of which can be found here) was the following:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around … when yellow will be mellow … when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen. [Link]

Washington D.C. is all a twitter this weekend, anxiously awaiting the multitude of inauguration balls to be thrown in honor of Obama’s swearing in ceremony (which is a mere afterthought). Everyone I talk to is just ready to get their party on. At least two Mutineers (Ennis and Anna) will be on hand. There is an unspoken competition underway as to who will throw the biggest and best ball. The Huffinton Post for example has been bragging non-stop about lining up Sting, Sheryl Crow, and other big names. It turns out that there is even a Sikh Ball you can hang at:

When a Barack Obama campaign volunteer offered to help Gulshan Gachoke attend the Sikh Inaugural Ball in Washington, her response was: What is an inaugural ball?

Although it has been more than 30 years since Gachoke and her husband left their village in India’s Punjab province for Northern California — and 18 years since she became a U.S. citizen — the 63-year-old speaks halting English, doesn’t know how to use the Internet and almost never ventures beyond her Fremont neighborhood’s Indian shops, lest someone mistake her for a Muslim and insult her.

But after a volunteer, Reena Johar, who shares Gachoke’s Sikh religion, explained that the ball will be the first-ever inaugural gala sponsored by Indian Americans, Gachoke eagerly signed on. [Link]

Hmmmm, I wonder if she will get mistaken for a Muslim and be insulted on her way to the ball. WaPo better follow up on this. It seems like Gachoke was able to work up the courage to go because she too believes that Obama counts as a desi:

But more than anything, she was drawn by the sense that she shared something fundamental in common with the young man whose skin color was so close to her own that Gachoke initially thought he might be Indian.

“He is one of us, you know,” she said. “He feels the pain.” [Link]

After attending the chaos that was the DNC I am going to watch the events of these next several days on television and not worry about finding a place to pee. For those of you in DC, the tickets to the ball may be a bit pricey, but how many times in your life do you get a chance to be treated like a Maharajah?

THE “MAHARAJAH” PACKAGE
Product : Maharajah | Maharajah VIP Ticket | Price/Unit : 250.00 USD

$250 per person VIP Level (from 7 p.m. onward, includes no waiting, sit-down reception, complimentary tickets to open bar, passed hors d’oeuvres, butler service from 7-8 p.m., a sumptuous and a Very Presidential Buffet Dinner, entertainment, gift bag, and a commemorative gift to mark this historic occasion) [Link]

The attacks in Gaza are highly controversial with a fierce tug and pull between the sides. LA’s Mayor Villaraigosa and NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg have both taken a pro-Israel stance, as well as the 390 members of Congress who this past week voted “aye” to the passing of House Resolution 34. The resolution “recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirms the United States’ strong support for Israel…” On the streets it seems most people are angry about the situation on the Gaza side, not necessarily pro-Hamas, but more aligned with a ‘pro-humanitarian stop the killing of innocent people’ stance.

I knew how I personally felt, but what I wanted to know is, “Is this a South Asian American issue? As desis, why should we care?” Short of learning that Gandhi was an anti-Zionist, there’s not too much out there on the matter. But at Saturday’s protest, there were many desis out walking the street in solidarity. So I hit the streets and asked them why they were there. This is what they had to say.

“A lot of people were here for the protest,” said Omar of the band Elephant with Guns. “I couldn’t find my friend so I just joined the people I was with and started playing[he starts beating a hand held drum and chanting] one, two, three, four, we don’t want your racist war. Five, six, seven, eight, stop the killing stop the hate.”

“I thought it was great turnout and I was very inspired by it,” states Amy, a young professional. “It’s important for South Asians to be here because we need to show our solidarity. We went through it in India during our fight for independence.”

“I think that this is not particular to Arabs, to people of Middle East orgins, or to South Asian origin but I think that any community that has lived under any kind of occupation or the injustices of any type of colonization should be committed to this cause,” said Naaz, a PhD student at UCLA. “I’m from an Indian background. The types of atrocities that were committed under the British in India and the way that they systematically tried to divide people and divide Hindus from Muslims was unjust. We are still living with a lot of the scars of that British occupation…I think it’s about Western hegemony that is still continuing in the form of capitalism, and in new imperialistic projects, like Iraq, Afghanistan and maybe even Pakistan… As a community of color the west has been manipulating us for a long time.”

“South Asians tend not to be as connected to other communities in general,” said the Mad Guru, wearing an image he had designed pinned to the front of his shirt. “We can’t keep seeing problems as other people’s problems somewhere far away. I mean, you have to understand that if you don’t stick up for other peoples’ rights, then no one is going to stick up for your rights either.”

The protest was great, but there are other ways people in the South Asian community are showing support too. Some in the Sikh community jumped on board earlier this week.

Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickramatunge was assassinated in broad daylight outside of Colombo last week. SAJA has a helpful round-up of coverage of the event, including some background on Wickramatunge’s journalistic record. What stands out is the fact that he has been a consistent dissenting voice in Sri Lankan politics, sharply criticizing the previous government for years. In recent years he had also become a critic of the new government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, whom he had earlier supported. Indeed, Wickramatunge and Rajapaska were until recently rather close friends.

Wickramatunge’s assassination is widely believed to have been carried out by forces allied with the government, if not directly sponsored by the government itself. His memorial service, which took place yesterday in Colombo, was attended by thousands of people (see a Flickr photostream of the event here).

This past Sunday, the Sunday Leader, the Sri Lankan newspaper founded by Wickramatunge and his brother, carried a posthumous editorial authored by Wickramatunge himself. It’s called, “And Then They Came For Me,” and it’s written with the understanding that it would only be printed in the event of the author’s assassination.

It’s a moving statement, which ought to be read by anyone who doubts whether freedom of the press or freedom of speech is, after all, an essential right. Wickramatunge begins by asserting his primary goal as a journalist over the fifteen years he had worked with this newspaper:

The Sunday Leader has been a controversial newspaper because we say it like we see it: whether it be a spade, a thief or a murderer, we call it by that name. We do not hide behind euphemism. The investigative articles we print are supported by documentary evidence thanks to the public-spiritedness of citizens who at great risk to themselves pass on this material to us. We have exposed scandal after scandal, and never once in these 15 years has anyone proved us wrong or successfully prosecuted us.

The free media serve as a mirror in which the public can see itself sans mascara and styling gel. From us you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future. Sometimes the image you see in that mirror is not a pleasant one. But while you may grumble in the privacy of your armchair, the journalists who hold the mirror up to you do so publicly and at great risk to themselves. That is our calling, and we do not shirk it.

Every newspaper has its angle, and we do not hide the fact that we have ours. Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy. Think about those words, for they each has profound meaning. Transparent because government must be openly accountable to the people and never abuse their trust. Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united. Liberal because we recognise that all human beings are created different, and we need to accept others for what they are and not what we would like them to be. And democratic… well, if you need me to explain why that is important, you’d best stop buying this paper. (a link)

Aasif Mandvi wasn’t the only person to allude to the fact that Sanjay Gupta’s coming nomination makes life harder for all of us non- attractive neurosurgeon journalists. Sandip Roy, writing at New American Media, also tries to prepare us all for how hard it is going to be for us regular desis to play keep up with the Guptas now:

…I fear it’s a mixed blessing for the rest of us much more run-of-the-mill South Asians. It’s exciting to see someone who comes from your stock make it big. But another neurosurgeon-makes-good story is going to make us look even more like underachievers.

“What’s the matter, beta? Why can’t you be more like that nice Sanjay Gupta? Not just a neurosurgeon but on CNN AND meeting Obama for three hours?”

Not only is he dashing and articulate. Not only did he do brain surgery on a 2 -year-old Iraqi boy while embedded during the Iraq war, now he might be the new Surgeon-general. Let me pause, and reel in the envy!

And his only qualm, according to the Washington Post is “is said to involve the financial impact on his pregnant wife and two children if he gives up his lucrative medical and journalistic careers.”

Golly. This is a South Asian parent’s dream. He’s 39 and he’s already followed the four stages of a good Hindu life - childhood, education, family and now a sort-of-renunciation-and-service… [Link]

I completely agree with Roy’s analysis. This is the reason I have been pretty bummed ever since the Gupta nomination even though I agree he is a good pick. In fact, there has been a sort of let down ever since Obama got elected. He promised that we could all “Be the change.” How can that be true though when 300,000 people submitted resumes for ~7000 “change” jobs? Its like musical chairs and I, like may of you, am left without a seat. I’m the wrong kind of doctor, just a blogger and not a journalist, and I’m not quite so…model-like. I can’t even complain that he had access to a better education at an elitist school since we went to the same school. In short, I’m rapidly turning into a bitter hater, much like conservative pundit Stephen Colbert who basically implies in the clip below that Gupta isn’t qualified since he is a “dick eater”:

News that Sanjay Gupta has been offered the position of Surgeon General has produced the classic trifecta of Golidlocks responses: Is he too sexy for the job, not sexy enough, or does he have the right amount of smouldering sex appeal to keep pace with Obama, Biden, Daschle and Hillary Clinton?

Too sexy for this job:

My friend Dr. B objects to the idea that SG could be the SG, saying that he lacks the gravitas for the job, and that she would have preferred a more established, less erotically charged nominee in the C. Everett Koop mold.

For those of you too young to remember, despite Koop’s mad pediatric surgical skillz, he was as attractive as Bill Gates on a bad hair day. Nobody, no matter how intense their uniform fetish, ever had an erotic dream about Dr. Koop or Joycelen Elders, and Dr. B thinks that precedent should be maintained.

Similarly, when Dr. Amonymous asks for SG’s policy qualifications, pointing out that “The Surgeon General functions under the direction of the Assistant Secretary for Health and operationally heads the 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the USPHS, a cadre of health professionals who are on call 24 hours a day, and can be dispatched by the Secretary of HHS or the Assistant Secretary for Health in the event of a public health emergency.” [wiki], it’s clear that what he’s really saying is … “how can I take him seriously when he’s so pretty?”

(Manish has a variant of this argument, claiming not that Gupta is too sexy for the job, but that the job isn’t sexy enough for him, calling it a step down from his current position to one that pays less and has less influence.)

They do have a point since “Gupta was named one of the Sexiest Men of 2003 by People magazine.” [wiki] It’s hard to see what more objective measure of sexiness there might be.

Not sexy enough for this job:

There are those, however, who reject People Magazine’s imprimature as if it were some illegible doctor’s scrawl on a prescription pad, arguing brazenly that Dr. Gupta doesn’t have the intellectual honesty sex appeal necessary for the position.

By about 3:30p.m. eastern this afternoon, every South Asian American in the country (and their mother) had already heard that Sanjay Gupta was on the verge of being announced the next Surgeon General of the United States:

President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

Gupta has told administration officials that he wants the job, and the final vetting process is under way. He has asked for a few days to figure out the financial and logistical details of moving his family from Atlanta to Washington but is expected to accept the offer.

When reached for comment today, Gupta did not deny the account but declined to comment.

The offer followed a two-hour Chicago meeting in November with Obama, who said that Gupta could be the highest-profile surgeon general in history and would have an expanded role in providing health policy advice, the sources said. Gupta later spoke with Tom Daschle, Obama’s White House health czar and nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, and other advisers to the president-elect. [Link]

The choice of Gupta is very obvious when you think about it. It adds a touch of star power to Obama’s administration, will get lots of kudos (and donations) from the South Asian American community and, perhaps most importantly, adds another health care policy wonk to the dream team to be headed by H&HS Secretary Tom Daschle. You know all those rich Indian doctors that tend to vote Republican? Maybe not anymore.

CNN released a statement saying, “Since first learning that Dr. Gupta was under consideration for the surgeon general position, CNN has made sure that his on-air reporting has been on health and wellness matters and not on health-care policy or any matters involving the new administration…” [Link]

Taking this job, which will result in a large paycut for Gupta, will also set him up very nicely to run for office in Michigan in the future. Through some contacts I heard the rumors a few months back that Gupta at least thought about or was encouraged to run for mayor of Detroit to replace the disgraced Kwame Kilpatrick.

As a college senior I once invited Dr. Gupta to the Midwest Indian American Students’s Conference at the University of Michigan (he is an alumnus). It was before he hit the big time but I remember him being really genuine and laid back. And of course who can forget his exploits with the Devil Docs at the beginning of the war where is switched between reporting for CNN and scrubbing in to brain surgery.

There is another really good potential outcome as a result of this appointment. I know a lot of desi doctors who look a lot younger than they really are. Patients always make comments to them like, “uhhh…are you old enough?” Now these desi doctors can point to Sanjay Gupta who is the top doctor in the land and also looks pretty young and say, “umm, like yeah.”

What I really wanted to do was to end this post with the really funny Gupta/Dobbs CNN ad from a few years back. Can someone find me a working link…STAT?

There are currently as many elected African American governors as Indian American governors: one. For those of you that stopped reading Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com the day after the election, you are missing out. Today he had a wonderfully geeky post about why there are so few African American Senators (none actually unless you count Burris) and Governors. His analysis also offers some insight that might be of interest to the South Asian American community:

When the House of Representatives convenes tomorrow, it will contain 39 African-American members, not including non-voting delegates in places like the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. This number, representing about 9 percent of the Congress, falls somewhat short of the fraction of African-Americans in the population as a whole — a truly representative House would have about 55 black members — but perhaps not dramatically so. The situation at first glance would appear to be much better than it was prior to 1990, when there were generally only about 20 black members in the House at any given time.

The districts these 39 Congressmen serve, however, are not very representative at all. All 39 contain a higher percentage of African-Americans than the population as a whole, ranging from Keith Ellison’s district in Minneapolis, which is just barely more black than the national average, to Jesse Jackson Jr.’s on the South Side of Chicago, which is 68 percent African-American. About 64 percent of the members — 25 of 39 — come from districts that contain an outright black majority. The districts are also much more Democratic than the country as a whole, with an average PVI of D +25; only Sanford Bishop’s district in Georgia, which has a PVI of D+2, is anywhere close to the national average. [Link]

So here it is in a nutshell. Assuming that experienced African American representatives (a reasonable number of which there are) would make suitable candidates to run for the U.S. Senate, why aren’t there more black Senators or Governors? The answer is that because the base of these potential candidates is largely African American, many of them never develop messages targeted to an audience any wider than this base. Doing so might cause them to lose some “cred” with that base. Thus, forced to compete statewide with this self-inflicted handicap, their campaigns never get off the ground. Obama was a rare exception because he realized intuitively what the data shows and made sure to appeal to all demographics and not just his perceived base, even if it meant being called “not black enough.” To the vast majority of South Asian American candidates the above is so obvious it doesn’t need mentioning. Our ethnic base is so small it would never be enough to solely rely on (except maybe in Jersey or Fremont). From the beginning, desi candidates have to work hard to appeal to all groups and their issues. Despite hard-to-pronounce names and brown skin this “tactic” helps us beat the odds that seem to stymie African American candidates.

Since we have been on the topic of corrupt South Asian leaders who go on to have a second chapter in their political careers, it seems worth pointing out that Sheikh Hasina, leader of Bangladesh’s Awami League Party, has been elected back into office in that country.

Naheem Mohaiemen has his enthusiastic take here, and his account of voting (for the first time) at The Daily Star.

But since I recently reviewed Tahmima Anam’s A Golden Age, here is her response, published in The Guardian’s Comment is Free:

The BNP were at the helm of power in the last electoral cycle. During this time, Khaleda Zia promoted cronies to high positions of power, corrupted the courts with political appointments, and oversaw the theft of government funds on an unprecedented level. In 2007, the party orchestrated a coordinated effort to rig the elections, leading to the army’s intervention and two years of military-backed rule.

In this election, the BNP allied themselves with the Jamaat-e-Islami and conducted a campaign of fear-mongering, with slogans decrying the corruption of religious values and predicting a threat to Islam through foreign influence. By contrast, the Awami League ran a campaign that was purposefully secular and progressive. Though no stranger to allegations of corruption, the Awami League cleansed its party of much of the old guard. In the end, it campaigned on a platform of change, promising jobs and economic regeneration. The result was not only victory for the Awami League, but a near annihilation of the Jamaat-e-Islami. (link)

I’m certainly pleased whenever parties (in any country) advocating Sharia are soundly defeated like this. But I wonder why the silence on Sheikh Hasina’s own poor performance in her earlier term in office? Anam’s optimism and enthusiasm seems to be the consensus amongst progressive Bangladeshis from what I can tell; there is simply great relief that the rising tide of Islamism seems to have been reversed.

But I’m curious if there are other perspectives. One articulate dissent I’ve come across so far comes from a commenter on Anam’s article at The Guardian, who identifies himself (or herself) as SMohamed:

As a British Muslim of Bangladeshi decent it has been disheartening to often hear the land of my forefather denigrated as corrupt and ‘dirt poor’. In my opinion the ‘ladies’ in question are the main reason for the corruption through the incompetence and downright disregard they have for the peopple of Bangladesh. Dynastic politics do not work. The ladies in question lead only in name with far better players pulling the strings. I would be proud if Bangladesh actually had a lady in power who was not associated to previous leaders. She may actually have a mind of her own and bring about the change that is so desperately needed in a country on the verge of natural annihilation. (link)

Is Bangladesh now going to be in a better position on the global stage, or will it be stuck where it has been for years? Is there evidence that Sheikh Hasina might be a more effective, less corrupt leader of her country this time around?

For the past four and a half years, India has had a classy, educated, honest Prime Minister in Manmohan Singh. He’s often been criticized for not seeming forceful enough, but he did score a major success against both left and right in the nuclear deal and subsequent vote of no-confidence, and will probably join a relatively small number of Indian PMs in finishing out a complete five-year term. (Quick quiz: how many have there been?)

One person who is being talked about as a viable candidate for India’s next Prime Minister couldn’t be more different — Lalu Prasad Yadav. Yadav is the ex-Chief Minister of Bihar, where he rose to power in the “Mandal era” by mobilizing what are referred to as backward caste voting blocs in the state. Once in power, Yadav became nationally notorious as a rampantly corrupt figure, who embezzled at least $267 million in the “Fodder Scam”. He was eventually forced out of office, but was able to continue effectively running the state after he installed his wife, Rabri Devi, as Chief Minister in his stead. Starting in the late 1990s, Lalu Prasad Yadav became the punchline of many Indian jokes; even saying his name in some circles leads people to start smiling, in expectation of the joke to follow. (Another quiz: what are the names of his nine children?)

During the current UPA (Congress) administration he has had a second political life as the National Railways Minister — and he’s had remarkable success in turning around a huge government operation that had for decades been dominated by inefficiency and losses for the government. During its tenure (1999-2004), the NDA (BJP) had even been making noises to the effect that the only solution would be privatization, or failing that, raising ticket prices aggressively. But under Yadav, in 2008 alone the Railways earned profits of $6 billion — without raising passenger ticket prices at all. He may have been incredibly corrupt (and may still be corrupt), but he has been remarkably effective at turning around a major government agency.

I mention Lalu Prasad Yadav as a Prime Minister possibility as a reflection of the chatter I was hearing, mainly from relatives, as I was traveling in northern India last week. I have no idea whether it’s a real possibility, and I’m certainly far from thrilled about the possibility of someone so corrupt becoming Prime Minister. But it would nevertheless be interesting, partly because it would involve the country making a clear departure from the Nehru family and western-educated elites, in favor of someone with a strikingly different profile.

He may or may not become Prime Minister, but it does appear that while Lalu Prasad Yadav is still the butt of a few jokes, many Indians are starting to utter his name with newfound respect.

The shoe-throwing incident. People love the shoe-throwing incident. Now, I’m blogging about it here, despite the fact that it was an Iraqi who did it to a non-Desi. I am doing this for three reasons:

1) It brought back bad memories of my last trip to Kerala (more on that, after the jump)

2) We think of shoes as dirty and thus, disrespectful as well (AFAIK)

3) The Lobb-ber has received a marriage proposal for his act of bravado:

An Egyptian man said on Wednesday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad on Sunday

The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. “This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero,” she told Reuters by telephone.

Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Zaidi’s brother, to tell him of the offer. “I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage,” he added.

Zaidi’s gesture has struck a chord across the Arab world, where President Bush is widely despised for invading Iraq in 2003 and for his support for Israel. [link]

Disrespecting someone with a shoe AND a potential “alliance” of families? Oh, that’s so brown, even if it’s not technically brown. Whatever mang, I’m down with the spirit and the letter.

It didn’t just strike a chord across the Arab world. A Professor of Technocultural Studies at my alma mater, U.C. Davis (go ags!), published the following thoughts in the Huffington Post (via Sunaina Maira of ASATA, the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, whose website seems to be down):

Know what Bush was saying when al-Zeidi threw his shoes? “The war is not over. But … it is decidedly on its way to being won.”

And Muntadhar al-Zeidi lost it. Threw both his shoes, yelling that shoe #1 was ” a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people!” His second shoe was “for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq!”

This was a gift to the entire world. We all owe a debt to this 28-year old journalist who, for one beautiful moment, letting go of all rational calculation of the possible consequences, stood up and spoke truth to power.

He is currently being held by Iraqi security forces and faces an unknown fate. I would not want to be in his shoes right now. [link]

I’m not sure any of us would want to be in his position, right now:

While we are busy debating the merits of one potential Obama appointee and fawning over another (ok, I know, I am the only one fawning), there is a third that might end up having the most substantive role of all in Obama’s administration. Neera Tanden, who I first wrote about back in 2004, in all likelihood is about to occupy a position that will greatly influence this nation’s health care policy. First, remember that Tom Daschle will serve a new dual role. He will not only be named as the cabinet level head of Health and Human Services, but will also be director of a new WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF HEALTH REFORM. This essentially gives him the powers of a Health Czar and indicates that we will see a major legislative push in the direction of comprehensive health care reform. Tanden is a member of the transition team’s health advisors, having come over from Clinton’s campaign. She is a battle-hardened survivor of Hillary-care and knows the lessons learned and can be a great asset to Daschle. Here is an interesting footnote about Tanden’s role at the inception of Hillary’s campaign:

On a cold midmorning in January 2007, Hillary sat in the sunny living room of her house on Whitehaven Street in Washington, a well-to-do enclave off Embassy Row where she lived with her mother and, on occasion, her husband. She was finishing a last round of policy prep with her aides before getting on a plane to Iowa for her first big campaign swing. In a moment of quiet, she looked around the living room and said, to no one in particular, “I so love this house. Why am I doing this?”

Her policy director, Neera Tanden, and her advertising director, Mandy Grunwald, laughed, a little too lightheartedly. Clinton went on. “I’m so comfortable here. Why am I doing this?”

Tanden spoke up. “The White House isn’t so bad,” she said. [Link]

The New York Times had a good article on Tanden way back in 2000 [via Manish]:

How smart is the smart kid in Hillary Clinton’s Senate bid?

From all appearances — including a law degree from Yale — very.

It was Ms. Tanden, signing on with the exploratory committee in July 1999, who moved to New York from the White House and worked with Mrs. Clinton, researching and developing policies. She was 29.

It was Ms. Tanden — with, she wants you to know, her staff of six — who challenged Rick A. Lazio’s first major policy proposal, a tax-reduction plan, in August. In two hours Ms. Tanden prepared a detailed financial response. Finding the facts and figures to defend her candidate’s position is a large part of her work.

Watching Ms. Tanden in action at the Hillary 2000 headquarters on 34th Street is not permitted.

But you can accompany Ms. Tanden, informal, fast-talking, connected to her cell phone as to a body part, across the street to the restaurant she frequents these days, the cafeteria in Macy’s basement. She works 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. Her husband hates her work, Ms. Tanden allows in an unguarded moment. She makes a quick, politic adjustment: he doesn’t hate the work; he hates the way she brings the work home, the stress. [Link]

Let me start by posting Sonal Shah’s newly-released statement in full, as one goal of this post is to let readers judge her words for themselves:

I was recently maligned by a professor at a college in Connecticut who wrote an article in CounterPunch accusing me of association with Hindu extremism. Then, a few days ago, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, published an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer, to which this site linked, that echoed the CounterPunch accusations. These attacks sadden me, but they share one other thing in common: the accusations are false.

In reaction to these attacks, my closest friends — and many strangers — have rallied to my side. I am touched by this outpouring of support. And as painful as this episode has been for me personally, I welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue with the seriousness that it deserves, but the conversation should proceed on the basis of verified facts and reasoned argument, not innuendo and defamation.

Indian politics and history are contested and emotive, but also unfamiliar to most Americans. I understand why so many Indians and Indian-Americans feel strongly about religious extremism in India, because I share the same concerns.

I am an American, and my political engagements have always and only been American. I served as a U.S. Treasury Department official for seven years, and now work on global development policy at Google.org. And I am honored to serve on the Presidential Transition Team of President-elect Obama while on leave from Google.org.

I emigrated from India at the age of four, and grew up in Houston. Like many Americans, I remain proud of my heritage. But my engagement with India has been exclusively cultural and humanitarian. After the devastating earthquake in Gujarat in 2001, I worked on behalf of a consortium of Indian-American organizations to raise funds for humanitarian relief. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHP-A), an independent charity associated with the eponymous Indian political group, was among these organizations, and it was the only one to list my name on its website. I am not affiliated with any of these organizations, including the VHP-A, and have not worked with any of them since 2001.

The experience with the Gujarat earthquake did, however, teach me an important lesson. It pointed up a lack of dedicated infrastructure to help alleviate suffering in India, so together with my brother and sister, I founded Indicorps, an organization modeled on the U.S. Peace Corps that enables young Indian-Americans to spend a year in service to marginalized communities in India. The fellows come from every religious background, and have worked among every religious community in India. Indeed, some Indicorps fellows focus on inter-faith dialogue as part of their projects.

In 2002, Gujarat suffered one of the most profound tragedies in its long history, when extremist political leaders, including some associated with the VHP, incited riots that resulted in the deaths of thousands. Had I been able to foresee the role of the VHP in India in these heinous events, or anticipate that the VHP of America could possibly stand by silently in the face of its Indian counterpart’s complicity in the events of Gujarat in 2002 — thereby undermining the American group’s cultural and humanitarian efforts with which I was involved — I would not have associated with the VHP of America.

Sadly, CounterPunch and Senator Santorum have suggested that I somehow endorse that violence and the ongoing violence in Orissa. I do not - I deplore it. But more than that, I have worked against it, and will continue to do so. I have already denounced the groups at issue and am hopeful that we can begin to have an honest conversation about the ways immigrant and diaspora communities can engage constructively in social and humanitarian work abroad. (link)

I was happy to see a believable account of how Shah’s name appeared on the VHPA website as a coordinator for earthquake relief in 2001. Shah doesn’t specifically address the statements from a VHPA spokesman to the effect of “she was part of our leadership council for three years,” but there is a clear and convincing account of what she now believes about the VHP as an organization in India, as well as a clear statement about Gujarat 2002. I think we should also not overlook the statement “I am an American” that is here: she considers her personal political commitments to be first and foremost oriented to the American political landscape. I think this fact is important to remember whenever we talk about 2nd generation South Asian Americans’ relationships to specific political issues within South Asia.

After the fold, some thoughts following a personal meeting I had with Anand Shah, Sonal Shah’s younger brother, today in Philadelphia.

While I do hope that Sonal Shah becomes a permanent part of Obama’s administration, I am much more excited to see where my Huma Abedin ends up. Reggie Love ended up besting her for the role of “body man/woman” but you can’t keep this woman down for long. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic has the latest gossip for us Huma watchers. You guessed it, she will probably follow Clinton to State, showing the world a whole new face of America:

I’ve been a Clinton Kremlinologist for years, and although there are many armor-plated guardians of Clinton’s inner circle, Huma Abedin has been the toughest to crack. No exaggeration: with Clinton heading to State, Abedin is going to be a major force in American diplomacy for the next several years.

Abedin was one of the First Lady’s travelling personal assistants during the second term, but hasn’t been only that for years Formally, she is a Senior Advisor to Senator Clinton, and was her Travelling Chief of Staff during the campaign. In that latter role, she was in charge of the roadshow, one of the few parts of the campaign that met with near universal praise, both internally and externally.

She is part of the crucial connective tissue between HRC and her far flung world of supporters, friends, staff, former staff, advisors, donors, on and on. Not a gatekeeper, because she is famous for her openess and sharing even the smallest details with HRC to keep her fully briefed, and manages some of the biggest egos around with diplomatic aplomb (I can only imagine.. “Hi Huma, it’s Dick Holbrooke and I REALLY need to talk to Hillary about this Jim Steinberg thing”)

The totality of Huma is much more in line with the mythical “Aide de Camp” of old (people like David Petraeus were at one point someone else’s Aide de Camp, and we have no doubt that Huma will one day have her very own)

People who know her say she is a full and crucial member of HRC’s state department and she will be playing a big role at Foggy Bottom - and anyone there or elsewhere that short changes her as a “personal assistant” does so at their own risk.

She is also a Muslim who speaks fluent Arabic —her mother runs a university in Saudi Arabia — and brings that perspective on a complex part of the world to HRC’s sphere. it’s not uncommon to see Huma on Bill Clinton’s important trips to the region, because he too values her in that way. [Link]

Look, for some time now we’ve had a problem between Israel and the Palestinians. Can we get Huma on that? U.S. missiles in Poland? Mr. Putin, we have a Ms. Abedin on Line 1 for you. I am just saying folks, for those of you who didn’t think it was a good idea for Obama to form a team of rivals by including HRC, this little bonus should allay your fears.

Politico.com listed Shah as a contender for Secretary of Energy in the new administration:

Here’s a look at the five best jobs left to be doled out by Obama…. Secretary of Energy

The list: Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm; Dan Reicher, ex-Clinton renewable energy chief, now at Google; Sonal Shah, who heads Google.org’s global development efforts; Obama advisor Jason Grumet; John Bryson, retired chair at Edison International and hybrid car advocate; former Indiana Rep. Philip Sharp, Resources for the Future think tank.

It is not clear to me where this list comes from - whether these are a list of candidates that they know are under consideration or whether they are people that Politico thinks would be good for the job.

Sonal has a solid background in energy. She was a VP at Goldman Sachs, focusing on Green issues before she went over to Google.org:

Sonal worked on green initiatives, including advising clients and bankers on alternative energy opportunities and how to implement environmental, social and governance criteria for all investments. [wiki]

Sonal’s job was to make sure that green was … well, green, i.e. profitable. In this period, Goldman came up with a plan to reduce its emissions by 12% by 2007 and invest $1 billion in alternative energy. This dovetails nicely with Obama’s emphasis on alternative energy as one of his top priorities:

Obama has made the greening of America in all forms - reducing dependence on foreign oil, boosting solar and wind power, increasing auto fuel efficiency, and using green technology to drive the economic recovery - a central part of his pitch for the White House, and the person in this job could ride herd on those activities. [Politico]

The question is, could Sonal pass confirmation for such a high profile post? This is a post which would involve diplomacy with India, so her ties to the VHPA and other Sangh organizations would definitely become an issue.

UPDATE: As Homer Singhson points out, the NYT has Nobel Prizewinner Steven Chu as the front runner for the Energy Secretary position. Even so, this is the first time, to the best of my knowledge, that a desi-American has even been mentioned for a cabinet position.

To follow-up on Taz’s post earlier this week, several new sources including New York Magazine are reporting that President-elect Obama will soon tap Preeta Bansal as the United States Solicitor General:

Preeta Bansal, a Harvard-educated litigation partner at Skadden, is rumored to be President-elect Obama’s choice for solicitor general. That person argues the government’s position at the Supreme Court (which will still be dominated by conservatives). “It’s making the rounds in New York’s legal circles, absolutely,” says a former colleague of Bansal’s. She was New York’s solicitor general under Eliot Spitzer and a counselor to then–assistant attorney general Joel Klein in the Clinton administration; she was an adviser to Obama’s campaign and now serves on the transition team. She’d be the first woman and first Indian-American to hold the job. [Link]

Ravi and I wanted to interview Preeta at the DNC in Denver but we weren’t allowed to. There were certain folks who you could only interview with permission from Obama’s people. That’s how you knew they were likely to get a top spot in a possible future administration (or be a top bundler). If this turns out to be Obama’s pick it also will serve as a major nod to his Asian American supporters. We’ll then see if Bansal has what it takes to go ten rounds with the likes of Scalia and Roberts.

What I also want to know though is, what about Neal Katyal? Obama has said that shutting down the blight that is Guantanamo Bay is one of his top priorities. Why not give Katyal a leadership role in a possible commission to shut it down? From a recent PBS interview:

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, President-elect Obama, as we said, has said he will shut it down. Should he stick to the promise? And can he? What are the issues there?

NEAL KATYAL: Right. He should absolutely stick to the promise. I mean, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the defense secretary, Robert Gates, have both said that Guantanamo is now a net national security loss for the United States. So there’s a security reason to do it above and beyond the simple humanitarian one. [Link]

Oh hell, I’ll just come out and say what I’m really advocating for: Katyal for SCOTUS.

I am going to make a prediction and say that within 10 years Texas is going to pull a North Carolina and go blue. Take Houston where I live as an example. The fourth largest city in the United States went very Democratic. Surprised? Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio also went purplish to blue. The vast in-between parts of Texas are red of course but do they matter that much? All is not good in Texas however, nor in other parts of the country. Don’t get complacent. Just because a guy named Barack Obama can get elected President of the United States does not mean a guy with a name like that could win a city council seat, even in a district that went blue. As much as we like to blast Piyush Jindal for his love of the Brady Bunch, he knows that in parts of the country the ends are going to justify the means for a bit longer. There is an all too illustrative example of this right here in Houston. On my ballot there were two Indian American candidates (see here and here) running for two separate judge positions. I have had the pleasure of meeting both Ashish Mahendru and Ravi “R.K.” Sandill and came away impressed by both. Ashish and his wife were even kind enough to invite me to their Diwali party in October. So what happened on election night?

127th District Judge In: 100%
R.K. Sandill, D
554,882 50.5%
Sharolyn Wood, R (I)
543,959 49.5%

334th District Judge In: 100%
Ashish Mahendru, D
532,135 48.6%
Sharon McCally, R (I)
563,517 51.4%

I think everyone reading this knows what’s up. And it isn’t just brown candidates either. The Houston Chronicle called bulls*it right away:

The night Mekisha Murray became one of only four Harris County Democrats to lose a judicial race, her husband had a quick and stinging analysis: “You have your mother to blame for this.”

And perhaps, she did. But more so, the discriminating voters of Harris County, who apparently were turned off by Mekisha’s uncommon, or ethnic-sounding name.

Curiously, the only other three Democrats who failed in their challenges of vulnerable GOP judicial incumbents also had unusual names: Ashish Mahendru, Andres Pereira and Goodwille Pierre.

Well-funded top-ballot headliners like Barack Obama may have been able to overcome the obstacles presented by their funny-sounding names. But voters seem less tolerant further down the ballot. [Link]

We have talked extensively here about one particular South Asian American member of the Obama-Biden transitional team. But are there others? Facebook informed me earlier this week that Parag Mehta left his job as the Director of External Communications at the Democratic National Committee — the highest-ranking staff position held by a South Asian in the Democratic Party. Now we know why, he is the latest South Asian to join the Presidential Transition Team.

Parag Mehta, 31, has been named the deputy director of inter-governmental affairs and public liaison of the Obama-Biden transition team, charged with outreach to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other minority groups.

He said that besides outreaching to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, his mandate would also include reaching out “to lesbians, gays and bi-sexuals and also a couple of issue areas. So, I will be reaching out to these groups too besides Asian Pacific Americans.” But, Mehta explained that “the office is not just for minority groups. The office also includes small businesses, doctors, lawyers, rural farmers-so it’s a pretty large portfolio.”[IndiaDem]

The central Texan native was deputy political director for Howard Dean’s 2003 presidential bid, and directed the campaign’s ethnic outreach. Prior to joining the DNC, Mehta served as the deputy political director for America Votes. He holds a masters degree in public administration from Syracuse University and served in both the Clinton and Bush administrations as liaison to the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.[NewAmericaMedia]

Mehta will be leading a conversation in a post-election webinar hosted by SAALT this Tuesday, November 25th at 1pm PST where people can ask him questions they have on the transition team. Working next door to Mehta in the transition team office is another desi face, Nick Rathod.

Nick Rathod, 33, has been appointed director to the Office of Inter-governmental Affairs. Rathod is the national outreach director of South Asians for Obama and one of its founding members. He also co-founded South Asian Americans Leading Together.[NewAmericaMedia]

Lawyer and former Clinton insider Preeta Bansal’s name has also been floating around the transition team.

Reports also suggest that the former solicitor general of New York, Preeta Bansal, currently a senior advisor on the Obama campaign, may be considered for the position of Solicitor General in the Department of Justice.[AsianWeek]

Other desi names that have been popping up in regards to the transition team are that of Arti Rai, Anjan Mukherjee, Rachana Bhowmik, Subhasri Ramanathan, Natasha Bilimoria and Puneet Talwar. Also rumored are Neera Tanden, Hrishi Karthikeyan, Dave Kumar, and Kris Kolluri.

Though considered just a “temp job”, this may be one of the most important temp jobs I’ve ever seen. What is remarkable to me is just how transparent and AAPI-accessible the transition team is, especially compared to every past presidential transition team. From the President-Elect’s Change Website, to broadly being able to track the transition team at Public Citizen’s Becoming 44, to having conference calls hosted by APIA Vote to explain the transition team process for the APIA community, I feel that I finally have the transparency I need to hold my elected official accountable.

As far as accessibility, I’m pretty confident in saying that there has never been this many desis involved in a Presidential Transition Team before, and I can say with certainty that this will only lead to an increased representation of South Asians in the White House. Not just any South Asians, but leaders that our community has looked to in the past to advocate for our community - people that we have as facebook friends, in our Gmail contacts, and most importantly, readers of Sepia Mutiny - are going to be in the White House. And there’s something just thrilling about that.

A few weeks ago, I posted “Data Crunching for Obama,” a look at the Democratic campaign’s microtargeting strategies led by Vijay Ravindran, chief technology officer at Catalist, Harold Icke’s start-up political technology company that built a national voter database of information on more than 260 million people for progressive groups, including the Obama campaign.

At Catalist, Ravindran led all the technology aspects of developing the company’s software products and services. The data banks and web-based tools he helped develop could answer questions such as: “How many Indian-Americans gave money to me, said they were an Obama supporter, voted in the last general election, own their home and live in Baltimore?”

Below the fold is a Q&A with Vijay Ravindran, where he talks about his engagement with politics, the 2008 election efforts, Catalist’s role in it, and what South Asian voter data tells us about the “brown” community.

Incidentally, the 34 year old is on a roll. Just yesterday, it was announced that as of February ‘09, Ravindran will be the senior vice president and chief digital officer of The Washington Post Company. Per the press release that went out:

“We are fortunate to have Vijay join the Company as we focus increasingly on electronic media,” said Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive officer of The Washington Post Company. “Vijay is widely recognized as one of the top innovators in the field. I am delighted that he will bring his extraordinary skills, talent and experience to our efforts to expand our digital business.”

The Terminator: The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Not much I have heard about the state of affairs in Pakistan after their elections has given me confidence that this particular iteration of “democracy” will survive for very long there. I was initially most concerned that a weak (and corrupt) central government would hurt ordinary Pakistanis by failing to adequately confront the extremists that sought to de-stabilize their country.

Case in point, let’s consider the huge blast that occurred in September at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad killing 53 people (two of whom were Americans):

A suicide bomb attack that killed 53 people at the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital bore the hallmarks of an operation by al Qaeda or an affiliate, Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials said on Sunday.

Teams combing the burnt shell of the hotel found more charred bodies after the blast on Saturday evening ignited a blaze that swept through the hotel, part of a U.S.-based chain and a favorite haunt of diplomats and wealthy Pakistanis. [Link]

So how did Pakistan respond around that same time to the threat of internal terrorism? For one, they declined investigative help from the FBI who are quite experienced with this kind of attack given past U.S. embassy bombings abroad:

Malik rejected FBI assistance and said Pakistani security agencies were capable of handling the probe.

A US official at the Guantanamo naval base told Reuters “the attack certainly bears all the hallmarks of… Al Qaeda or its associates”.

Six suspects: Online said six suspects from FATA had been held. [Link]

I understand the need to maintain the appearance of “standing up to the U.S.” to play to the domestic crowd, but not in the absence of doing anything. Now that we no longer have the slightly more compliant Musharraf to deal with, the U.S. has had to become a bit more proactive about rooting out terrorists:

Bush confronted Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister, with evidence of involvement by its military intelligence (ISI) in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

“They were very hot on the ISI,” said Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister. “Very hot. When we asked them for more information, Bush laughed and said, ‘When we share information with your guys, the bad guys always run away.’ “… [Link]

Though I was an early and vocal participant in the Great Sonal Shah Internet Debate of 2008, I am done arguing about it. This post is not about that directly.

Instead, I’d like to focus on some of the bigger issues behind the controversy, specifically: 1) how South Asian religious youth camps work and what they do, and 2) whether Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu organizations in the U.S. send large amounts of money to South Asia to support communalist organizations over there.

As always, I would love to hear personal testimony from people who went to religious youth camps, or who have been involved in any of the organizations I’m going to be mentioning. An ounce of personal testimony is better than a pound of theorizing, generalizing, and blah blah blah argument.

1. What’s at issue

These two issues are the central themes of a chapter in Vijay Prashad’s book, The Karma of Brown Folk, called “Of Yankee Hindutva.” They also feature in Prashad’s essay in Sulekha, “Letter to a Young American Hindu.”

The reason Prashad is so focused on Sonal Shah is pretty clear: to him, she seems to represent exactly the “Yankee Hindutva” he has been talking about for years. As I see it, the major things Sonal Shah is accused of are 1) being a part of the leadership of an organization called the VHP-A, which has a clear communal bias (no one seriously disputes this), and 2) speaking at HSS-US youth camps like this one (from the website, HSS-US appears to be considerably less extreme than VHP-A, though they do prominently advertise a new book they’ve published on M.S. Golwalkar). Ennis has also suggested that what is really worse than this might be 3) the fact that she waited so long to clarify her former affiliation: the cover-up is worse than the crime. I do not agree with him on that, but I do agree with people like Mira Kamdar that (1) and (2) might be concerning.

But what exactly does an association with the American branch of a Hindu nationalist organization tell us about a person? How much do we really know about the American branches of these organizations? How bad are they really?

Below the fold, I’ll raise some questions about the accounts Vijay Prashad has given of VHPA and the Hindu Students Council in his book, The Karma of Brown Folk.

Before doing that, let’s start with a personal testimony, from a person who actually disagrees with me overall on this issue. As I was browsing people’s various blog posts relating to Sonal Shah, I came across a great post and discussion thread by a blogger named Anasuya. In the comments to Anasuya’s post is another person named Anasuya (Anasuya Sanyal), who attended VHP camps years ago, and had this to say about her experience of them:

I too remember attending VHP conferences as a teenager growing up in the US and I had no idea of the political affiliations until I lived for a bit in India around age 17. Naturally, I was not in any kind of agreement with the VHP platforms, philosophy or actions and I even wrote a small piece about the American “face” of the VHP for The Telegraph!

And as a second generation Indian American, Indian politics were not a topic in the home and VHP conferences were a parentally-approved weekend outing since we were with other Indian friends. The fun part was our more responsible friends would drive us all to the place and we’d take over a cheap motel and party. Otherwise at that age, a weekend away would have been strictly forbidden.

I don’t remember too much about the conferences themselves–there were a few interesting group discussions/breakout sessions. I didn’t see any political content. If anything, the parents saw it as a way to participate in a big somewhat religious gathering, seeing as how more established religions in the US had youth events, whereas Hindus did not. (link)

As I say, Anasuya Sanyal disagrees with me overall, so this account shouldn’t be taken as a tailor-made version of what happened to support the “pro Sonal Shah” side of things.

Anasuya (the blogger) also has a great string of questions that follow from this:

At times, it must be done. It simply must.

What is “it”? Honest reflection. Meditation. The potentially uncomfortable exercise of asking difficult questions…questions like…”Is Neel Kashkari a CHUMP?”

Elijah Cummings, breakin’ it down Bodymore-style. A friend of mine whom I had forwarded that clip to told me that Cummings is a genuinely nice guy, which makes it all the more hilarious for him to be the one questioning our boy Neel. Find a previous SM post about the sacrificial lamb Kashkari by our Vinod, here.

(Hmm. I thought the name of the author of that ThinkProgress piece sounded familiar…then I realized it was erstwhile WLPer/reader Satyam, whom I was introduced to by mutineer Harin at the Kal Penn event held in support of our President-elect. :) I love how accomplished and brainy you smurfs mutineers are.)

Thanks to Sepoy over at Chapati Mystery, who translated A.Q. Khan’s first Urdu language column for the Daily Jang. The column has one of the harshest paragraphs on Pervez Musharraf I’ve ever seen in print:

Our bureaucracy and sycophants play a large role in making these false gods into God. Musharraf is F.A. pass (high-school equivalent), a qualification which we use to employ attendants. By a mistaken promotion, he became our commander-in-chief. It nauseated us to see such a dim-wit lecture the highly educated and the experts on economics, education, foreign policy, commerce and industry. And they would bow in front of him and wag their heads and exclaim at his intelligence. The way of an intelligent ruler (or Dictator) is that he doesn’t choose his companions on the basis of their flattery but on the basis of their expertise and their knowledge; he listens to their advice; and gives them all the help for the completion of important projects. There was this rumor going around about Musharraf that he complains to his Army friends, “I am saddened to see that if uneducated people cannot understand my arguments, it is ok, but even educated people cannot follow me.” The reason is obvious. The ability to pull the trigger of a gun and the ability to make an intelligent statement are clearly different. (link)

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did; I found it strangely therapeutic to read. (For those who read Urdu, you can see the original here. Out of curiosity, since I’ve let my beginners’ Urdu slide since last December, what is the Urdu word being translated here as “dim-wit”?)

In the column you’ll also find Khan’s version of the story of how he got involved with communicating information about nuclear weaponry with countries like North Korea (according to this column, his main agenda was acquiring ballistic missile technology; he doesn’t say what he gave North Korea in return…). And he heaps praise on both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.

Just to be clear: A. Q. Khan is not to taken as trustworthy or believable (in case you’ve forgotten who he is, read the primer). But it’s all the same interesting to see him emerge with this stuff now that Musharraf is gone.

Election Day may have only been seven days ago, but here on the West Coast San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has her eye on 2010.

San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, one of Barack Obama’s earliest California backers, announced today that she is running for California attorney general in 2010…She would replace Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, the former Oakland mayor and California governor, who is expected to run for governor in 2010.[latimes]

Harris’ announcement was tempered with one, arguably big, caveat: Should current Attorney General Jerry Brown not run for governor in 2010, she would not pursue that office.

Should Harris not run for Attorney General it is believed that she would readily accept a political appointment as perhaps a deputy attorney general with the U.S. Justice Department. Harris has been a near tireless supporter of President-elect Barack Obama and is believed to be a short list of people Obama is considering for appointments to the federal department.[politickerca]

Kamala Harris is mixed race, thus her current position gives her three firsts — she is the first female District Attorney to be elected in San Francisco; the first African American elected as District Attorney in California; and the first Indian American elected to the position in the United States. If she wins in 2010, she would be breaking even more glass ceilings.

She would be the state’s first female attorney general and the first, in decades, who started out as a courtroom prosecutor.[latimes]

In December 2003, Harris was elected as the first woman District Attorney in San Francisco’s history, and as the first African American woman in California to hold the office. She was overwhelmingly reelected to a second term in November 2007.[politickerca]

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, is a breast cancer researcher. Her sister, Maya Harris, is a vice president at the Ford Foundation. Her brother-in-law, D. Anthony West, an attorney at the San Francisco law firm of Morrison & Foerster, is among the Californians who could receive an appointment in the Obama administration.[latimes]

Kamala sent out a message to her supporters yesterday including the following…

“Now, I want to take that same energy, innovation and change to the state level. I’ve spent my entire professional life in the trenches as a courtroom prosecutor. And I can tell you from the frontlines, we need tough new ideas for strengthening our criminal justice system in California. As Attorney General, I will fight for all Californians – from distressed homeowners to families whose neighborhoods are under siege. In the coming months, I will detail new ideas on how we can fight street gangs, go after subprime lenders and others responsible for the financial crisis, and fundamentally reform our prison system.”[caprog]

Good luck, Kamala. This is definitely a race that we will be keeping our eye on.

Sonal’s brother posted the following statement from Sonal in the comments of Amardeep’s post In Defense of Sonal Shah (boldface mine):

As an Indian-American who has lived in this country since the age of four, serving on the Obama-Biden transition team is a unique privilege for me. A presidential transition is always a time of excitement and, in some cases, of rumors and unfounded gossip. I’d like to set to rest a few baseless and silly reports that have been circulating on the Internet.

First, my personal politics have nothing in common with the views espoused by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or any such organization. I’ve never been involved in Indian politics, and never intend to do so.

Second, I’ve always condemned any politics of division, of ethnic or religious hatred, of violence and intimidation as a political tool. Some factually inaccurate internet rumors have attempted to link me to Hindu Nationalist groups through a variety of tenuous connections: Relief work I’m proud to have helped coordinate following the Gujarati earthquake of 2001, or cultural and religious affiliations of some of my family members, or apolitical humanitarian work I’ve been privileged to do as a founder of the NGO Indicorps and as the Director of Global Development for Google.org.

Finally, I do not subscribe to the views of such Hindu nationalist groups, and never have. Ridiculous tactics of guilt by association have been decisively repudiated by the American people. I am delighted with what the victory on November 4 says about my country, and about our place in the world. I look forward to serving our President-elect in this time of transition.

That’s the sort of unequivocal statement of her political views that I had been hoping for. It’s also what the groups that were concerned about her appointment were asking for.

Sonal is a highly qualified and experienced public figure who has done a lot of good. There’s also no evidence that I’ve seen, from anybody, that Sonal holds sectarian or bigoted sentiments. To the contrary - people I know who know her personally have said only positive things about her and her family. I suspect this statement will put most people’s concerns to rest in terms of her participation on the transition team.

But … I think the statement reveals two areas of questionable judgment that I think might cause problems for her if she’s nominated to a position in the new administration, despite her qualifications and track record.

It looks like Governor Bobby Jindal was approached by the McCain campaign for serious VP vetting, but he turned down the McCain people. From the WaPo (thanks, Sahba):

Jindal was approached by McCain forces to gauge his interest in the vice presidency and told them he was not interested in being vetted due to his desire to continue on with his current job, to which he was elected just one year ago.

While the official reason that Jindal took his name out of contention was his lack of a desire to leave the Louisiana governorship, there was also real trepidation within his political inner circle that Jindal might wind up as the pick — McCain was attracted to his comprehensive health-care knowledge — and be caught up in what they believed to be a less-than-stellar campaign that could pin a loss on Jindal without much ability to change or control the direction of the contest. (link)

Here is what I said on October 29:

I expect it will come out, in months to come, that McCain specifically asked Jindal to join the ticket this past summer and Jindal turned him down. (link)

It looks like it won’t take months for the truth to ‘out’, after all. (Admittedly, he was not literally invited to join the ticket, but, hey, close enough.)

Last week Abhi did a post on Sonal Shah, who is working for the Obama transition team. Over the weekend, however, a controversy erupted over Shah, who has worked for the Center for American Progress and Google.org (the philanthropic arm of Google), and who has started, with her siblings, a do-good organization called Indicorps.

Vijay Prashad makes some very harsh accusations in an article in Counterpunch, basically suggesting that Sonal Shah is a supporter of a Hindu right organization, the VHP.

The accusations have been widely covered in the Indian media, including The Hindustan Times, TOI, and DNA. Most of those are simply echoing the statements made by Prashad. I have also been getting emails from left-leaning Indian academic friends, who are outraged about Sonal Shah.

I am skeptical about Prashad’s accusations. First, I think it’s important to keep a little perspective: Sonal Shah has been hired because of her experience with Google.Org and Center for American Progress, not because of her former affiliation with the VHP-A. She is also not actually working for the “Obama administration” — she is working on the team that will hire people to work for the Obama administration. If and when she has an official government post, and especially if that post has something to do with policy on India, this kind of scrutiny might be merited. Right now, it is not.

Second, Prashad’s accusations against Sonal Shah smell like a smear — not so different from Sarah Palin saying Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists.” I have no idea whether Sonal Shah is secretly sympathetic to the VHP or not; I do not believe so. [UPDATE: We now have a statement from Sonal Shah, through her brother: here. The statement has been verified through another source.] But given that she has not made a public statement in response to Prashad’s most recent accusations, We should probably respond to Shah based on her actions and verified statements, not on her parents’ beliefs (the worst kind of guilt-by-association), not on her past membership in the VHP-A (which is not disputed), and not on what Vijay Prashad says she said at some Desi conference years ago. In this decade, and in the work she is best known for, Sonal Shah has clearly been on the right side of things.

Vijay Prashad wants to paint a very particular image of Sonal Shah, as a kind of die-hard Hindu chauvinist, who continues to harbor secret communal hatreds, even if she has not made public statements to that effect, is not formally affiliated with any relevant groups, and has been doing valuable social work with Google.Org and Indicorps. But that is just one narrative. One could easily construct a counter-narrative along these lines: Sonal Shah’s parents are in fact supporters of the VHP, and are friends of Narendra Modi. As an ABD growing up in Texas, she had little awareness of the destructive and intolerant nature of Hindu nationalism, and when the opportunity came around to work with VHP-A to raise money for earthquake victims in Gujarat in 2001, she took it. But perhaps, with maturity, and as she took a higher profile role in the organization, she also began to gain an awareness of the costs of affiliation with the VHP, and left to found an organization that does similar work, but with a secular slant. [UPDATE/CORRECTION: According to her statement, even at the time, Shah did not subscribe to the message or ideology of the VHP. She characterizes her work as purely focused on humanitarian aid. She also clearly distances herself from the agenda of the VHP, and suggests she has had no involvement in Indian politics, nor intends to have any.]

That second narrative I have presented is admittedly speculation. But I put it out there because I think there is as much evidence to support it as there is to support the narrative that Prashad has put out in Counterpunch.

I do not have the time to write more at present; I may come back to this later tonight. In the meanwhile, comments are open for discussion. Read the Prashad essay — what do you think? Is he being fair? Also, do readers know more about Indicorps? And, finally, if anyone does know Sonal Shah personally, would you vouch for her (or perhaps, for what Prashad is saying about her)?

An article published in the Hindustan Times on Monday quoted an anonymous Obama advisor as saying, “You can’t swing a dead cat in the Obama camp without hitting an Indian.” The implication here is that Indians and South Asian Americans are going to be a huge part of this new administration. Well earlier today one “Sonal Shah” rocketed all the way up to the 7th position as the most searched term on Google:

Turns out that Ms. Shah was named part of Obama’s transition team advisory board today:

On the list: former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner; Obama friend and former Commerce Secretary William Daley, University of California-Berkeley law school dean Christopher Edley; Obama law school friends and advisers Michael Froman and Julius Genachowski; former Gore domestic policy adviser Donald Gips; Governor Janet Napolitano; former transportation secretary Federico Peña; Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and Sonal Shah of Google.org. [Link]

Shah was probably brought in on the recommendation of the current head of the transition team, John Podesta:

Shah, although not as visible an Obama activist as Bansal, had been brought into the transition team in the summer by her old boss Podesta, and told rediff.com that she will be taking a leave of absence from Google.org for the next two-and-a-half months at least till Obama is sworn in January 20 as the 44th president of the United States.

While Bansal will be working on personnel operations beyond January 20, her name is also been thrown up for a senior level position in the Department of Justice, and speculation is rife that she could be the new Solicitor General.

However, Bansal has been keeping a low profile and told rediff.com that she didn’t want to comment on the speculation or her duties as part of the personnel selection team, but insiders said, “She will be very heavily involved on the personnel side.” [Link]

Well, whether you voted for him or not, history was made yesterday as Barack Obama was elected President of the United States by 52% of voters, a healthy electoral margin, and victories in Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and probably even North Carolina. How was your election night?

A brief note on the Indian reaction: though some Indian papers are a little nervous about Obama’s anti-outsourcing rhetoric, for the most part India appears to be as enthusiastic as the rest of the world about the prospect of a President Obama. Manmohan Singh, for instance, described the victory as “extraordinary”. Also see this list of pros and cons in the Economic Times, and this story, which has executives from Wipro and TCS expressing satisfaction with Obama’s grasp of the realities of the globalization era.

Meanwhile, Ashwin Madia lost in Minnesota’s 3rd District to Erik Paulson. The numbers were something like 48% to 40%, with a curiously large 8% plus voting for “other” candidates.

It’s somewhat disappointing, but it is worth noting that Madia is just 30 years old, and he was running in a district long held by Republicans:

With a lack of real political experience, Madia, a former lawyer and Iraq war veteran ran on a campaign of ideals. Over and over again he told voters that he didn’t need experience in St. Paul, that he had experience in Baghdad. He often started his speeches with the tale of his parents’ immigration from India. They came here nearly 40 years ago with just $19, and today their son is running for U.S. Congress. The American Dream, Madia would often say, is still very much alive in this county.

His message did not change Tuesday night as he conceded. “Even though we lost this election tonight, we didn’t lose the debate,” said Madia, 30, as he addressed disappointed supporters in Osso. “Our message was right on. I may not have been the right messenger, but our message was right, this idea that our country can do better than what we have been doing.” (link)

We may have more to say about this once there is more data about why voters did what they did.

Barack Obama was elected president tonight and also won the state of Minnesota. Still too close to call however, is the Ashwin Madia vs. Erik Paulsen race in the 3rd Congressional district. As of midnight central time and with 49% of the precincts reporting, Madia trails 47 to ~42%.

While we wait for the final result I want to leave you with this clip I took of a speech Madia gave in Denver during the DNC. During the speech he spoke passionately about being relentless and putting everything you have into your race once you decide to run for office. Win or lose I remember thinking at the time it was great advice for anyone thinking of running.

Sure today is about presidents, pundits and pandering. We’ve blogged macacas, Obamas and Madias. But today is Election Day, and not only is today the day to vote, but we need to make sure that this vote is counted.

I am getting up at the crack of dawn to partake in protecting the rights of Asian and Pacific Islander voters all across Southern California. There are already other stories coming out of the woodwork - one friend of mine registered to vote but couldn’t be found on the rolls, and another friend stood in a five hour line at the Los Angeles Registrar of Voter to vote early on Friday. On Election Day, the stories are expected to be tenfolds worse and poll monitors will be sent to polls all across the nation to keep the suppression at a minimum. If you haven’t signed up to volunteer with an official organization, you can grab your camera and Video the Vote or document your story.

I stole the following Q&A from a post I did for Sepia Mutiny during the 2006 Election, but it still works, for the most part.

What do I do if I requested an absentee ballot/registered to vote and haven’t received anything yet? You should go to your polling place and vote in person, and if they don’t have your name, you should vote provisionally. They have to give you a provisional ballot - they’ll verify over the next week to see what the problem is and if they count it. If you’re too far from your polling place, call your Secretary of State’s office or the hotline.

What if I have my absentee form, but I forgot to mail it? Take your absentee form to your local polling place and drop it off in person.

What if I go to vote and they don’t have my name? Vote provisionally. If you have your voter registration receipt, that is your proof of registration. And call the hotline.

Do I need to bring ID to vote? It depends on what state you live in, though as organizers we feel that asking for a voter ID is a form of disenfranchisement and are continuously battling this. But here in CA, I’m pretty sure if you are a first time voter that didn’t put down a CA DL number or SS # on your reg form, they will ask for your ID. If they ask for your ID, and you live in a state/situation where you don’t need an ID, call the hotline.

What if I don’t know where I’m supposed to go and vote? Simple go to the Polling Place Finder.

I didn’t get any information from my registrar’s info on who I’m voting for. What should I do? You should still vote, at your nearest polling place. To figure out what you are voting for before you go to your polling place, go to Smart Voter. With a quick submit of your address, they can find you all the candidates and propositions for your district. If they don’t have your name in their list, VOTE PROVISIONALLY.

It’s already 7:30 pm, and there will be this long line at the polls, and by the time I get there, I’ll be turned away… Most employers will give you two hours to go vote today, be sure to ask to see if you can get out early, or do it on your lunch break. Polls are open from 7am to 8pm. All you have to do is go stand in line before 8pm - as long as you are in line, they can’t turn you away. If they try to, or if they closed your poll early, call the hotline. [SepiaMutiny]

There is a national Election Protection hotline that I HIGHLY recommend that you scrawl on the back of your hand before leaving the house today: 1-866-OUR-VOTE. The Election Protection site has gotten tech-savvy since 2006, and there are up to the minute updates on stories of suppression across the country. If you have questions about the voting process and don’t want to call the hotline, please enter them in the comment section or e-mail me at taz[at]saavy.org and I’ll do my best. If you have stories of voting today, whether positive experiences or stories of voter suppression, please enter them in the comments as well - I’d love to hear the desi experience on voting all across the country. It’d also be interesting to see if desis get unfairly targeted for the denial of voting rights.

And in case it wasn’t obvious, GO VOTE!

This article buried in the Saturday’s New York Times reports that the Obama campaign has invested heavily in microtargeting.

Microtargeting uses computers and mathematical models to take disparate bits of information about voters — the cars they own, the groups they belong to, the magazines they read — and analyze it in a way to predict how likely a person is to vote and what issues and values are most important to him. Often these analyses turn up surprising results; for instance, Democrats have taken advantage of the fact that many evangelical Christians are open to hearing a pro-environmental message.

Though this is technique has long been favored by the Republican party, especially during the 2000 Bush campaign, even Republicans agree that he “Obama campaign has appropriated it and taken it to a new level.”

One of the largest data banks is Catalist, a for-profit company that specializes in providing data for the Obama campaign. Turns out its chief technology officer is 34 year old Vijay Ravindran, former director of the ordering-services group at Amazon.com, where he led a team of about 130 engineers who built and maintained the site’s “shopping cart.

From the Washington Post:

The work being done in Catalist’s McPherson Square offices—which, with its multiscreen computer terminals, resembles a Silicon Valley start-up—is helping revolutionize the fields known as data mining and microtargeting. … Catalist was founded in August 2005 by Harold Ickes, the longtime Clinton deputy White House chief of staff, after the 2004 campaign to address the Democrats’ inability to harness data. One of the first hires was a young engineer, Vijay Ravindran. … “With my hiring, he made a decision that this was going to be a real company,” Ravindran says. As the chief data-architecture guy at Catalist, he’s part of a new trend in political technology: As data become more important in campaigning, candidates are increasingly turning to the tech industry for business-level expertise.

In a feature on political strategists and microtargeting, from fastcompany.com [via the newstab, thanks brijo1], Ravindran says:

“In the political space, I felt it was very important to build a computing architecture that would take in real-time data, get them into a standardized format, and then load them into a place where they could be snapshotted out for particular purposes. That didn’t exist before. Now we have an architecture that scales more than 15 terabytes of data while providing an interface for users to work with. We expect to leave this election cycle with a piece of permanent infrastructure that enables groups to do microtargeting more efficiently than ever before. It all boils down to one principle: Leave no data behind.”

Below the fold is a video where Ravindran talks a little bit about what he does.

As the election nears, it is crucial to understand just how important this election will be for our community. Just a few years ago, the concept of major South Asian campaign groups, let along major South Asian candidates, was unthinkable. South Asians were a small group that didn’t get out to the polls in sizable numbers and those who did were usually spoken to solely on the issues of immigration and U.S.-India relations. This election, however, has dramatically changed the nature of the South Asian community’s involvement in politics. India Post recently had a great piece where they highlighted a few young South Asians who have been making their voice heard this election season, and it gives a good overview of how our community has mobilized this year.

The article profiles South Asians from a variety of backgrounds, all motivated to become active during this election season for different reasons. Bhavini Dhoshi, 25, is “currently working as a legal intern for a not-for-profit immigration services organization,” and especially cares about reproductive rights, the environment, and healthcare, amongst other issues. Shashi Dholandas, a 24-year old young law student, counts “the current state of the economy and the US standing in the international arena” as his major concerns. Niki Shah, an organizer with South Asians for Obama, says “My generation is overburdened with the cost of education. We want a decent education but the attached cost may outweigh the long-term benefits.”

The profiles are interesting and definitely worth a read, and are notable because of the breadth of interests and activities of the surveyed group. The article does mention U.S.-India relations, and these are surely important issues for members of our community, be they immigrants who once called a South Asian nation their home, or the children of those immigrants. Yet for every single young South Asian, these issues were secondary to topics such as healthcare, the environment, the war, or the economy.

At the DNC, Hrishi Karthikeyan, the founder of South Asians for Obama, noted that one of the reasons he started SAFO was because he wanted politicians and campaigns to realize that there were many South Asians for whom every issue was important, just as they would be for any American. For far too long, politicians had felt as though they only needed to talk to South Asians about issues such as immigration and U.S.-India relations, and they would have their vote. The massive activation in this campaign is changing this perception as more South Asians get involved and voice their concerns on every issue of importance. In this campaign, Indian-Americans have played a major role in issues concerning foreign policy, domestic policy, and finance, amongst other issues. Over the past year, one Indian-American has shined as the governor of a very Southern state while another is in a tight congressional race in Minnesota.

South Asians have worked hard in this election to rise from a small niche group to an important part of the electorate. Groups such as SAFO, Asian Americans for Obama, and non-partisan groups including SAALT have put forth their best efforts to transform the South Asian vote into a prominent piece of the American electoral map. It will all be for naught, however, if we don’t vote en masse this Tuesday. So tomorrow, your vote is not only about the direction of this country, but our community’s place in the American political spectrum. The choice between non-voting and voting is the choice between leaving our community a niche group that will always be on the periphery of the political scene or helping us emerge as a crucial bloc that can make our voices heard for many elections to come.

I actually loved Heidi Klum’s Kali outfit that V.V. blogged about. If I was wealthly enough to afford putting together something like that I’d be all about it. My costume from this past Friday night only cost $15 and I had to make it myself.

Before you ask, nobody tried to open the access panel and rig votes (not that it wasn’t encouraged). So here is the deal. If you are a reader of this site and wore a costume on Friday night that is either related to the election or to anything with a desi connection (like Klum’s costume) then please email me at abhi [at] sepiamutiny dot com and I will paste the picture in this post. No, if you wore a sari that doesn’t count as dressing up. As for me, I’d hate to throw my costume out. I am wondering if on Tuesday I should just go stand really close to and in front of people, just to see what happens.

Indian sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik created this sculpture on Puri Beach near Bhubaneswar, India

Its all about fight election night from now through Tuesday and the sense of excitement has been building (around the world even, as you can see in the picture above). I am now getting text messages from excited friends who have been “deployed” in battleground states as part of the 72 hour GOTV effort. I have also heard from South Asian Americans who are helping to bring potential new hires to the attention of the candidate’s transition teams. Tuesday should not be the end of desi political involvement but rather a new beginning. Anyone currently participating who thinks their job is done on Tuesday after simply voting doesn’t have an appreciation for the work needed to maintain a democracy. One of the founding fathers understood this well:

Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide. - John Adams [Link]

A couple of weeks ago I asked for reader’s help in identifying some local desi candidates that we should keep an eye on Tuesday night. One of those identified was Republican Sashi Sabaratnam McEntee who is a Sri Lankan American running for State Senate District 3 in California. Here is video from a recent debate between her and her Democratic opponent Mark Leno:

A 34-year-old Republican business consultant who has never before run for office is hoping to score a David-and-Goliath upset over Democrat Mark Leno in the race for the 3rd District State Senate seat in November.

Sashi McEntee, who expects to give birth to her first child in December, said she was recruited by members of the Marin Republican Party…

McEntee, who describes herself as a moderate Republican, favors some form of amnesty for undocumented immigrants. She opposes Proposition 8, which would eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry, and opposes criminalizing abortion. But she supports Proposition 4, which would require that the parents of minors be contacted and a 48-hour waiting period enforced before a doctor performs an abortion.

“I think that parents need to be involved in all medical decisions related to underage children,” McEntee said. [Link]

Sahsi’s trip to the Republican National Convention was featured by the Washington Post. She says she represents the many other “closet Republicans” out there in Northern California.

Sikhs are a fairly small group of voters in America, so I’m always intrigued when a candidate reaches out to us.

I expected the Obama campaign to issue Diwali greetings and figured he’d direct it to Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. But I was quite surprised when the Obama campaign also sent a letter to the American Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee to wish everybody a happy Tercentenary Celebration of the Guruship of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. It is a big holiday for Sikhs, but not one I expected any national politician to notice. (There were no official greetings from the McCain camp for either holiday)

As I’ve written before, these sorts of emails to the community are fairly cheap in terms of effort, and are a nice way to build good will, even if they tell you little about a candidate.

More important than holiday greetings was the difference in response by campaigns to the Sikh Coalition’s first ever Voter Guide for Sikh Americans. The Sikh Coalition is non-profit and non-partisan. Their guide invited responses from all presidential candidates (not just the major ones) including the Green Party, Socialist Party, Libertarian Party and even such ultra-fringe parties as the Prohibition Party and the Boston Tea Party.

They received extensive replies from Obama (Democratic Party) and Gloria Riva (Party of Socialism and Liberation) and shorter replies from Ralph Nader (Independent Party) and Gene Amondson (Prohibition Party). The GOP did not reply.

The fact that the GOP failed to respond to the survey was very telling. They could easily have filled out the first question, about interaction with Sikh voters and constituents, since McCain was actually involved in the official response to Balbir Singh Sodhi’s murder in Mesa, AZ in 2001. And the GOP has enough staff that they could have tasked somebody to fill the entire questionnaire out. No, the message associated with their lack of response was quite clear. A campaign won’t bother responding to a questionnaire if they’ve already written that bunch of voters off. (That factoid is actually from Audacity of Hope)

In the last few days before the election, I wanted to revisit each campaign’s efforts to reach out the desi voters.

Indians for McCain has new material on their website, including a “Candidate Comparison On Indian-Americans” (sic) which forms an interesting contrast to South Asians for Obama’s “Barack Obama: Working for South Asian Americans” and Obama vs. McCain Comparison Sheet handouts. The differences between the two websites recapitulate both differences between the campaigns but also differences within our community.

The difference in group names reveals their important differences in their attitudes. Indians for McCain is focussed both on Indo-Americans and on India’s relationship to America. Their candidate comparison covers only American foreign policy towards India, contrasting the candidates efforts on these three topics:

• On doing business with India
• On the US-India Civil Nuclear Deal
• On the U.S. pushing the G8 to include India

This is material designed to appeal to voters who are first generation immigrants, for whom issues of America’s treatment of India are paramount.

[There is also a group called SouthAsians for McCain but they have less material on their website and they are really an Indian-American group. Their banner includes the Indian flag and map, and they have an extensive section on McCain’s views on Indo-American relations which is exerpted from the Indian Express article on this topic]

SAFO’s approach instead stresses Asian American issues broadly. Their candidate comparison sheet is actually the campaign’s generic comparison sheet on all AAPI issues, covering topics such as college costs, immigration, minority health services, and compensation for Japanese American internment during WWII.

This handout is available in Hindi and Urdu, which is an odd choice since I doubt recent non-English speaking immigrants will see themselves as enough part of the Asian American community to care about the Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007.

Election Day is on TUESDAY NOVEMBER 4th and a state of Election fatigue/delirium has settled in like a fog creeping across the country (or maybe just with me). The folks at Projekt NewSpeak put out this short documentary on the importance of the ‘Asian American Vote’ and if they are going to swing the vote this Election cycle (via AngryAsianMan).

Even though the film generally refers to Asian American voters, they used the very desi ‘Macaca effect’ as their prime example. As was blogged about quite often here at Sepia Mutiny, the slurring of S.R. Sidarth a ‘macaca’ by George Allen essentially swung the vote in Virginia to Jim Webb by 0.5% (read Amardeep’s previous analysis here).

Desis may not have critical mass to swing the presidential vote (especially given the electoral college system) but as ‘33% of Asian Indians likely to vote are undecided voters’ a critical event at the local level could swing the vote. Especially with local politics such as Senate, Congress, County-wide and City seats. Neighborhoods with high South Asian concentrations where I was thinking this could be possible for Tuesday’s election were Chicago, New Jersey, Bay area, Minneapolis, pockets of FL, Detroit/Ann Arbor and of course, Virginia.

What say you? In your precinct/city/state, do you have a critical mass of voting desis that your community could swing the vote should a racist event occur on the campaign trail? Do you think the film is right in saying that as ‘Asian Americans’ we have the potential to swing the vote a la ‘Macaca effect’ once again? Is what is happening with Ashwin Madia this year’s Macaca moment?

In my last post on the racial turn in the Minnesota 3rd District Congressional race, I left open the possibility that the rhetoric being used against Ashwin Madia might not turn into a pattern. Now there is no doubt.

On the left below are publicly available images of Madia. On the right, you see the images as presented in a recent Republican attack ad (“Running to Raise Taxes”; view it here):

From KARE 11, an NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities, Minnesota:

A Republican attack ad invites viewers to “meet the real Ashwin Madia,” but the still photos featured in the spot present a noticeably darker version of the 3rd District DFL congressional candidate.

“At least three of the photos of Madia were obviously darkened, using one method or another,” public affairs and media consultant Dean Alger told KARE 11.

He said the viewing public has grown accustomed to hearing distorted claims, or statements and votes used out of context. However, Alger asserts the altered images of Madia, the son of Indian immigrants, crosses a line. (link)

Just in case readers need a Razib-ian reminder of why this is bad, here is a bit more:

Via Andrew Sullivan, a smart quote from Ross Douthat regarding Bobby Jindal’s prospects for 2012:

If anything, I think the way the McCain campaign has finished up — and the way the media has covered it — works to Jindal’s advantage in 2012: Conservatives are going to be extremely eager to prove that they only hate Obama because he’s a radical, not because they’re racist, and what better way to demonstrate that than to nominate a dark-skinned conservative with a funny-sounding name? Indeed, much of the current affection for Jindal among movement conservatives - and especially in talk-radio land - can be traced to precisely such a yearning for a conservative Obama: A multicultural prince who channels Ronald Reagan, and whose nomination would at least reduce the taint of racism that clings to the American Right.(Ross Douthat, link)

Yes, that’s why I thought, many months ago, that Jindal would have made a good VP choice for McCain. (I expect it will come out, in months to come, that McCain specifically asked Jindal to join the ticket this past summer and Jindal turned him down.).

The above argument is in response to a point from Christopher Orr at The New Republic that I think many on the left (including our own Ennis) have agreed with:

Though rarely explicit (and certainly not exclusive) a large portion of the GOP’s closing argument this cycle has been to stoke white, working class fear and suspicion of the Other. The dark-skinned man with the foreign-sounding name may be a Muslim, or a socialist, or a friend of terrorists, or a racial huckster, or a fake U.S. citizen, or some other vague kind of “radical.” You may never be sure which he is (maybe all of the above), but in your gut you simply don’t “know” him the way you know the other candidates. This is not, to put it mildly, a message likely to benefit Bobby Jindal. (Christopher Orr, link)

For Douthat, by contrast, the attempt to “otherize” Obama is a combination of things, involving not just his skin color and name, but also his academic background, history as an urban community organizer, and membership in a liberation theology church:

I think this vastly, vastly overestimates the extent to which the attempt to “Otherize” Obama has been about race qua race (and racism qua racism), and vastly underestimates the extent to which it’s been about the way Obama’s name, ancestry and skin color have dovetailed with other aspects of his background - from his liberation-theology church to the academic-lefty and urban-machine milieu in which he spent much of his early political career - that the GOP would have tried to play up against any Democratic candidate (and especially in a year when the party didn’t have much else going for it). (Ross Douthat, link)

All in all, an interesting exchange.

I think it is certainly true that the GOP has been stoking up xenophobia (have you seen this?) through its attempt to smear Obama as “palling around with terrorists” (Rashid Khalidi being the latest smear), and with the whole “Who is the real Barack Obama?” line of thought.

But Douthat’s point of view — that this is merely a cynical, tactical attack, not based on fundamental beliefs amongst the leadership — gives me some hope that this will not become a chronic line of attack should Obama win the election next week.

Happy Deepavali! Today I am wearing a new shirt and eating truffles. (Delish.) What a pleasant time! Other people are having a lovely Deepavali too, I hope and assume. Probably including the ten Malaysian Hindraf activists sprung on bail just in time for hols.

Per The Economic Times:

“A police spokesman said all of them were freed to enable them to celebrate Deepavali. “Although the police, under the law, could extend their remand orders to facilitate investigations, yet on humanitarian ground they were released to enable them to celebrate the festive occasion,” the spokesman added.

Shut UP! Malaysian government dudes, you guys are SO nice! SO generous! Especially considering what they did, gathering outside the PM’s office to deliver a memo…

To review, Hindraf (the Hindu Rights Action Force) is a group in Malaysia that protests what The Economic Times calls “perceived discrimination against the [country’s] estimated 2.6 million ethnic Indians, a bulk of them Tamil Hindus.”*

And as of earlier this month, Hindraf is banned in Malaysia. Longer backgrounder here, via SAJAForum.

*(Don’t get me started on my rant about news organizations using the word “perceived” for something they can damn well report on. Aren’t you supposed to be government watchdogs? Is there discrimination? Or isn’t there? Hint: there is.)

In the run up to election day I need help from our readers. I want to know about all the desi candidates running for elected office this Nov. 4th. In the comments of this post please provide:

1) Name of candidate and party affiliation

2) City, State

3) Office they are running for

4) Their website, a news article about them, or a commercial by them

In the early days of SM I had the time to do all this myself. These days I am just too busy to do all the research. More importantly however, there are many more desi candidates running. Let me get you guys warmed up by posting Ashish Mahendru’s television ad. He is running for judge locally here in Houston. That’s right, in Texas you elect your judges so that laws get interpreted just the way you like .

Big bonus points for anyone that finds a desi candidate running for office in the state of North Dakota, where SM’s world blogging headquarters is based.

Election fever is on the rise. (I don’t know about you, but none of my favorite TV shows quite have the same appeal these days and anytime I pick up a newspaper or hop on a website or facebook, I’m more likely to click on a election story or link than anything else.) It’s even hitting Anu Garg, the software engineer turned wordsmith and the brain behind the immensely popular (600,000 people in some 200 countries) A.Word.A.Day newsletter.

Garg is asking a simple question this week: What’s in a name (of those whom we call our presidential hopefuls)?

“The effect of the actions of a president last for years and eponyms (words coined after someone’s name) enter the language that reflect their legacy, such as Reaganomics and teddy bear (after Theodore Roosevelt),” Garg wrote earlier today in his daily newsletter. And, although the five words for this week’s A.Word.A.Day all appear to have been coined after this year’s presidential candidates (Obama, Biden, McCain, and Palin). they have been in the language even before these candidates were born.

The first word for this week: obambulate

PRONUNCIATION:
(o-BAM-byuh-layt) MEANING:
verb tr.: To walk about.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin ob- (towards, against) + ambulare (to walk). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ambhi- (around) that is also the source of ambulance, alley, preamble, and bivouac. The first print citation of the word is from 1614.
USAGE:
“We have often seen noble statesmen obambulating (as Dr. Johnson would say) the silent engraving-room, obviously rehearsing their orations.”
The Year’s Art; J.S. Virtue & Co.; 1917.

[In case you’re wondering, the image to your right was generated using the above definition, courtesy of Wordle, a wonderfully obsessive site that generates word clouds for a chunk of text, url, or RSS feed.]

The remaining presidential words will be posted here everyday for the rest of this week. And, a Q&A with Anu Garg follows below the fold.

Last week the Sacramento County GOP, which is the local party for the state capital of the most populous state in the union, had image below on their the official website!

If you had any doubt that the GOP was promoting the message “Obama = Arab = Muslim = Terrorist!” this should put your doubts to rest. (To their credit, the state level party quickly had the material removed but that doesn’t undercut the broader campaign.)

One minor personal consequence of this tactic is that I am unable to go canvassing door-to-door in battleground states for either campaign. Can you imagine the reception I would encounter knocking on doors for the Obama campaign in West Virginia? Or how about ringing doorbells for McCain in Missouri?

Sure, I might be able to overcome the xenophobia and fear of certain voters, but that would make the exercise more about me than the candidate, with each minute spent explaining who I am taken away from time avalable to make the case for a particular campaign. No, that would be immensely selfish on my part.

Unfortunately, this leaves me with only one option if I want to participate in face-to-face persuasion of voters. I could pretend to be working for the opposition.

Do you still have ANY doubt as to how this Presidential race is going to end in a few weeks? I can point you to at least one person who is betting on an Obama victory [via Politico]:

The key word that should grab your attention in the flyer above is “Iowa,” the location of Jindal’s fundraiser. Piyush “Bobby” Jindal has just begun campaigning for the Republican nomination in 2012. The other thing to note are the endorsements in the bottom left. I had planned on writing this post all week (even before seeing this flyer) based on some circumstantial evidence I had turned up. This just ended any doubt.

It seems that every time I tell some political wonk on the campaign front that I’m mobilizing Asian and Pacific Islander voters, their eyes glaze over condescendingly. To them, the AAPI community (including South Asian Americans) are a complicated and apathetic community to mobilize. This election cycle, this community has been referred to as the ‘Sleeping Giant’ and a national report released this week shows that the AAPI community could be the missed swing vote this for November 4th.

The researchers’ 2008 National Asian American Survey (NAAS) shows that 41 percent of Asian Americans are likely to favor Obama, while 24 percent support John McCain. In battleground states, where either candidate could win on Election Day, Obama leads with 43 percent of Asian Americans supporting him and 22 percent favoring McCain.

Researchers point out that a key finding of the study is the high proportion of undecided Asian American likely voters: 34 percent. Among the general population, national polls conducted since the major party conventions show that undecided voters are approximately 8 percent of the electorate.[NAAS]

Yes, the report states the Asian Americans are overwhelming leaning Obama - but even bigger news is that 1/3 of the likely to vote population are still deciding how to vote. Thus, if campaigns want to get the most bang for their buck for the next three weeks, Asian American likely voters seems like a good place to start.

How do the ‘Asian Indians’ fair in this report?

Among Asian American citizens, 65 percent can be described as likely voters. Japanese American citizens are the most likely to vote (82%), followed by Asian Indian (73%), Koreans (72%), Filipinos (67%), Vietnamese (65 %) and Chinese (60%). [pg 1]

The report predicts that 43 percent of Asian American adults will vote in the 2008 elections. Amongst Asian Indians, 45 percent will vote, but the proportions are higher if one looks at turnout among the citizen population (73%) and the registered voter population (78%). [pg 6]

Asian Indians identify largely as Democrats (39%) and only 7 percent identify as Republican. 19 percent identify as independents, and 35 percent identify as non-partisan voters. [pg 11]

This election, 53 percent of Asian Indians are voting for Obama, 13 percent are voting for McCain and 33 percent of Asian Indians are still undecided. [pg 13]

Should be no surprise that desis talk politics - 70 percent discussed politics with their friends and family. And 14 percent of Asian Indians have visited the internet to discuss a candidate or issue. (Oh yeah, reading Sepia Mutiny is a form of political participation…!) [pg 23]

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past week or so, you will have heard about the ways in which it is being implied that Obama is either an Arab, or a terrorist, or both (because, what’s the difference really?).

To the right is a billboard from the swing state of Missouri. It appears to be a spontaneous emission of racism by somebody local, rather than a calculated political gesture associated with a campaign, but in many ways that makes it scarier to me.

The tenor of the race has changed, and gotten nastier. Back in February, McCain clearly dissassociated himself from a speaker at a rally who kept referring to Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama” and the campaign followed suit. However, in the last month Obama’s middle name has cropped up more and more often at rallies, including one where ” a Florida sheriff ranted about “Barack Hussein Obama” at a Palin rally while in full uniform.” [NYT]

This even arose recently at a McCain rally where McCain’s response was quite revealing:

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not — he’s an Arab. He is not…No?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: No, ma’am. No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not. Thank you. [HuffPo]

Ideally, I would have liked McCain to have said three things in his answer:

1. Obama is a decent man with whom I have major policy disagreements
2. He is an American who is not of Arabic origin or a muslim
3. Not that there would be anything wrong with him being either Arab or Muslim

Neither campaign has managed to make that last point, and it’s a very important one.

This past Saturday afternoon, proud desis rallied up and down Pioneer Boulevard in Artesia, also known as Southern California’s Little India. Oct 11th marked National Coming Out Day and this was the second annual rally jointly hosted by Satrang and South Asian Network. But unlike last year’s rally, this year it was charged with election energy and urgency. On November 4th people will be voting on Proposition 8, a ballot measure that would take away the right to get married for single sex couples.

Shoppers and shop owners looked on queerly, as the procession flamboyantly marched up and down the crowded sidewalk. Most walked by ignoring, some stopped and asked questions, and there were a couple of ‘toba, toba’ aunties spotted walking by. Around fifty people were in the rally and everyone was chanting “Hum suth ek hay [We are all one],” “No on Prop 8,” and my personal favorite, “We are here. We’re queer. We’re out on Pioneer.”

“We are here to raise awareness and visibility about the South Asian queer community here in Little India,” said Sanjay Chhugani, former president of SATRANG. “We’ve been received very positively. This is the second time we are out here. We were out here last year on National Coming Out Day…I don’t think there was anything negative about it.”

On a bustling street corner, the rally stopped marching to address the curious bystanders.

“Folks we are here today to come together to reach out for your support because right now our rights are being violated,” said Hamid Khan, Executive Director of South Asian Network. “We are being stripped of our humanity. We are being stripped of our dignity. Why? Because we are queer. Why? Because we want to celebrate our life the way we want to…

“Proposition 8 will ban marriage from people who love each other. Proposition 8 would ban marriage from people who want to spend their lives together….we are asking for you to tell your neighbors, to tell your colleagues, to tell your friends to not be hateful. Do not deny people the lives the way they want to spend their lives.”

Though Proposition 8 is clearly not just about the South Asian community, this rally served to give a voice to South Asians in the community who are going to be deeply affected should the proposition get passed.

[More words and pictures after the jump]

Things from the campaign trail keep getting uglier. Here is what went down at a rally in Davenport, Iowa TODAY:

At a McCain event, as the crowd waited for McCain himself to arrive, Pastor Arnold Conrad of the Grace Evangelical Free Church of Davenport, Iowa, gave an invocation that included the following: “I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day.” [Link]

First of all, even the hate speech itself demonstrates gross ignorance. For goodness sake, if you are going to be a bigot at least have the courtesy to be a bigot that makes sense. “Hindu” and “Buddha” aren’t gods. Millions of people don’t worship “Hindu.” Furthermore, all three of the Abrahamic religions worship the same God, Muslims just call him Allah. Geez, can anyone just sign up to be a pastor? This was the invocation that started off the rally before McCain even arrived. I guess they wanted to get the crowd in the mood.

Update: Video is now up (thanks to commenter “baplog”)

Here was the McCain campaign’s official response:

McCain Iowa spokeswoman Wendy Rieman: “While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama’s judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief.” [link]

Yes, we wouldn’t want to distract from real issues. Right.

Where is there really to go from there?

ABC News’ Imtiyaz Delawala, traveling with Palin, reports that a Palin supporter in Johnstown, Pa., today was holding a Curious George monkey doll on which he’d put an Obama sticker. [Link]

If I was Delawala I’d ask for a bodyguard while reporting. All of this is increasingly troubling. After the attacks on September 11th there was a backlash that included violence against anyone perceived to be a Muslim. Should we be worrying about the same thing if Obama should win?

Update: Frank Rich of the NYTimes breaks it down.

McCain isn’t the only trailing Republican candidate whose campaign tactics are getting increasingly nasty. Erik Paulsen of Minnesota is giving him a run for his money. Months back I observed how eerily similar Madia’s campaign against Paulsen is to Obama’s against McCain’s. A week ago Amardeep followed up with more nastiness. And now the s*it gets deeper:

While Republican Party representatives took heat this week for claiming in fliers that DFL candidate Ashwin Madia had the “wrong demographics” to serve the people of the 3rd Congressional District, they got off lightly with respect to the not-so-veiled undercurrent in their attack on Madia’s “lifestyle.” By larding in mentions of Madia’s household (he’s a renter, not an owner) and his hobbies (he’s not a soccer coach), the tacit insinuation that Madia must be gay is made easier to politely ignore. But it appears to be the real payload behind GOP efforts to point out Madia’s purported, um, difference from the stolid homesteaders of the 3rd District.

“Gutter politics are a gross insult to the good people of our district,” Rep. Jim Ramstad said Tuesday while praising Republican candidate Erik Paulsen for upholding of the “proud tradition of clean politics and ethical campaigns.” But as history demonstrates, there is a long and unadmirable record of flogging a political opponent’s unmarried status as a genteel means of throwing the race into the gutter. And since no accusation is ever actually made, the implication is not really susceptible to rebuttal. It just hangs out there with a wink. [link]

Got that? Not only is Paulsen’s campaign implying that he is “the wrong demographic” (ethnically) but now they are hinting that because he is ~30 and single he might be gay. Geez, and you thought desi parents were the ones putting on the marriage pressure! Now for some good news. SurveyUSA and DNCC internal polling shows that Madia may actually be up on Paulsen. The expected high Democratic turnout may further boost Madia via the coattail effect:

SurveyUSA (10/6-7, likely voters, 8/26-28 in parens):

Ashwin Madia (D): 46 (41)
Erik Paulsen (R): 43 (44)
David Dillon (IP): 8
(MoE: ±4%)

These numbers aren’t far off from a recent DCCC internal poll showing Madia leading by 44-39. SUSA still seems to have a questionably GOP-tilted sample of young voters (they break for Paulsen by a 51-40 margin in this poll), but that might be offset by a possibly-skewed 53-38 Madia lead among 50-to-64 year-olds. [Link]

When we first blogged about the differences between McCain and Obama on Pakistan, we had no idea that this issue would grow to be a central issue in the debates. What’s funny about it is how it leads the candidate of each party to sound very much like he belongs to the other side.

Doesn’t Obama sound like a Republican, with his insistence that US national security should take a precedence over the sovereignity of other countries?

And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden; we will crush Al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority. [Link]

McCain, in his objection, is forced to sound like a Democrat, talking about soft power and how American arrogance can lead to more support for terrorism:

You know, if you are a country and you’re trying to gain the support of another country, then you want to do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion. When you announce that you’re going to launch an attack into another country, it’s pretty obvious that you have the effect that it had in Pakistan: It turns public opinion against us. [Link]

No wonder Palin got confused which position she was supposed to support:

“So we do cross border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan you think?,” Rovito asked. “If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin responded [Link]

What I don’t understand is why nobody has brought up the fact that events have overtaken both candidates. They’re acting like there is a debate over whether to respect Pakistani sovereignty when the US already regularly violates Pakistani airspace and has sent special forces in on the ground:

This past weekend I returned to NYC for an event I knew would be too good to miss: Writers Speak Out for Obama, featuring an all-star line-up.

Considering this blog’s longstanding interest in matters both literary and political, I figured SM readers would want to see the scene. So here we go. Six literary giants came out to read for the benefit, which was the brainchild of Meera Nair (the writer) and emceed by Mira Nair (the director). It was not an official Obama event, but rather, as Meera noted, “community organizing.”

Above, the luminaries themselves. Thanks to Preston Merchant for letting me use his pictures, which, predictably, are awesome. Left to right: Mira Nair, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Suketu Mehta, Salman Rushdie, Akhil Sharma, Manil Suri. Yes, really. All of them. Together.

Earlier this year, wedding bells in California started ringing for people in the gay and lesbian community when the California Supreme Court ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates the promise of equality in the California Constitution. But all that might change on November 4th.

Proposition 8 eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry. Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.[NoOnProp8]

Desis in the GLBT community in California have been getting organized. Down here in Southern California, Satrang has been taking the lead and showing up at events and handing out educational materials to push for no on Prop 8. Bay Area based Trikone has stepped it up and taken it further. They took out an ad in India Currents with the following poster:

The Mutiny is a a sucker for the advocating Nanis/Dadis and this poster of the the grandmother holding her granddaughter is just too adorable. Her message?

My grandkids, Mira and Kabir bring so much joy to my life. Our desi traditions have flourished with my son, Inder and his partner, Ken. But Prop 8 threatens to take away our right to a happy home by banning my son from marrying his life partner. Please help us protect our family and the rights of my grandchildren.

Inder and Ken and their family were profiled in India Currents earlier this year.

Inder, a dermatologist, and his partner, Ken, a Corporate Officer, first started talking about children in Spring 2003 when they became domestic partners. “We are both from large families,” Inder explains in his considered, correct way, “and it seemed like a natural progression to have our own kids.” Today they are a family of four: Inder, Ken, Kabir—who is two and a half—and Meera.[IndiaCurrents]

Their families have have been very supportive in the raising of the children.

“Our families are our biggest support groups,” [Inder] says, “We both have large, extended families. Here’s where the embracing, extended Indian family—with its Aunties who want to fatten you up for your own good and third cousins whom you have to see every month because they are family—can actually be a powerful support structure. But often, in South Asian communities, [Bay are psychologist] Amlani explains, there isn’t much support from the family for same-sex partnerships.[IndiaCurrents]

There are other rights that the couple have to struggle with outside of the right to marriage - the access to immigration. Inder is an immigrant whereas Ken isn’t.

Last week Nina Shen Rastogi at Slate asked the question, “If we’re in the midst of a financial collapse, why aren’t executives jumping out of office buildings?”

Because the current situation hasn’t had nearly as devastating an effect on people’s personal finances. The Great Crash of 1929—and, to a lesser extent, the crash of 1987—did lead some people to commit suicide. But in nearly all of those cases, the deceased had suffered a major loss when the market collapsed. Now, due in large part to those earlier experiences, investors tend to keep their portfolios far more diversified, so as to avoid having their entire fortunes wiped out when stocks take a downturn. In addition, some of the worst declines in the past week have been limited to a smaller number of companies (such as Lehman Bros., Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs), further limiting the potential damage to individual investors. [Link]

Sadly, we may be about to see people’s personal finances affected if things keep going bad. This afternoon there was tragic news out of the San Fernando Valley. An out-of-work Indian American financial advisor killed his wife, mother-in-law and three young sons before turning the gun on himself:

“We believe this to be a murder-suicide,” Moore said. “It appears [the gunman] killed his family and then took his own life.”

The bodies of the man’s 39-year-old wife, 70-year-old mother-in-law, and three sons — ages 19, 12 and 7 — were found inside the home’s various bedrooms. Authorities had earlier said that one of the victims was the gunman’s mother but now say it was his mother-in-law.

Friends and neighbors identified the couple as Karthik and Subasri Rajaram, who had lived in the neighborhood for a few years.

Moore said police believe that the gunman shot the victims sometime after 6 p.m. Saturday, and that he had left behind three letters indicating that he had carried out the killings. One letter, addressed to law enforcement, confessed to the shootings. He wrote a second letter to friends. The third letter, police said, appeared to be a will.

Moore said Rajaram had previously worked for Price Waterhouse and Sony Pictures and “had attested to some financial difficulties,” Moore said. “He had become despondent over his financial” situation…

One of the young victims, Ganesha Rajaram, 12, was a 7th grade honors student at Alfred B. Nobel in Northridge, which he had attended for the last two years, said Principal Robert Coburn. His parents were very involved in his education, frequently interacting with teachers and never showing any signs that anything was amiss, he said. [Link]

Of course it is pure speculation at this point to assume that Mr. Rajaram’s financial woes are directly related to the current bear market, but the San Fernando Valley was one of the hardest hit in the sub-prime debacle. Hopefully this remains an isolated incident and not a national trend.

With both the Obama and McCain campaigns now in their “end-game” phase we will be seeing lots of kitchen-sink campaigning in the coming weeks by both sides (anyone watch the news today?). The vast majority of YouTube ads you see released on the campaign websites, on various internet blogs, or especially reported on in the news, are never really even aired as paid advertisements on television. The campaigns rely on the free publicity provided by blogs and the media to circulate those ads. In short, more pundits and bloggers talk about or report on the ads then actually see them spontaneously. This is because television advertising is damn expensive, even for these historically wealthy campaigns. A huge chunk of advertising is actually being done “sub-rosa” via the radio and direct mailers. Here, for example, is a direct mailer being sent out by the Obama campaign [via Politico]:

“American jobs to India” reads the bottom box. Clearly the Obama campaign isn’t afraid to play the outsourcing/xenophobia card as long as it flies well under the radar in a battleground state (probably Missouri in this case). I wonder if South Asians for Obama will be in touch with the campaign about this mailer now that the desi community has shown it can bring “resources” (the buzz word I kept hearing at the Democratic National Convention) to the table and therefore has a voice at said table.

We are 30 days before Election Day, and with each day, there seems to be one more new piece of propaganda to buy. We had our own set of Sepia Mutiny political t-shirts on the site last month. Now DesiWear is in the desi political t-shirt business. From the DesiWear blog:

In a few weeks, probably one of the most important and historic elections will be held in the United States. …we have two candidates that are worthy of the presidency; John McCain is a living hero, and a very admirable politician. Barrack [sic] Obama, in his own right, is a visionary who understands that the United States needs to step out of the shadow of dark and start rebuilding its rep with positive and logical change…We at Desi Wear don’t usually get involved in politics, however, after living in North America over the past eight years, it’s absolutely clear that in order for the United States to get back on track on the world stage and lead our world with the TRUE American dream we must come together and join Barrack [sic] Obama and his message for change for a more prosperous and progressive United States. Now is the time! Let’s unite together and vote Barrack [sic] Obama for the next President of the United States. Show you care, rock our new “Desis for Obama” original T. [DesiWear]

Cute. you get a t-shirt and motivation all for one low price of $25. So close to Election Day though, I’m a little skeptical that orders made will arrive in the mail before Nov. 4th. These shirts are unaffiliated with the official South Asians for Obama campaign (SAFO does not have shirts but does have SAFO buttons for sale).

What I love about these shirts is that they are created by a desi owned business unaffiliated with the Obama campaign. But this business wanted to do something. So they did what they do best, designed t-shirts. In fact, there are many people in the Asian American community who have designed ethnically targeted logos/t-shirts for Obama, completely unconnected to the official campaign. It’s all rather…grassroots, you know?

Are you a desi not for Obama and looking for a shirt? Well, I couldn’t find a desis for McCain t-shirt. I couldn’t find non-partisan “Desi Vote” gear either, though this desi shirt at BlackLava comes pretty close. Check out the thousands of political designs up at Cafe Press - I’m sure one of them will suit you, and your political leanings too. Or, be grassroots and design and print one of your own!

Just a quick post, to highlight something that I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about in the weeks to come. We’re starting to see racially-tinged rhetoric against an Indian-American candidate for U.S. Congress:

It seems to me that the officials at this press event know exactly what they’re saying, though they nevertheless deny the racist and xenophobic thrust of their comments: “From a demographic standpoint, Erik Paulson fits the district very well.”

I do not know whether the Republican Party in Minnesota is going to start running ads along these lines or not. If not, perhaps this isn’t really all that important. But the rhetoric here just feels too deliberate to be merely a one-off event or an accident. That said, if they’re sinking to this level, Madia must be doing something right.

Incidentally, here is a debate between Madia and Paulson that took place on Minnesota Public Radio in mid-August. And here are a few recent SM posts related to Madia: here, here, and here.

…well, that’s what my Father would have said, had he been around to witness the smarmy perviness (thanks for submitting this to the news tab, KXB!):

For those who (like me) can’t see wideo at work, here’s what went down:

Sarah Palin and the foreign leaders she has met with in New York have said very little to reporters over the last two days, but the press happened to be in the room on Wednesday for one eyebrow-raising exchange, as the new president of Pakistan lavished praise on Palin’s looks. [CNN]

On entering a room filled with several Pakistani officials this afternoon, Palin was immediately greeted by Sherry Rehman, the country’s Information Minister.

“And how does one keep looking that good when one is that busy?,” Rehman asked, drawing friendly laughter from the room when she complimented Palin.

“Oh, thank you,” Palin said. [CNN]

A new study out in India claims that “in the last decade, at least one-fifth of the country’s electorate was paid cash for their votes.” [HT MR] The study also claims that this percentage (unsurprisingly) is far higher amongst those living below the poverty line, with as many as 94% of Andhra voters below the poverty line alleged to have sold their votes. The side of the bribe varies from around $3/voter up to (and this I find hard to believe) $25:

The bribe money varies from state to state. It may be Rs100-150 (a voter) in some states and it can go up to Rs1,000 in some constituencies [link]

[Huge graphic of findings below the fold]

I don’t have a problem believing that there is vote buying in India - there’s huge corruption throughout the electoral system. Furthermore, vote buying is common behavior in many democracies, including when America was younger.

Washington and Jefferson bought elections using alcohol; Washington paid 40 pounds (a huge sum in those days) to win an election against a more popular rival for the VA legislature in 1758. These practices continued after the founding of the Republic:

Some politicians had been known to buy votes and pay repeat voters. In 1823 the price of a vote in New York City was $5 and for repeat voters, went as high as $30. [link]

I’m also not surprised that poor people who are willing to sell their labor and their bodies just to stay alive might be willing to take a payment.

No, what I have trouble with is the fact that the article reports the conclusions of this study while waving their hands concerning how these numbers were estimated:

Explaining the methodology for the study, Rao said CMS used a perception, experience and estimation method to arrive at its conclusions. “Not many will admit they have been bribed to cast their vote,” he said. “But, in confidence, they would let you know if they knew someone who has taken money.” [link]

It’s not that I’m against Sunny Leone (NSFW). I am totally pro desi woman in any non-mainstream industry. I even blogged about her on Sepia Mutiny previously as a ‘cool desi woman under 30.’ I like her, you know, for a porn star.

But at work today, I was researching voting public service announcement (PSA) targeted toward the Asian American community. There was the bikini-clad Korean one, the kung fu epic one, the Kelly Hu bowing to George Takai one. There are even several PSAs put out by the non-profit APIA Vote that have a stream of famous Asian American actors talking about voting. But of course, none of the PSAs had a desi face.

SAJA Forum’s Sree Sreenivasan had brought this issue up earlier this year…

…I am writing today to bring attention to the fact that to some (just some) Asian Americans, South Asians still don’t count as Asian Americans…How else to interpret these two political public service ads, created by and starring Asian Americans and aimed at Asian Americans? Take a look at each and see neither bothers to put in any South Asian faces. John Cho, one half of the “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” team is featured in both ads, but you won’t find his at-least-as-equally-famous partner, Kal Penn, in either ad… I am glad there are such efforts out there to get Asian Americans to vote. But I am struck by how ridiculous it is not to have even a token brown face in these ads. [SAJAForum]

Sree, I found the token brown face amongst the sea of voting PSAs!!! I found the one! The youth vote organization Declare Yourself has a stream of quirky/sexual PSAs targeted directly to the youth demographics (at least “quirky/sexual” is what comes to mind when I watch McLovin teaching me how to pull the lever.) Declare Yourself partnered with Vivid Entertainment to create the following PSA, starring our gal, the sole desi starring in a voting PSA, Sunny Leone.

“As an immigrant who is thrilled to exercise her right to vote in a presidential election for the first time, I wanted to do what I could to get other young people to participate,” said Leone who only recently became an American citizen. “There’s no excuse not to register -DeclareYourself.com makes it so easy.” [LVTSG]

I could go on and on about the innovation behind a voting non-profit partnering with an adult entertainment company… but I’m sure you just want to get to the video already, don’t you?

Did Sunny get you excited…to vote?

Go to Rock the Vote and register to vote online today. We have less then 45 days till Election Day on November 4th. You’ll need to re-register if you moved, changed names, or changed political parties. In most states the last day to register to vote is 30 days before Election Day.

So here’s my personal request. Though it’s great Sunny is the first desi face in a voting PSA, I think there should be more. And since the boys have Sunny, how about we gals get some brown sugar like Sendhil Ramamurthy, Naveen Andrews or Kal Penn to make a voting PSA? That would definitely rock my vote. ;-)

Perhaps in response to my last post about the record blinding whiteness of the RNC, the GOP has decided to reach out to minority voters in the key state of Virginia with a big rally this weekend.

Among the key speakers at this rally will be none other than former Senator George Allen of Macaca fame, a man the state party sees as perfectly exemplifying the face they want to put forward to minority voters:

“George Allen has an excellent record on issues of diversity, reaching out to people…His whole career, his whole life have been a testament to a guy who’s treated people equally across racial lines, across every kind of line.” [Link]

No, you haven’t accidentally clicked on a post from the Onion, this is for real, I don’t have the imagination to make something like this up.

For those of you whose memory is hazy, two years ago George Allen was a senator from Virginia, favored not only for re-election but for the party’s Presidential nomination in 2008 until he called a young desi by the name of S.R. Sidarth a macaca, and welcomed him to “America and the real world.” [Youtube]

In the process of digging around in Allen’s history, reporters found out that he also had a real fondness for the Confederacy and used to keep a noose hanging from a tree in his law office. So it’s not just desis who have reasons to be repulsed by Allen, it’s a far larger group of potential voters.

When asked about the macaca incident, the communications director for the VA GOP waved the whole thing off as being just a wikipedia smear job:

Asked whether “macaca” might cloud the message a bit, Scimeca said the whole thing was a smear-job by the Dems: “Anyone had to go on Wikipedia to be offended by it. And you know how people can mess with Wikipedia.” [Link]

That last statement will probably offend a group that overlaps heavily with desis in Virginia, techies. After all, how could any self-respecting geek still respect a party spokesman who can’t tell his Wikipedia from his Youtube?

Related posts: Q: What is a “Macaca” and should we fear it? ; “Macaca” Not Going Away ; The Macaca Speaks

Here are the final batch of political t-shirts that Manish and I have created (in case you are looking to sport something subversive with just about 50 days to go before we have a new president). First up is “Hare Bama” (which you may recognize):

The next t-shirt tries to help clear up confusion:

Watching the Republican National Convention was a little like being lost in an Alaskan snowstorm: I was blinded by the unbearable whiteness of being a Republican delegate. It was surprising, therefore, to find out that the delegates were even whiter than they appeared on TV. It seems the camera not only adds ten pounds, it also increases the amount of melanin in the room.

While 44% of all delegates at the DNC were minorities, this was true for only 7% of RNC delegates. In fact, this was one of the whitest RNC conventions in decades, pretty much since Black Americans effectively regained the franchise:

Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago [Link]

This was a big shift from 2000 and 2004, when the Bush campaign successfully reached out strongly to Black and Latino voters. The absence of Latino voters was particularly striking, probably because Latino activists have been driven out of the party grassroots that constitute the delegates by the rancor over immigration.

The party has also made a concerted effort to court Hispanics, but its electoral gains have been diminished by the hard-line stance many Republicans have taken on immigration… 5 percent of delegates are Hispanic, the lowest percentage at a Republican convention since 1996 [Link]

McCain’s own campaign manager said:

“We have to make a better case to the Hispanic voter that the Republican Party has something to offer other than a deportation slip,” [Link]

And while I was unable to find any figures on Asians at the Republican convention, the numbers leave little room for Asian delegates unless in very small number.

Dear Bridget,

Amar chotho apu. My sister from another mother (because all of us Bangladeshis essentially are, nah?). Is Bridget your bhalou nam or dak nam? Neither? Ok. Well, yay! Finally, a Bangladeshi-American makes it to the stage of a big political party convention. Rumor has it that your outfit was pretty fly. How did it feel being up there on stage? Did you feel like you were breaking boundaries? Because as the first Bangladeshi-American on stage at the Republican National Convention, you definitely were. And your mother, Cindy McCain, made sure to let everyone know in her RNC speech how she “discovered” you too.

For me, the great moment of clarity was when I became a mother. Something changed in me. I would never see my obligations the same way again. It was after that I was walking through the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh, surrounded by terrible poverty and the devastation of a cyclone. All around me were the children and the desperate faces of their mothers. The pain was overwhelming, and I felt helpless. But then I visited an orphanage begun by Mother Teresa, and two very sick little girls captured my heart. There was something I could do. I could take them home, and so I did. Today, both of those little girls are healthy and happy. And one of them you just met tonight: our beautiful daughter, Bridget. [Fox News]

Ahh, but who is this other little Bangladeshi girl you were adopted with?

John and Cindy McCain adopted one of them, Wes Gullett [McCain’s former aide] and his wife Deborah adopted the other… The McCains adopted the baby with the cleft palate, Bridget, and the Gulletts adopted the other one, Nicki. Both children required a lot of medical attention, but the Gulletts never saw a hospital bill.[ABCNews]

Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin made history last night, as she addressed the RNC. In her speech, she (of the lifetime NRA membership) aimed barbed verbal ammunition at Barack Obama, though many reports indicated that she would not do so; so much for reciprocating his class-drenched gesture of reminding the press corps that he, too, was the child of a teen mother, and that they should back the muck off of Bristol Palin. I know, I get it— it’s the convention. It’s a pep rally, time to rile up the fans.

Palin displayed exquisite contempt while commenting on Obama’s past work as a “Community Organizer”; and yes, that’s exactly how she pronounced it, as if the words were too strangely shaped for her mouth, as if they should be chaperoned by quotes.

But, community Organizers do extraordinary things. If you don’t believe me, look here, at one of the most revered “Community Organizers”, ever:

From last night’s performance:

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.

And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.

I have yet to finish all my Democratic National Convention posting since I’ve been on near constant travel ever since I left Denver (I’m in Alabama right now in a hotel where some Gustav refugees are also staying). I am however, in touch with an Indian American woman (let’s call her PK) who is in Minneapolis this week. PK is at the RNC as a medic who is treating protesters (and possibly some anarchists) who are at the convention. I asked her if she’d be nice enough to send me a dispatch and she sent the following last night:

Today I spent most of the day at a street clinic, organized by local and national activists concerned about the health of those involved in protests, especially those subject to police brutality. We’re housed in a church, right across from one of the main hospitals in St. Paul (this is where I do some of my medical rotations). We’re close to the capitol building, but a mile from the Xcel Center. This center is here to address the acute needs of those in medical need, but either unable (due to lack of health insurance) or uninterested (due to lack of trust with the medical establishment or record system) to access their medical care at the mainstream health center.

Yesterday, many of the medics out on the streets were taken in with the protestors. The general belief is that medics are being targetted for arrest particularly because without the support staff there to help the “rioters”, the protestors will be less likely to attempt further action.

The Poor People’s March for Economic Human Rights took place today. It was notably smaller than yesterdays demonstration, and the arrests and retaliation was smaller, though the police presence is out of proportion to the number of marchers. In clinic, the entire afternoon and evening we kept getting texts that tear gas was used at this-and-that street and we were expecting a deluge of tear gassed individuals to show up, any minute. But we had very few visits, mainly because people are being decontaminated on the streets. At the clinic, we have a larger makeshift decontamination center (basically, the person strips, we hose them down to remove all residues of the gas, clean out their eyes with solution, and have them put on new clothes), and it seemed to attract a lot of unneccessary attention late in the evening because we had all the “fresh clothes” set up on the grass and the Poor People’s March veered towards our street. A collection of police came by and began asking what we’re doing, who is renting the space, and other unnecessaries. They were told to return with a warrant, and the remainder of the evening was high stress, as the main organizers began to prepare us for being taken in, in the case of a raid. My main worry through this whole thing was typically desi— I’m studying for the USMLE and can’t afford to go to jail right now! AND WHAT WILL MY PARENTS THINK??!

“MA!”

“WHAT!”

“Did you hear??”

“What? McCain?”

“YES! Aw, Man! It’s only 8 or so in California…I thought I’d get to tell you.”

“No. I am listening to the NPR. Family Radio has become annoying. That man thinks the world will end in three years.”

“SO???”

“So what?”

“What do YOU think? You were so curious about whom he’d pick…”

“I was really disappointed when I heard it…my heart just went down to the floor. What’s wrong with this old man, has he lost his brain or something? She is a young girl. No experience. She is Governor of state with 8000 population for only two years. What’s she know?”

“I think…Alaska has more people than—“

“Who cares! Don’t interrupt! Point is, I can manage things better than she can. This is guaranteed losing ticket.”

“You wanted Joe Lieberman, didn’t you?”

“I did!”

“And why is that, Mummy?”

“Because he is a Democrat. Was. I mean, he is independent. Also, he was so nice to you, when you met with him and his wife.”

“Awesome reasoning, Ma. Anyway, if not Sarah, then whom?”

“I would rather he gone for that…kid…the Indian…the governor…”

Give this to the Democrats - even if message control is sometimes a challenge, they sure know how to make a convention eventful. The day at Invesco Field was already like no other event I had ever attended before Obama spoke - standing in line from 10 A.M., I saw enthusiasm and excitement about democracy from such an enormous group of people (80,000), and the most special part about the night was that these 80,000 really were a diverse cross-section of the United States. Unlike just about every other event of the week, one did not need to be wealthy and/or powerful to get in and see the speech. And it was reflected well in the speeches immediately preceding Barack Obama’s, by working-class Americans who have fallen on hard times in the last eight years. Other notable early speeches included that of Al Gore (decent, but he spoke very quickly), Bill Richardson (great reception from the crowd), and a performance from Will.I.Am (awesome).

The main event, and the speech everyone was waiting for, however, was Obama’s, and for good reason. With the “open convention” and the anniversary of Dr. King’s speech, the event was billed as a historic and landmark event. Obama could have given a purely soaring and intellectual speech similar to his discussions of race and national politics in previous instances, but he wisely realized that different times call for different approaches. Many voters are questioning where the “meat” behind his economic plans is, and thus, today he told voters “exactly what change would mean if I am president.” He then delved into specifics of reforming the tax code, eliminating capital gains for small businesses, tax cuts for the poor and middle class, tax hikes for the top 5%, and eliminating dependence on foreign oil. His hope, which seemed to be achieved, was that any voter watching would have a fairly clear understanding of how he would approach economic issues by the end of the speech.

He also delved into specifics on energy policy, foreign policy, and made sure to highlight the McCain-Bush connections for all they were worth. He came out tough and hardened, challenging that “If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next Commander-in-Chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have.” Many have worried about Obama being a soft president, or relenting on his principles - after a week of Illinois delegation meetings, followed by this speech, I’m definitely convinced that a spine of steel is pretty much a necessary trait for anyone to succeed in Illinois politics.

Obama touched on a theme that is also one of Ashwin Madia’s favored lines of speaking, and that he had not discussed in a while. Madia is at his best when he speaks about “redefining patriotism,” and how patriotism is not merely “bumping your hands on your chest and waving a flag.” Madia is one of what I think of as the “Obama generation” of politicians who is inspired by a candidate who has the guts to say, “I’ve got news for you John McCain: We all put our country first.”

But when it came time to finish the speech, Obama returned to what he does best, and that was to inspire and motivate the listeners to work together for a better purpose. He discussed America’s promise, a subject that holds a special appeal to anyone who has immigrated, or whose parents have immigrated, to this country.

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance. It’s a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours - a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.

When Obama spoke to the crowd about America’s promise, he was certainly speaking to people such as my parents, who, young in India, saw and knew that only in America was there “that better place around the bend,” and who knew that their kids could do things in this country that they could do nowhere else. He was talking about the American Dream that has allowed our community to come here, flourish, and create a unique home. And he knows that this “American promise,” which has been the foundation for our flourishing and strong community, is eroding and must be restored and rebuilt.

Whether you agree with him or not, one of the most unique elements of Obama’s candidacy is that he knows our story, that of the American Dream, in a way few candidates for higher office ever have. As his biographical video played, he accepted the nomination, and then invoked King’s speech and dream at the conclusion, many of the young and old in the crowd who had never thought a man with his name, appearance, and background could be in this position had tears in their eyes.

Our whole time here, while we’ve been blogging, nobody has really asked Ravi or I what we do. I know what I am suggesting is silly. Why should they? We are Sepia Mutiny. We blog. A lot of them read the blog. What else is there other than that we are bloggers here to report? But that is not what we are and there is an important point here so bear with me. Blogging is just a hobby. It was created out of nothing four years ago and my personal objective was to gain access to this convention. Access to “power,” so that we could tell the story from the inside. We are still outsiders here though, both at the fundraising luncheons and in the press room where people keep bitching about how the celebrity press (Couric and Cooper) gets treated better. We are here because we claimed this spot. We wanted it bad enough because we see the potential our community has if they get more involved…and not by simply raising money. A life in politics where money is important isn’t the only way in.

Ravi is about to enter college at Harvard next week and major in applied math. I have degrees in aerospace engineering and geology. We are not bundlers, politicians, or journalists. We aren’t getting paid a dime for any of this and we aren’t asking for a dime for our posts. We are doing what we do because we have something to say and something we believe in. For those of you sitting at home watching the coverage and thinking you have to be rich or an important politician to participate in this process I’d like to point you to an article about the headline speaker tonight. Sometimes you just show up and think on your feet because you believe in yourself and what you want to do:

The Democratic National Convention is akin to a longstanding family reunion. And eight years ago, Barack Obama was not on the guest list… He was drained of money and confidence, fresh from a punishing defeat in a Congressional primary race here. Even the Illinois delegation did not have room at the party’s gathering in Los Angeles for Mr. Obama, then a 39-year-old lawyer, who had annoyed some state Democrats for not waiting his turn to seek a higher office.

Never mind all that. Mr. Obama bought a plane ticket and headed west anyway.

He persuaded a clerk at the car rental agency to overlook the unpaid balance on his credit card, and he made his way to the festivities. He was not a delegate — not even close to being a superdelegate — and without a floor credential he had all the sway of the junior state senator that he was.

“I have no memory of him there,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, recalled in an interview the other day. “It was a disastrous trip for him…”

When party activists gathered in Chicago to nominate Bill Clinton to a second term in 1996, Mr. Obama was making his first run for political office, but he did not have enough clout to get full access to the convention. Instead, he concluded that high-dollar breakfasts and dinners seemed to lock voters out of the system, grousing to a reporter, “The convention’s for sale, right?”… [Link]

I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed that three days in to this I haven’t seen any Molotov cocktails, police beatings, tear gas, or plastic handcuffs being used(particularly where desis were involved). I think Ravi and I would have loved to have interviewed a desi protester if we had found one. The only thing I have seen thus far have been some extreme “anti-sinners” and a few anti-abortion trucks with shock-value images on their sides driving around town. As expected, there were several pro-immigrant groups carrying signs around, but this was a friendly crowd. As for me, I picked up a button from the CNN booth that I proudly started wearing around town to announce the issue I support.

Say it loud, say it proud.

Located on the 16th St. mall

I decided to take it easy today and stay away from the luncheons and the schmoozing. Instead, I paid a visit to Mt. Everest Imports on the 16th Street Mall area of downtown Denver (the extremely crowded area where all the hotels and businesses catering to conventioneers is located). Mt. Everest Imports is owned by a Nepali immigrant named Shyam Shrestha. I asked him how business was going since Mt. Everest did not seem to be selling any Obama gear (unlike every other store of any kind in the whole area). He told me it was going “very well.” The shop was totally empty. I told him my sister-in-law was Nepali and he opened up a little more and said he’d been there for about 10 years and gave me his business card. Still, with all the cheesy Obama memorabilia I’ve seen here I think Shyam would have done well for himself if he’d sell Buddhas with Obama’s head and the Buddha’s body. I’m just saying. Try and visit Shyam store when you are in Denver.

After the Asian American caucus meeting on Wednesday morning I had the chance to speak with Democratic superdelegate-at-large Kamil Hasan (appointed by Howard Dean). Hasan is an entrepreneur from the Bay Area and a partner at HiTek Ventures. He is also a member of the IndoAmerican Council whose mission is as follows:

iForum is a non-partisan organization with a mission to:

1. Empower the Indo-American community to be more active in public service so that it can influence the future strategic direction of our country and major policies of our government.

2. Inspire and mentor aspiring young Indo-Americans to get involved in public service and run for office, and to provide them material and strategic support to ensure their success.

3. Identify and prioritize issues of major importance to the Indo-American community, develop white papers on these issues, and develop a mechanism to address them.

4. Create a forum for exchange of ideas between the community, elected officials and influential leaders on issues important to the community. [Link]

Hasan warmed to me when I told him that I grew up in the Bay Area. Ravi and I (and several journalists here reporting for Indian newspapers) have found that the South Asian American finance folks (the top fundraisers) are pretty tightly controlled and so the press (when acting in an official capacity) is kept at arms length from them. Mr. Hasan however, was kind enough to speak with me.

Hasan raised a lot of cash for Kerry back in 2004 as a top bundler. His wife also hosted fundraisers for Hillary Clinton in their Bay Area home (with Bill in tow). Then, on June 1st of this year with Clinton’s fate sealed, Barack Obama called him up for his delegate vote. Mr. Hasan told me that he spoke to Obama for a few moments to make sure he supported the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal and a few other issues of importance, especially to Indian Americans of his generation. Since then Hasan has been a top bundler for Obama, in fact, he was the one that organized and hosted the “I’m a desi” event in San Francisco a few weeks ago. We both found a lot of humor in Obama’s comments about making dal. My last question to Hasan was if he had any children and if they were as in to politics as him. Hasan has two daughters. One is an attorney in the bay area and the other is still in school as a poli-sci major. The younger one was already raising funds for California state level candidates when she was just 19. Seems like we have a dynasty in the making here.

Well, the laws of probability had to eventually come to fruition, and for one night of the convention, I decided to have an “alternate night.” I headed to the Ralph Nader “Open the Debates” rally at U of D, which was quite the spectacle. It was at times entertaining, frustrating, bizarre, and exciting. It cost 12 dollars to enter, which was somewhere between a few thousand dollars and a few hundred thousand less than it takes to get in the DNC. I was on the prowl for South Asians, though it seemed that by the time I had arrived most people had already settled in their seats (Nader rallies are not for those with short attention spans, and they are more like performances as opposed to the ‘meeting’ feeling of a convention).

I was able to catch a glimpse of Ralph at the start of the convention, which was a good thing seeing as though some uncontrollable circumstances prevented me from seeing his final speech. Unlike the DNC or RNC, time management was not in high demand at the rally. I did, however, see Cindy Sheehan, the MC, and the former lead singer of the Dead Kennedys give speeches generally trashing both parties for their many “similarities.” On a slightly more substantive note, Bob Barr and Cynthia McKinney sent taped videos offering their critiques of the establishment and their arguments for opening the Presidential Debates to 3rd party candidates, which was the stated purpose of the rally.

I met one South Asian vendor, Nick Bygon, who was selling black Ralph Nader “rebel” t-shirts in the mold of Obama’s white “hope” t-shirts. Bygon, a student at community college, told me he supports Nader because he believes in a cause “greater than himself,” and that there’s little difference between the two major parties. He cited the example of Afghanistan, saying that Obama’s pledge to increase troop levels showed that he really was no different than McCain when it came to “warmongering.” When asked about the accusation that Nader stole voters from Obama, he replied that Nader supporters would never have voted for Obama or McCain. (He might be interested in this article). He said he first supported Nader in 2000 and has been a major fan ever since.

Cindy Sheehan spoke about the war, Jello Biafra spoke about torture, and Sean Penn gave a highly convoluted and confused speech about terrorism. There were some really weird musicians and some generally bizarre protesters. The impression and general feeling of the audience was: don’t tell Ralph not to run! The two major parties are the exact same! Anyone who truly believes the two parties are the same, has obviously not looked at recent Supreme Court appointees, the candidates’ plans for Iraq, their tax plans, and their healthcare plans. And while I was on the prowl for South Asians, and maybe I was just looking in the wrong sections of the crowd, I have a theory about why there might not be a large amount of South Asian Nader supporters. The extremely diverse group of people attending Nader rallies gushes at the prospect of socialism, single-payer healthcare, high taxes, and increased government. They are shining idealists, fighting for a socialist ideal they have never experienced in the very free and capitalist state of the United States. Many South Asian immigrants, on the other hand, have experienced the full brunt of government socialism, spending, and ambitious programs (see India up to ‘91) in their countries of origin, and are thus wary of unbridled government expansion. They have found that good old balanced and centrist economic pragmatism works, whether here or there, and hey – this guy says his whole theory of economics is “pragmatism.”

Earlier today Ashwin Madia and his communications director Dan Pollock showed Ravi and I their new commercial on Dan’s laptop. It is titled “Running” (obviously a pun on the fact that he is running in the video and running for Congress). SM readers are among the first to see it: