Parting the Luna Sea

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Jesus, a sex guru, a ballet dancer and Superman’s girlfriend walk into a casting call…

Indian-Canadian director Vic Sarin is putting together an indie film called Partition (thanks, sd). The Sepia Films (wha?) script seems more than ‘inspired’ by the Bollywood megahit Gadar. Both films show a Sikh villager rescuing a Muslim girl during Partition and guiding her safely into Pakistan:

Partition is a sweeping, historical drama set against the partition of India and based on the real life experiences of director Vic Sarin’s family. Partition tells the story of a former British army Sikh officer, Gian Singh, who rescues a young Muslim girl, falls in love with her and must travel to Pakistan to save her… Production on the film will begin next April in South Africa, India and United Kingdom…

The film features Jimi Mistry (East Is East, The Guru), Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ), Neve Campbell (The Company) and Kristin Kreuk (Smallville). Mistry will take the lead, and Campbell will play his British friend, fitting neatly into the Candice Bergen role in Gandhi. She even has a similar jawline.

Kreuk will play the 17-year-old Muslim love interest, Naseem. Her parents are Chinese and Dutch, but I suppose it’s walking distance from Smallville to the Punjabi pind.

“I’m so excited about Partition,” KK told TV Guide

That’s right, she told TV Guide… that she’s excited… about… Partition. Isn’t that kind of like telling Soap Opera Digest that you’re excited about the Holocaust? I doubt those in my family who survived it were in their happy-happy-fun-fun place at the time. Here’s an idea: how about Kal Penn the henchman shooting death rays from his eyes at Superman’s girlfriend. Now that’s exciting.

Sarin previously directed a TV movie called Left Behind about the events after the Rapture, when all good Christians are suddenly called to heaven, leaving brides at the altar and planes in midair. With that pedigree, I’m surprised he couldn’t get Mel Gibson and Willem Dafoe.

Let’s you and I make a movie about the American Revolution. We’ll use only desi actors (Anupam Kher in a wig would make a japing George Washington) and tell people, ‘Sorry, yaar, it’s what the market demands.’

Apul is annoyed that hello-my-future-girlfriend Preity Zinta isn’t the love interest like in Gadar, but he allows that Kreuk is ‘a cutie-patootie.’

88 thoughts on “Parting the Luna Sea

  1. Oh god is it so hard for Hollywood to cast brown actors for brown roles?? WTBF! First “The Party”, then “Gandhi”, then “The Simpsons”, and now this. Kristin looks all cute and all but whens the last time you saw a Pakistani who looks like Bjork? And I hope to god she doesn’t bust out in some gora-fied urdu….

  2. Directors have a big fascination with Sikh-Pakistani love these days, even in Veer-Zaara Shah Rukh Khan plays a Sikh character. Khamosh Pani, Gurdas Maan’s Shaheed-e-Mohabaat, the list goes on and on.

    I am bored. Get a new storyline. Lets look at partition in a different, less chliched way.

    Although I contradict myself, because Khamosh Pani is an excellent film, which is not at all cliched, but still, its time to look at partition in different ways from the Romeo & Juliet way.

  3. This will not be the first time Jimi Mistry plays a Sardarji. He played a gangster Sikh in a little known British movie called My Kingdom. Click on the link to see him in UK Chic-Sikh bandana.

    UK Sikhs are gangsters and rudeboy’s generally. Can’t wait to see DMX busting some Bhangra~Hip-Hop moves in his next video.

  4. Production on the film will begin next April in South Africa, India and United Kingdom


    I’m just trying to work out which scenes from the partition of Punjab they are going to film in South Africa???

    UK is no problem, Southall and Birmingham can stand in for Jalandhar etc etc any day.

  5. Oh god is it so hard for Hollywood to cast brown actors for brown roles?? WTBF! First “The Party”, then “Gandhi”, then “The Simpsons”, and now this.

    Movie studios are in it primarily for the money, if they can get more money via and indian name they will do it; but since there aren’t any BIG ones, they go with a guranatee.

    Kristin looks all cute and all but whens the last time you saw a Pakistani who looks like Bjork? And I hope to god she doesn’t bust out in some gora-fied urdu….

    Pakistani are physicially comparable to Punbaji’s correct? Have you seen any really really white Punjabi women that look like they could pass for causcasian? I’m sure you have. One my ex-girlfriends is Punjabi, she could pass for latino, greek, or middle eastern..

    If South American actors want to have top billing in these movies, then they will have to grab for it; it’s not going to be given to them on a silver platter…

  6. Oh god is it so hard for Hollywood to cast brown actors for brown roles?? WTBF! First “The Party”, then “Gandhi”…

    Just to clarify, if you are referring to Ben Kingsley (aka Krishna Bhanji), he is half Gujurati. Though your point is well taken.

  7. There are plenty of South Asian actors on the scene. (I think you mean South Asian anyway, not South American). For instance, there are South Asian Americans like Rhona Mitra, the chick from the OC, P. Singh from ER…Not to mention that India has a little bit of a movie industry going too, I’m sure if US movie execs looked really really hard they could find a decent actress somewhere on the subcontinent….

    As for placing blame on such actors for not “grabbing for it”….the onus should be placed on the party which picks actors, namely the bigwigs in the US movie industry, not for the struggling actors who are denied such roles. Thats like dissing a minority applicant who was denied a job on the basis of his/her race for not grabbing for the job, and for expecting it on a silver platter.

    Re: Pakistanis being physically comparable to Punjabis….Punjabis are an ethnic group, while Pakistanis come from a country. So there are plenty of Punjabi Pakistanis, along with Sindhi Pakistani, etc. Many Pakis do look white, but you will be hard-pressed to find one who looks like Kreuk (white plus asian features). If anything, you may be able to find some Bengalis and people from the eastern appendage of india (Mizoram, Assam, etc.) with such features, but thats on the other side of the subcontinent from Pakistan! And don’t give me a strained muhajir rationale….how many muhajirs came from Assam…

    You know Hindi films in the 80’s and before would depict Americans and Brit in the same way….the part would be played by a light-skinned desi with a horrible adopted accent. The depiction was laughable to anyone who had met or conversed with an actual gora from these places. I mean it just made the film look so stupid to have some guy trying to pass off “Hey baby, vont to dance?”…..As embarassing as that was, at least hindi films now actually employ actual Americans/Brits for such roles (see Lagaan, Out of Control, Swades). Its sad that American films haven’t progressed likewise, but rather are still stuck in the stereotype-laden and offensive phase of “brown face” portrayals.

  8. “Oh god is it so hard for Hollywood to cast brown actors for brown roles??”

    Sure… And, it’s also hard to cast Scots for Scottish roles (see Mel Gibson in Braveheart), Latinos for Latino roles (see Cliff Curtis in Training Day), Jews for Jewish roles (see Ben Kingsley in Schindlers List), Thais for Thai roles (see Chow Yun Fat in Anna and the King), Afrikaners in Afrikaner roles (see Marlon Brando in A Dry White Season), Argentinians in Argentinian roles (see me vomit on Madonna in Evita), Moors in Moorish roles (hahahahahahaha see Orson Welles in Othello)…

    When it comes to historical epics (I know, Training Day doesn’t fit here), Hollywood doesn’t care as much about the authenticity of the actor as they do about the authenticity of his/her acting. Sure, it would be nice to have a film by the people, for the people and, misaligning race and ethnicity does take a risk in terms of the audience…

    But, well, a half-brown Ben Kingsley in Gandhi is not half as bad as seeing a wholly white Alec Guinness playing Godbole in Passage to India. Why? Because Kingsley fit the role, Guinness did not and according to the buzz, that’s why Kristin Kreuk was cast in this film:

    Vic Sarin’s independently produced “Partition” is semi-autobiographical (parent’s story, not his) and the director apparently picked the actor who most resembled the “real” Muslim girl.

    So, to answer the question, “Are there any Pakistani women that look like Bjork?” Yes, I guess so.

  9. … ben kingsley is half-brown (gujarati-kenyan father) and half-jewish…

    He’s the perfect Hinjew. If he doesn’t top his A-levels, he’s beaten by his parents and gets no gifts for Hannukah.

  10. … the director apparently picked the actor who most resembled the “real” Muslim girl.

    She’s got East Asian eyes, she doesn’t really pass well. Maybe with dark hair and a chunni over her head…

  11. as for kristin looking brown, she looks like a pale version of my dad’s best friend’s daughter…but of course, she’s bengali. so in general, if phenotype ~ ethnicity matching is what you want, not the hottest move. but like i said, kristin’s hot, she’s well known, etc. etc. and think of it as a move toward phenotype matching, remember that mowgli was played by a east asian actor in the live action jungle book 10 years back.

  12. …remember that mowgli was played by a east asian actor in the live action jungle book…

    Believe me, it’s a sore point:

    Disney producer Gary Gero held auditions for the lead in South Asian population centers all over the world, including London, New York, LA, and SF. In the end we got a Chinese/Filipino actor under brown shoe polish and a mop of false hair. Disney had said in its casting call that no experience was necessary, just a “Mowgli face.” Turns out that Gero was watching Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story when he found that “Mowgli face” in Jason Scott Lee. After all, one Asian’s as good as another, right?

    Kreuk isn’t abominably off, but her eyes and nose aren’t quite desi.

  13. Well, now, we can we make a broad leap and say that it’s possible the girl is a Muslim from, say, Burma? After all, she’s not ethnically Pakistani, at least not at the time of this story and given the cross-migration of Muslims, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility..

    My quick-change Benji–let us not forget that he is “Sir Ben Kingsley,” and that aside from playing a Jew and an Indian, he’s also played an American, an Italian and an Iranian. I’m sure he’s been much more, but when it comes to being a Hollywood-chameleon, Cliff Curtis has everyone beat.

    Ack, no one is what they seem (Razib, I appreciate your addressing me as “Christ,” but it’s not necessary)…

  14. Well, now, we can we make a broad leap and say that it’s possible the girl is a Muslim from, say, Burma?

    Sarin is a Punjabi name, so she’s most likely supposed to be a local Punjabi girl. A Burmese girl would be darker skinned with different features.

    Kingsley rocks. See him in Sexy Beast. You won’t believe what happened to Gandhi. And he’s excellent as a proud, wounded Iranian in House of Sand and Fog.

  15. i have actually met some really upper class ashraf muslims of north indian origin who look somewhat like kruek mix (european + asian), in that they are descended from central asian people who are mixes of caucasians (persians) and mongoloid peoples and haven’t intermarried much with converts of “pure” south asian origin. one could even postulate that she is descended from a group of hazara people from the highlands of afghanistan who settled in the lowlands, and as we know, the hazara’s are mongoloid looking.

  16. Ahh, I beg to differ because Sarin only indicates patrilineage and not all Burmese are darker, especially the ones that might look like her(Burma in the family, what can I say, my plot thickens). And then, there’s this:

    “…When he falls in love with a 17-year-old girl (Kristin Kreuk) who has been separated from her family as India is being torn into two countries… “

    So, who knows where she’s from in the story… I’m trying to defend it, give this little indie-film the benefit of the doubt and you’re already sticking a fork in it. Sad.

  17. There are plenty of South Asian actors on the scene. (I think you mean South Asian anyway, not South American).

    Doh! Yes, South Asian.

    As for placing blame on such actors for not “grabbing for it”….the onus should be placed on the party which picks actors, namely the bigwigs in the US movie industry, not for the struggling actors who are denied such roles. Thats like dissing a minority applicant who was denied a job on the basis of his/her race for not grabbing for the job, and for expecting it on a silver platter.

    I think your argument is specious. Your comparing apples and oranges. How do you know that they didn’t have South Asians audition for the role but couldn’t find someone they felt was suitable. Actors race doesn’t negate a story nor a movie. Take for instance the Shawshank Redemption. According to the book Morgan Freeman’s character was white. Did casting Morgan Freeman take away from the movie or the story? I don’t think so..

    But my argument for actors “grabbing for it” isn’t putting any particular “onus” that others don’t have on them when they interview for a job; or have ambitions to accomplish something. According to what’s written it’s an Indie film…so the producers are South Asians “grabbin for it” much like Robert Townsend did. According to interviews and such actors like to do roles other than those proscribed by their looks or backgrounds, otherwise how would they become better actors?

    Punjabis are an ethnic group, while Pakistanis come from a country.

    Yeah, my bad.

    Many Pakis do look white, but you will be hard-pressed to find one who looks like Kreuk (white plus asian features)

    I tell you what take a gander at the stupid kids on this site and you tell me if a good majority of the girls (especially the North Indian/Punjabi/Paki) couldn’t be similar to Kristin Kreuk.

    Its sad that American films haven’t progressed likewise, but rather are still stuck in the stereotype-laden and offensive phase of “brown face” portrayals.

    That’s not neccessarily true, and you should know that from the very examples you yourself gave. I’ll give one myself, Naveen Andrews on ‘Lost’.

  18. Manish,

    “Her eyes and nose aren’t quite desi”? Er, I know you didn’t mean anything by that comment, but do you know how that sounds? Are we really poring over a person’s features to determine if they could reliably be ethnically equivalent to our idea of an ethnic? Oh, you know what I mean. This whole line of thinking really creeps me out. It’s like when I was a kid and called an auntie who was born and lived in India and had blue eyes my American auntie, cause I just didn’t get it.

    (And last time I was in Dehra Dun I saw plenty of desi’s that looked like her…..)

  19. This whole line of thinking really creeps me out… (And last time I was in Dehra Dun I saw plenty of desi’s that looked like her…..)

    It’s aesthetic, m’dear, aesthetic. Straight bachelors are connoisseurs of female faces. Send over those Dehra Dun photos, I’ve never seen this phenotype on a desi.

  20. Its sort of not the point if she phenotypically looks Punjabi Pakistani (which I feel she doesn’t). Fine you can find someone who looks like her. But the actress herself is still not desi, which is the problem.

    As for the cited cases of Scots, Latinos, Jews, Thais, Afrikaners, maybe such people should have been provided the chance to compete for the role. But more to the point, South Asia has the world’s biggest movie industry! Please, get a desi actor for a desi role, especially when its so hard for us to break into “mainstream” cinema…lest we be relegated to forever being either computer nerds or pot smoking junkies.

    An integral part of acting is representation and convincing portrayal. I’m sorry, unless Kreuk took about 3-4 years of college level punjabi or whatever the native language of the girl was, her abilities are going to be necessarily limited, a priori, a fortiori.

    Its true, I don’t know for a fact that desis were not offered the chance to audition for the role. But it is equally specious to just assume that such people were actually offered the opportunity and were denied.

    Now I don’t know Mr. “Vic” myself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he were engrained with the post-colonial mindset of servile subservience towards the white acting establishment….selling out to the man, just to make it big. “Hey I know, I’ll tell a story of the exotic locus-du-jour, India/Pakistan, throw in some white faces so Americans/Canadians will deign to watch it, and make a killing!”

    Sorry if I sound bitter.

    Lastly…my friend, how can you cite Training Day in serious conversation? Shame on you…

  21. do you desire a south asian actress or a north indian actress?

    But the actress herself is still not desi, which is the problem.

    b/c that makes me think you would prefer the former over KK.

    this however:

    An integral part of acting is representation and convincing portrayal. I’m sorry, unless Kreuk took about 3-4 years of college level punjabi or whatever the native language of the girl was, her abilities are going to be necessarily limited, a priori, a fortiori.

    makes me think you prefer the latter, i.e. a north indian and more specifically, a punjabi. if it was just “desi” you wanted, then i could play this character…except like kristin, i didn’t take 3-4 years of college level punjabi either. i guess that limits my (and any other non-punjabi-speaking desi’s) acting choices. 🙂

  22. could someone turn this into a detailed front page post/exposition? i think that the topic is interesting, but the opinions are not being fully fleshed out in the comments.

    for example, i think it would be kind of bizarre if a blonde swede was picked to play the role of a muslim punjabi girl. so phenotype matters in terms of verisimilitude. that being said, demanding “3-4 years of college level punjabi or whatever the native language of the girl was, her abilities are going to be necessarily limited, a priori, a fortiori” seems to focus to a high level of specificity. what about stipulating that only a muslim should play a muslim?

    i will be honest and say that if KK wasn’t hot i would probably be more irritated, but i am pro-her-getting-facetime. that being said, demanding that there be a high level of mapping between role:actor in terms of “identity” can cause problems. remember l’affaire kahlo? italian american actress laura san giancomo probably “looked” more like frida kahlo, but there was a demand that a mexican actress play a mexican icon. so salma hayek was chosen. the irony is that neither kahlo (father hungarian jewish) nor salma (father lebanese) are typical latinas in their ethnicities.

  23. haha dont get hung up on the college punjabi people. Point is she should know the language to best play the role.

    do you desire a south asian actress or a north indian actress?

    I desire south asian actresses from all over. But as for who I’d like to see play the part, prefer someone from the region that the original person was from.

  24. i will be honest and say that if KK wasn’t hot i would probably be more irritated

    She is hot + exotic looking + quasi famous amongst mainstream audiences.

    From an American perspective exotic looks are those that have a high degree of racial amigiosity.

    As such a blonde swede would be unacceptable because she is obviously white, but a dutch/chinese hapa
    due to her exotic looks can pass for a Punjabi Pakistani.

    The movie is designed to appeal to audiences in America, where most people think India is in the Middle East, and nobody believes me when I tell them Ralph Nader is an Arab American.

  25. There’s a lot that needs to be done for media to be fair towards South Asians. In general

  26. Did anybody catch the pbs documentary last night on Kerela. Its interesting that the natives of Kerela and an average Punjabi looking person look completely different. I guess we need to stop using the term ‘South Asian’ especially on this topic because people from a state like Kerela look completely different from lets say a state like Punjab. So who exactly is South Asian looking? A typical Keralite or a typical Punjabi ?

  27. A typical Keralite or a typical Punjabi ?

    to an average white they don’t “look different” operationally. by this, i mean the physical difference is pretty clear to anyone with eyes, but they get cognitively slotted into “turban-head/sand nigger/dot head” category, to be crass about it.

    also, since my blog talks about genetics a lot, sepia mutiny readers might find it amusing to know that i get a steady stream of inquiries from punjabis about differences between their own ethnic group and other indians. in particular, there seems to be a tendency to want to emphasize the relative similarity of punjabis to western eurasians, in particularly europeans (based on phenotype).

    there are two points that i usually respond with

    a) the data is still coming in, but there is a substantial number of studies which imply that summed over all ancestrally informative loci, analyzing the phylogenetic tree constructed with a persian speaker from tehran, a punjabi from lahore and someone from kerala as the nodes, the persian would be the “outgroup.” in other words, south asians do tend share great genetic and physical commonalities, even more “caucasian” look ones from the northwest of the subcontinent (this does not mean that i am denying substructure, but, i think the preponderance of the evidence tends to lean slightly toward more unity than diversity when compared to non-south asian groups).

    b) browns kind of look to the same to non-browns, and someone beating the shit out of you for being a “paki” isn’t going to listen when you try to show that Y chromosomal studies suggest that there is a close cladistic relationship between many europeans and north indians via the M17 haplotype, with south indians being the outgroup.

  28. razib

    There is nothing more pathetic than a Punjabi trying to prove he is descended from some barbarian horde from the Central Asian steppes, some Scythian nomadic race or pure Iranian or Baghdadi bloodline. Its actually quite hilarious, but telling of some deep insecurity. Me, I am brown and love it, and I dont want to be descended from any other place than the beautiful land of five rivers, and the more I have in common with other beautiful desis the better 🙂

  29. punjabi boy,

    of course, it isn’t just punjabis. you get strange bedfellows when ideology trumps facts. i have seen both brahmim supremacists and dalit radicals promoting the idea that tamil brahmins are more closely related to central asians than other tamils based on one study from the late 1990s. i have talked to many bangladeshi muslims to be descended from turks, persians and afghans. and so on.

    one analogy that i think is worthwhile is europe:south asia. no one would deny that europeans are diverse, with many languages, religions and physical types. but, there is a certain overall category, and historical, cultural and genetic similarities which show through the differences. same with south asia. they are in fact even the same size, and until recent, about the same population (i’m excluding russia).

  30. razib

    You mention Brahmin supremacists. I have seen the whole Scythian warrior thing become a small fashion amongst some Jat Sikhs, and of course, lots and lots of Pakistani Punjabis are descended from Arabs. Its amazing the way that so many groups seem to want distance themselves from their roots. Anyway, it provides some unintended comedy and insight!

  31. Did anybody catch the pbs documentary last night on Kerela. Its interesting that the natives of Kerela and an average Punjabi looking person look completely different. I guess we need to stop using the term ‘South Asian’ especially on this topic because people from a state like Kerela look completely different from lets say a state like Punjab.

    no, but my sister told me about a program on KerAla. she did not, however, mention that an adequate cross-section of mallus were depicted, so that one could make useful generalisations.

    sigh.

    presumptuous assumptions used to divide people into lumps, son. what does a typical malayalee look like? if you had asked my father, he would have proudly pointed at me.

    BUT during the last three “north indian” social events i attended, i was asked if i was:

    a) bengali
    b) gujurati c) punjabi

    by people FROM north india. aunties and uncles from north india, to be exact.

    why does this even matter? it’s not clear-cut. it can’t be. the “average” punjabi vs the “natives” of karela or whatever you think my ancestral state is called don’t need to be pitted against each other.

    my jat sikh ex-bf’s cousin was smaller and darker than i was. the same jat sikh ex- thought that my mother was punjabi, when he met her for the first time, due to her relatively fair colouring, hairless arms and prominent proboscis.

    a tamil ex- was lighter and five inches taller than an ex- whose last name was aggarwal. there’s a range, people. EVERYWHERE. and i don’t think that i only run into exceptions to the rule, or that i am one either.

    who CARES?

    we’re all “south asian”, on this thread and elsewhere for many reasons. apparently the only reason you care about is a very shallow one called “appearance”. racists see no colour, neither should we.

    and for the record, i’m fine with KK playing this character, though i cringe at her “partition” comment. and yes, i know paki girls who look like her. blah blah blah, meaningless bullshit on race blah blah blah.

  32. I’d like to see some genetic evidence, but its not just a wacky theory that punjabi jats might have some of their heritage from central asia

  33. but its not just a wacky theory that punjabi jats might have some of their heritage from central asia

    some is the key. most of their ancestry is probably not “exogenous.”

    this paper sets the “high bound” for the possibility of exogenous ancestry in north south asians. it focuses on the patrlineage, which is generally skewed toward exogenous lines because so many people coming in from the northwest into india have had sex imbalances.

    in any case, the point is that some groups, whether that be brahmins, punjabis or bengalis* tend to emphasize the minority of their ancestry that separates them from other south asians rather than the majority. it is only human, but people need to grow up….

    • when japan beat the russians in the russo-japanese war bengali intellectuals all of a sudden took pride in the fact that there was/is some mongoloid ancestry among them.
  34. ANNA

    the same jat sikh ex- thought that my mother was punjabi, when he met her for the first time, due to her relatively fair colouring, hairless arms and prominent proboscis.

    LoL

    Oye!

    Leave our prominent proboscises alone!

    They are sexy

  35. Warning: Imminent Simpsons moment

    the “average” punjabi vs the “natives” of karela or whatever you think my ancestral state is called don’t need to be pitted against each other.

    Mmmmmm…..karela…..

  36. I hope to God, they do not try to claim that both sides (the Hindu-Sikh-Buddist victims & the Pakistani military supported Muslim partitioners) were at fault.

    Because the Indians had no weapons, were burnt out of thier homes, I lost my Grandfather to fellow Muslims, who though he was Hindu, so the neighborhood people Burned Him alive and killed his Cows.

    Almost every death was on the fleeing Hindu-Sikh-Buddist side, my kin the Muslims side was in power. Because we had a Military who agitated us to kill non belivers. But the Indians had no Sikh regiments no Hindu regiments, as they all were protecting Ghandi and Nehru and daughter.

  37. A N N A,

    The Kerela women have 3 inch long hairs in there Underarms, my ex-Kerela girlfriend was a typical example. I often would handpluck her underarms, while she slept, and she would look shocked at seeing some bare skin for the next month. haaah heee!

    Kerela woman your famous underarms, do the nation proud.

  38. Mujahid:

    Did anybody catch the pbs documentary last night on Kerela. Its interesting that the natives of Kerela and an average Punjabi looking person look completely different.

    D-uh …dude, you learnt this now after watching American TV? Thought this was common knowledge.

    There is no archetypical Indian racial type.It ranges from the fairly light skinned Kashmiris/Punjus to the (in general) tan South Indian , to the Mongoloid type features of people from the North East (Nagaland etc).

    As far as that Kristin chick, yeah it is definitely a miscast .She looks more Assamese than Punjabi. The average American joe cannot even tell the difference between Arabs and Indians, so these intricacies are probably beyond them.

  39. “The average American joe cannot even tell the difference between Arabs and Indians, so these intricacies are probably beyond them.”

    Ahh, but now what about the average Sardar-Canuck, can he tell the difference? See my earlier post about why Sarin chose to cast Kreuk and then know that Kreuk is from British Columbia, Telefilm Canada is funding and…

    I think we all know Kreuk isn’t a good decision, but funny how there’s no applause for the fact that an independent about Partition is getting Hollywood billing, not to mention a score by Ustad Ravi Shankar & Phillip Glass…

    Everyone bitches about South Asians getting shafted in Hollywood and then when someone doesn’t, they get the shaft by their own people for not getting it “just right.” Cut the project some slack, as its a far better idea than crap like “American Desi,” a film in which I truly wish they’d used non-Indians.

  40. Anna, I apologize for spelling Kerala as Kerela. The reason I posted this comment was that a lot of people here were lamenting the lack of ‘South Asians’ in movies. By referring to Kerala and comparing it to Punjab, I was pointing out the diversity of South Asia and the fact that South Asia has all kinds of people living in it and there is no typical ‘South Asian’ looking person.

  41. I partially agree with the statement that an average American cannot tell the difference between Arabs and Indians. I wonder how true this is in big cities. I have a lot of Palestinian/Jordanian friends. No one has ever asked them if they were Indians. Some North Indians do get confused for Arabs. Which raises an interesting question. Why is that the Indians are more likely to be confused for Arabs than the Arabs are to be confused for Indians ?

  42. Well Al M, Indians are confused for Arabs because there has been a longer history and acquaintenace with Arabs than Indians. Also, in the US people have simpler discriminatory powers (bless them). I can distinguish a native English, Scottish, German, Swedish, Italian native person somewhat easily. However I suspect most average americans unless told the last name would have trouble distinguishing native whites by country (non-US). In the US, I get routinely confused for being Arab,Spanish,Mexican,Indian,Pakistani. This lack of discrimination, however desirable, is not to be taken as a endorsement of racial onenes..

    To go a bit off tangent; I suspect, in your mind you have a continuous scale for humans where punjabis fall closer to whites while keralites are closer to blacks. So, if one were to squint a bit, it is a small step from punjabi to arab to italian to white right? Punjabis are deeply tanned whites right, check out the photoshop pictures? To support this point you will claim to have descended from a cave in the caucus mountains further north than those southies. Of course, nobody, except you, gives a damn about this stupid scale. In the US (and UK) you have only two groups – the whites and the darks. You, my friend Al M are a dark. Punjabis (and other north indians) who are openly racist in India towards south Indians — those damn darkies, southies, madrasis, dravids, we are aryan warriors, we eat wheat and drink ghee — have a shock of their life when they come to the west and the leave the civilized bubble-like life of the college/work. Dyeing your hair blonde, wearing green/blue contact ain’t turing you white. Even German Jews and Italians are barely acceptable as whites, you think you are going to pass off as white??? Reality is that you are a dark. Accept it and work with your fellow darks to build a strong power and economic base and life will be good. Once you have the power you can come to the table and talk with the whites as fellow humans worthy of respect and on equal terms. Keep going on this foolish quest of your semi-white ancestry and there will remain a marginal player.

  43. A Dark

    Your rant was misplaced. Al Mujahid is not the slightest way inclined to think the way that you assume he does. He doesnt give a damn about skin colour. The pompous lecture about Punjabis was amusing though.

    😉

  44. I have a lot of Palestinian/Jordanian friends

    Are they out of Guantanamo bay already ?