Dr. Mohammed Ali Chaudry was elected mayor of Basking Ridge / Bernards Township, New Jersey last year. He may be the first Pakistani-American mayor in the U.S., an achievement we should be proud of.

Sahiwal born Dr. Chaudhry left Pakistan in 1963 to study at London School of Economics, and…  came to United States in 1967 and earned a Ph. D. in Economics from Tufts University…

However, Chaudry also voted to ban Midnight’s Children in local schools while on the local board of education, possibly driven by antipathy dating back to The Satanic Verses. One desi voter who couldn’t read the book in his high school English class was so incensed that he cast a write-in vote (via liberal blog DailyKos) this morning for Salman Rushdie, who, to the best of my knowledge, is not running for Township Commissioner in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

As soon as I saw his name on the ballot last week, I flipped out… My 11th grade English teacher wanted to teach the book Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie in the year’s curriculum. However, this Chaudry guy tried to ban it! He was relentless!… my whole family went with my teacher to contest the banning of Midnight’s Children… that was 10 years ago… My sister and I (as well as my mom and dad…) agreed to write in “Salman Rushdie” as Township Commissioner… I’d pay generously to see the steam rising from Mr. Chaudry’s head.

Chaudry is probably also the first mayor to use an instant messaging video feed to attend a city council meeting from Pakistan:

“I had a friend who had a cable modem in Lahore and a camera set up so the Council could see my picture on the screen and I could see the Council. A landmark, I was very pleased with that. The beauty of this was it did not cost the Council a single penny.”