Monthly Archives: December 2004

Indian PM’s daughter says Bush personally authorized torture

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As we’ve blogged before, the Indian prime minister’s daughter, Amrit Singh, works for the ACLU in New York and is currently tracking down abuse at Abu Ghraib. Yesterday, her team released an FBI email from May 2004 that says President Bush personally authorized torture at Abu Ghraib:

The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.”… The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from “On Scene Commander–Baghdad” to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized…

India just loves to jawbone the U.S. out of a sense of false moral superiority, and it’s completely counterproductive to her own interests. But the Abu Ghraib case is an exception: the disregard for our city on a hill ideal went much higher than the few soldiers scapegoated. I applaud Ms. Singh and, although she’s not an official spokesperson for the Indian government, caution her dad to prepare for the inevitable reprisals.

The Times of India recently profiled Ms. Singh:

Singh, who is the Prime Minister’s third daughter, studied law at Yale and has kept a relatively low profile in the US, seemingly unaffected by her father’s dramatic political ascendancy… His economist friend Jagdish Bhagwati, who teaches at Columbia University, thinks Amrit is as brilliant as her father during his youth.

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1LT Prakash & the Scourge of Hollywood Typecasting

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Lt Prakash’s blog has developed QUITE a following in few short weeks it’s been published. His writing is fantastic, incisive, and dripping with first person perspective. I & many others are incredibly proud of the caliber of men in our armed forces.

In this recent entry, Prakash learns of a newly planned Hollywood movie chronicling the adventures of the Fallujah takedown in which he participated-

hunglikeastudbull : Fallujah the Movie prakred6: i hope your kidding hunglikeastudbull : oh no hunglikeastudbull : i hear they are going to have Val Kilmer play the part of me hunglikeastudbull : and the indian guy from Van Wilder play the part of “Red 6” prakred6: i heard Apu from the Simpsons was playing me
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Let’s restrict ’em Musleems

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A poll released Friday by Cornell University has some pretty scary results. Almost half of respondents in the national poll feel that some civil liberties of Muslim Americans should be curtailed as a precaution against terrorism. As stated in their press release:

About 27 percent of respondents said that all Muslim Americans should be required to register their location with the federal government, and 26 percent said they think that mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. law enforcement agencies. Twenty-nine percent agreed that undercover law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations, in order to keep tabs on their activities and fund raising. About 22 percent said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage. In all, about 44 percent said they believe that some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans.

Conversely, 48 percent of respondents nationally said they do not believe that civil liberties for Muslim Americans should be restricted.

The Media and Society Research Group, in Cornell’s Department of Communication, commissioned the poll, which was supervised by the Survey Research Institute, in Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The results were based on 715 completed telephone interviews of respondents across the United States, and the poll has a margin of error of 3.6 percent.

The survey also examined the relation of religiosity to perceptions of Islam and Islamic countries among Christian respondents. Sixty-five percent of self-described highly religious people queried said they view Islam as encouraging violence more than other religions do; in comparison, 42 percent of the respondents who said they were not highly religious saw Islam as encouraging violence. In addition, highly religious respondents also were more likely to describe Islamic countries as violent (64 percent), fanatical (61 percent) and dangerous (64 percent). Fewer of the respondents who said they were not highly religious described Islamic countries as violent (49 percent), fanatical (46 percent) and dangerous (44 percent). But 80 percent of all respondents said they see Islamic countries as being oppressive toward women.

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“Behzti” dishonored

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Over the weekend in England, a play about improprieties at a Sikh temple took a violent turn as reported by the AFP and several others:

A black comedy that triggered a weekend mini-riot because of its references to rape in a fictional Sikh temple has been cancelled, the playhouse in the English Midlands that was staging the play said.

The Birmingham Repertory Theatre said that, after consultations with police and Sikh community representatives, it was lowering the curtain on further performances of “Behzti” (Dishonour).

The piece, by Sikh actress turned playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, had sold out its entire run, but it upset Sikhs enough to prompt a series of peaceful demonstrations which turned violent on Saturday.

Three men were arrested, five police officers hurt, and the audience of some 600 evacuated in the melee, in which up to 400 protesters stormed the Rep, damaged doors, set off fire alarms and damaged backstage equipment.

The violence was apparently due to the same type of sanctimonious logic that we see displayed in so many other religious traditions.

…Sewa Singh Mandha, chairman of the Council of Sikh Gurdwaras in Birmingham, said “Behzti” offends on the grounds of falsehood.

“In a Sikh temple, sexual abuse does not take place, kissing and dancing don’t take place, rape doesn’t take place, homosexual activity doesn’t take place, murders do not take place,” he told BBC radio.

“I am bringing to the attention of the management of the theatre the sensitive nature of the play, because by going into the public domain it will cause deep hurt to the Sikh community.”

Baazee.com CEO arrested over sex clip

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The Baazee.com CEO, Avnish Bajaj, was arrested yesterday by the Delhi police due to the sale of the infamous mobile phone sex clip via his auction site. Baazee.com was recently acquired by eBay. Bajaj, a U.S. citizen and Harvard MBA in his early 30s, languished in a Delhi jail last night because of a tortured Indian theory of vicarious liability. It’s as if eBay CEO Meg Whitman were thrown in jail due to the sale of off-color items on eBay. The legal analogies in this case are phone companies and ISPs, where the high volume of traffic precludes censorship, rather than a common criminal case. The guy who should actually be in jail is the student who filmed and distributed the clip without his girlfriend’s consent. The Delhi court’s actions reek of opportunism to me– to take a stand on a high-profile case in a sexually repressed society. It’s all high-volume throat clearing.

Disclaimer: Bajaj is a friend of a friend.

Update: Bajaj was denied bail and remains in jail. Condoleezza Rice has asked the Indian government to guarantee him a fair trial:

The arrest of the Baazee CEO, who has been based in Mumbai for the past four-and-a-half years, has perplexed many in the Indian establishment as Bajaj has responded to summons to help the investigators probing the case. “He, as well as Baazee.com, had been cooperating in the investigations. The arrest has come totally out of the blue…”

Yesterday, Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay… called up from the US to reassure Baazee staff… Bajaj’s counsel Dinesh Mathur pleaded that his client had at no point attempted to evade the police. Moreover, with the site having more than 75 lakh listings, it was impossible to scan each and every item being traded.

Archaic Indian law apparently does not recognize electronic signatures:

Mathur said the video clip… was taken off the site after it was brought to the notice of Baazee officials that it was violating a user agreement… The magistrate, however, said the user agreement did not stand as it was not “signed” and was just a photocopy of a document.

The bullshit continues to fly.

Update 2: The Gray Lady finally cobbles together wire reports four days later.

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Caribbean desis aren’t feelin’ the love

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The NYT says many Caribbean desis, who originally came to Trinidad, Tobago and Guyana to work on sugar plantations, don’t feel accepted by South Asians in the U.S.:

“They believe our grandparents quit India, so we are like strangers to them…” Mr. Pooran knows Indians, he said, who always speak to him with the expression, “You Guyanese people.” “When I speak I say, ‘We Indians,’ ” he said… Marriages with Indian immigrants from India, though not unheard of, are far less common…

Some Guyanese talk with hurt about not quite being accepted as Indian. Mr. Budhai recalled how in 1978, his wife, Serojini, won an Indian beauty pageant but was never awarded the top prize, a trip to India, after the organizers learned she was Guyanese.

They do feel some bonhomie…

When she walks into a classroom, the first people she notices are those of Indian descent, whether from India or Guyana. “We call it the Indian Connection,” she said. “I glance over at them and they glance over at me, and we exchange a smile.”… When a Sikh spiritual leader was pummeled into unconsciousness in July by a group of people who ridiculed his turban, Guyanese joined in the protests.

… despite the cultural differences:

Guyanese music, while Indian influenced, is marked by a faster West Indian style that has come to be known as chutney soca… Guyanese names are distinguishing, with common Indian first names serving as their last names because of how British planters addressed them… their English [has] a singsong lilt and Creole dialect. Guyanese curries are less spicy, and a shop that serves the flat roti bread with various stews is a distinctly Caribbean conception.

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The Indus Script: Was it really a script?

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Describing what is sure to be a highly controversial idea, Science Magazine [paid or institutional access required] publishes an article about a group of scientists who are calling into question whether the Indus script is really even a script, in the traditional sense. Because of the fact that this article will not be accessible by most, I will liberally quote for the benefit of SM readers.

For 130 years scholars have struggled to decipher the Indus script. Now, in a proposal with broad academic and political implications, a brash outsider claims that such efforts are doomed to failure because the Indus symbols are not writing

Academic prizes typically are designed to confer prestige. But the latest proposed award, a $10,000 check for finding a lengthy inscription from the ancient Indus civilization, is intended to goad rather than honor. The controversial scholar who announced the prize last month cheekily predicts that he will never have to pay up. Going against a century of scholarship, he and a growing number of linguists and archaeologists assert that the Indus people–unlike their Egyptian and Mesopotamian contemporaries 4000 years ago–could not write.

That claim is part of a bitter clash among academics, as well as between Western scientists and Indian nationalists, over the nature of the Indus society, a clash that has led to shouting matches and death threats. But the provocative proposal, summed up in a paper published online last week, is winning adherents within the small community of Indus scholars who say it is time to rethink an enigmatic society that spanned a vast area in today’s Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan–the largest civilization of its day.

The Indus civilization has intrigued and puzzled researchers for more than 130 years, with their sophisticated sewers, huge numbers of wells, and a notable lack of monumental architecture or other signs of an elite class (see sidebar on p. 2027). Most intriguing of all is the mysterious system of symbols, left on small tablets, pots, and stamp seals. But without translations into a known script–the “Rosetta stones” that led to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform in the 19th century–hundreds of attempts to understand the symbols have so far failed. And what language the system might have expressed–such as a Dravidian language similar to tongues of today’s southern India, or a Vedic language of northern India–is also a hot topic. This is no dry discussion: Powerful Indian nationalists of the Hindutva movement see the Indus civilization as the direct ancestor to Hindu tradition and Vedic culture.

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Let the Top 10 (or whatever) lists begin

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Of course as the year draws to a close, we are all bound to be pummelled with numerous top whatever lists. USATODAY, in one of the first lists, has created its own for the top 100 people of 2004. At 78, is none other than Kal Penn. From the lists profile.

Even if it weren’t for Neil Patrick Harris’ cameo, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle still would’ve been a good movie. If you don’t believe me, some further proof: Penn, aka Kumar, has no fewer than five movies coming out in ’05.

IMDB confirms that Penn will play the lead in Mira Nair’s adaptation of The Namesake (due out in 2006), and lists the other five projects as Vegas Baby (starring Kathy Griffin), Man About Town (Starring Ben Affleck and Ling Bai), A Lot Like Love (2005), Son of the Mask (starring Jaime Kennedy), and Dancing in Twilight (Starring Mimi Rogers).

Also listed, and a significant amount higher I might add, is one of the stars of ABC’s silent success, Lost. From USATODAYs commentary…

I don’t have a problem with all these articles about Evangeline Lilly being the breakout star of Lost— I just kindly disagree. I find Andrews, who plays tortured and complex Sayid, by far the most compelling character. Let’s hope he makes out of this season alive.

Here is a link to a post I did on lost back in August, and here is one and another from SM.

Of abominable practices and licentious lives…

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I wanted to point out that we here at Sepia Mutiny, have a long and rich tradition of not simply bringing to you daily gossip and rumors, and of stirring up trouble, but of also bringing you a little South Asian history from time to time. We’d secretly like to stay respectable so that you aren’t ashamed to talk about us around the water cooler, and can use us to impress that cute girl or guy you are into, with your newfound knowledge. Thus I point you to an enlightening story about St. Francis Xavier in Time Magazine’s Asia edition. This month an estimated 2 million people will shuffle past Xavier’s tomb in the state of Goa to pay their respects. That is a pilgrimage that is second only to the Haj in numbers. These bunch of pious peripatetics may cramp the style of those, who like many of our friends, are going to Goa this New Year’s Eve to party.
So what did Xavier first think of the Goan’s?

A great number of them were adventurers of all sorts who left behind them in Europe even the semblance of outward morality [and] who had become utterly corrupted by temptations [and] vices. [They] made no pretense of desisting from their most abominable practices [and] led the most licentious lives.
—Henry James Coleridge,
The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier

Wow. Almost 500 years later that still seems to be an accurate description of some of our friends that are going to Goa. Xavier it seems, was loved by many yet his behavior might definitely be called abhorrent in many ways today. Such is usually the case with religious figures. Continue reading →

The latest Census data: Disparity among the Asian population

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The Los Angeles Times [registration required] publishes and in-depth article on census data released Wednesday, about the Asian American community. The full 24 page report can be found at the Census Bureau’s website and is titled, “We the People: Asians in the United States.”

From the LA times article:

Indian Americans have surged forward as the most successful Asian minority in the United States, reporting top levels of income, education, professional job status and English-language ability, even though three-fourths were foreign-born, according to U.S. census data released Wednesday.

The striking success of Asian Americans who trace their heritage to India contrasted with data showing struggles among Cambodian, Laotian and Hmong immigrants. Those three groups reported continued significant poverty rates, low job skills and limited English-language ability since their flight from war and political turmoil.

The report, “We the People: Asians in the United States,” was based on 2000 census data and underscored the enormous socioeconomic diversity among the nation’s 10 million Asian Americans, more than one third of whom live in California, the state with their largest population.

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