Monthly Archives: March 2005

Just a little to the left …

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India isn’t the same place it used to be. Literally.

A seismologist in India says that the country has moved closer to Indonesia due to the massive earthquake which triggered the tsunami in December. Dr Vineet Gahlaut said that India had shifted a few centimetres eastwards. The expedition reveals the geographical distance between India and Indonesia – the epicentre of the deadly earthquake – has been reduced by between five metres and 15mm. The amount of movement depended on the closeness of different areas to the epicentre of the quake, Dr Gahlaut explained. [BBC]

You see? The tsunami has brought the people of India and Indonesia closer together. Continue reading →

Hoteliers sweep out Modi, AIANA persists

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The Asian American Hotel Owners Association is canceling its invitation to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi:

[AAHOA chairman Mike Patel] said Gujaratis settled in USA have decided to stand by the decision of the US administration on the visa issue. He said, “We support the decision of the American government on this issue.” Patel pleaded with Modi to expedite the process of justice for the riot victims in the state…

Modi’s search for the real killers will proceed about as quickly as Robert Blake’s and O.J. Simpson’s. But the Association of Indians of North America wouldn’t know a losing cause if it bit them in the ass. It’s hosting Modi via satellite feed at Madison Square Garden on Sunday:

[The Association of Indian-Americans of North America (AIANA)], the organiser of the public meeting in the Madison Square Garden in New York, said they plan to put up a huge screen in the hall to telecast Modi’s speech live from Gandhinagar… An [AIANA] spokesperson claimed that the organisation represented the point of view of the majority of Indian-Americans in the United States.

AIANA is feting the man behind the abbatoir of Ahmedabad. They sure as hell don’t speak for me. ‘Aina’ means mirror in Hindi — they need to take a good, hard look at what they really stand for.

In related news, desi Christians have set a new record for longest acronym: the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America applauded the visa denial.

John Prabhudoss, the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee of FIACONA, said, “I applaud the decision of the State Department and I thank the US Congress for standing with us in the effort. Those who invited Modi to honour him in the US have done so in total neglect for the pain and suffering he has caused to hundreds of thousands of people in Gujarat and elsewhere…”

Update: Here’s a good way to show someone you disagree: torch an unrelated party’s godown.

Nearly 150 activists barged into the warehouse of U.S.-based PepsiCo in the western city of Surat, smashed bottles and set fire to the place…

Update 2: AAHOA is sending mixed signals about whether it still wants Modi to speak.

Previous posts: 1, 2

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The Modi situation: A conspiracy theory

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Reading the comments following my post yesterday on Modi, as well as following the comments on other websites, I have decided to do a follow up post on the situation so that I may forward a theory. Several of you think of it as a “snub against India” the way the U.S. seemingly bipassed normal channels in order to issue this censure of Modi. The word “hypocrisy” has also been thrown around quite liberally. Some of you ask, why deny Modi but not the President of China or the heads of states of other countries that have been known to commit religious or human rights violations? Let us look at the political ramifications of what happened yesterday by assuming for a moment that the U.S. and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (or his representative) HAD discussed the issue PRIOR to the Modi decision and that this WASN’T a surprise at all but a carefully planned political bushwhack.

Let’s first look at this article in Rediff:

Though sources close to the Gujarat government in Gandhinagar and the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership in New Delhi indicated to rediff.com correspondents that the decision to deny Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi a visa to visit the United States was taken at the embassy level in New Delhi, without consultation with the State Department in Washington, DC, senior Bush administration officials have told rediff.com that this is not correct.

The officials said the decision to deny Modi a visa was taken at the highest levels and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was apprised every step of the way during her travels in Asia.

“She is the Secretary of State,” the officials said, “and she knows all about what is going on that is important at the State Department.”

The officials acknowledged there were security concerns over the visit because of the large protests that were being organised and also because some of the cities where Modi was slated to speak had not been aware what a controversial figure he was and may not have been taking the necessary security precautions in terms of assigning police personnel and taking other preventive measures.

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Aish to haters, “SUCK IT!”

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yeah i said suck it.jpgOkay, so she never said that. But as her self-appointed advocate, I’m going to brazenly make that statement on her behalf. Oh, whatever. Just read it.

She’s very happy and flattered by the attention she’s getting in the US for Bride, especially after the bashing the film and Ash got back home. “But we all know that was premeditated. Now, after seeing the response in the US, I feel like I’m back to where I was when I was starting out as Miss World ten years ago — the same attention and the unbiased critical overview. It feels wonderful and comforting.
“…The US has been wonderful. When I landed there for the promotion of Bride, everything happened so quickly! I was on David Letterman’s show, and then in Chicago recording for Oprah Winfrey.
“They wrote about my clothes and appearance, but not about my giggling which a part of the Indian press seems to be obsessed with. Honestly, this is how I’ve been all along!In fact, (photographer) Gautam Rajdhyaksha wrote about my giggling habit in his book several years ago. So it isn’t an overnight affectation which I’ve acquired as part of my image. Please! Grant me more substance than that!”
Substance is what Ash is looking for in her roles as actress and brand ambassador. Does it feel good to be carrying Bollywood to the West? “It sure does! But wasn’t I doing that all along, even when I was a model and Miss World?”

Of course you were, Aishu. Do your thang, girrrl, do your thang. Continue reading →

Is that a kirpan in your pocket or…

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Tipster Amy H. alerts us to news of a settlement between 15 year old Amandeep Singh and the Greenburgh Central School District in Westchester County, New York that will now allow him to keep wearing his kirpan. As reported on the website of the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty which helped broker the agreement:

For peacefully observing the commands of his Sikh faith, fifteen-year-old Amandeep Singh was suspended for eight school days last month from his school in the Greenburgh Central School District in Westchester County, New York. Despite the ninth-grade honor student’s exemplary academic and disciplinary records, Principal Michael Chambless initially determined that Amandeep’s kirpan, an element of Sikh religious expression, was a “weapon” and suspended him. Today, after the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty intervened in his case, Amandeep received a letter from School Superintendent Josephine Moffett expunging his record of the suspension and allowing him to wear his kirpan at school.

The Becket Fund–an international, interfaith, public- interest law firm that protects the free expression of all religious traditions–worked with the international civil rights organization United Sikhs to convince the school to obey the requirements of the First Amendment and allow the kirpan.

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Amandeep agreed to wear a smaller kirpan of two inches in length that would be securely fastened under his clothes in a cloth pouch. He also agreed to allow school officials to make reasonable inspections to confirm his adherence to the conditions. The school agreed to expunge Amandeep’s record of the suspension and to ensure that no disciplinary action remains on his record. Today, Superintendent Josephine Moffett gave her final approval to the agreement.

“It’s a shame that a student, rather than the school, had to deliver a lesson on respecting the values of the Free Exercise Clause,” said Gaubatz. “But we applaud the school for eventually recognizing that sensible school policies that protect student safety need not–and must not, consistent with the First Amendment–compromise the religious beliefs of their students.”

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Q is for quotas

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A desi girl from South Africa was rejected by a med school, but her desi friend with lower grades was accepted. Keeping up with the Junejas, the family filed a lawsuit. In court, the med school admitted it had mistaken the friend to be black:

A doctor of Indian origin in South Africa has filed an appeal in Cape Town High Court after his daughter was refused admission to a medical school… He pointed out that [the University of Cape Town med school] had accepted Sunira’s friend, also of Indian origin, although her result was not as good. The friend was accepted because the university believed she was African… [Telegraph]

Due to South Africa’s discriminatory history, the UCT med school has explicit racial quotas for admissions. It even mandates that 2/3rds of its students be female, which must be a major bonus for male applicants:

… UCT’s “target equity mixes” for first-time-entering medicine undergraduates were set at 42 percent black, 28 percent white, 16 percent coloured and 14 percent Indian. Gender targets required 65 percent of these students to be female and 35 percent male. [Pretoria News]

The parents objected to assuming a disadvantaged background even of wealthy blacks:

They pointed to documents that showed that all African and coloured students who applied to study medicine at UCT were considered to be “educationally disadvantaged” even if they attended private schools. [Cape Argus]

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Modi gets B*slapped

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Although you may have already seen it in the comments on the sidebar, this is an important enough issue that I’m elevating it to a full post. A spokesman at the US Embassy in New Delhi announced that Chief Minister Modi has had his Visa DENIED [see previous posts 1,2]. This is a huge victory for grass roots activism (props to CAG) and I hope it will serve as a great example of Hindu/Muslim unity within the U.S. From Rediff:

The US has denied visa to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to visit the country, apparently because of Gujarat riots.

Modi has been denied diplomatic visa and his tourist/business visa already granted has also been revoked as per the US Immigration and Nationality Act, a spokesman of the US Embassy in New Delhi said.

The CM was to pay a five-day visit to the US from March 20.

Modi is expected to address a press conference at 1400 IST to give his reactions.

“We can confirm that Chief Minister of Gujarat state Narendra Modi applied for, but was denied, the diplomatic visa under Section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act because he was not coming for the purpose that qualified for a diplomatic visa,” the spokesman said.

“His tourist/business visa was revoked under Section 212 (a) (2) (g) of the Act, which makes any government official who was responsible for, or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom, ineligible for visa,” he added.

Assuming that the U.S. Embassy in India was working under orders from the Bush Administration, this means that Bush and the State Department are officially recognizing Modi as someone who committed a “violation of religious freedom,” thus acknowledging the validity of the State Department’s own assessment. If Karen Hughes is as on the ball as we expect her to be, then she better “use” this.

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Ummm. I think they are exercising.

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The Christian Science Monitor highlights the healthy goings on in Bangalore’s Cubbon Park. Apparently you can jog while sporting a Sari instead of FloJo-like spandex:

Many wear saris. Some don salwar kameezes, knee-length Indian tunics with loose pants. Others sport track pants and tees. One or two can’t leave their burqas behind for religious reasons. These women have come to a 300-acre wooded haven in the heart of congested Bangalore to walk and jog – minus any contour-hugging lycra or spandex.

The concern for modesty rubs off on men as well. They’re attired mostly in baggy shorts and tees, though some wear slacks. One or two are wrapped in an Indian white dhoti, the costume favored by Gandhi.

Jogging and walking are catching on in India, but few places can match the zeal and camaraderie found in Cubbon Park. In other parts of the world, fitness is a grueling, lonely experience, with i-Pods or perhaps a personal trainer for company. But here, there’s little that’s personal about personal fitness. Working out is an outing – with sons, uncles, brothers, grandmothers, husbands, wives, daughters, cousins, and family relations only Indians could invent.

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“Day to Day” profiles missing in action M.I.A.

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NPR’s excellent news magazine “Day to Day,” leads today’s broadcast with a comprehensive audio profile of M.I.A.:

…music critic Christian Bordal relates the inspirational story of M.I.A — a young hip-hop artist who grew up in Sri Lanka and South London. Her music bridges the gap between her war-torn past and her urban present…M.I.A says she had an idyllic childhood until the civil war intervened — her father joined the Tamil fighters, and she and the rest of her family relocated to Britain, settling in a housing project in the south end of London. She blossomed in art school as a teen, and developed her own unique style of music — a "do-it-yourself" aesthetic inspired by the British club scene, with stripped-down bass and drum rhythms driving catchy melodies. [NPR]

Meanwhile, BoingBoing reports that her father’s ties to the ’Tigers may have caused her to miss a scheduled appearance in Seattle:

…reader Pablos says: "M.I.A. was scheduled to perform at Chop Suey in Seattle tonight. Apparently she is having some kind of Visa trouble and her show has been cancelled." Some speculate the incident may relate to her father’s affiliation with a Sri Lankan rebel group designated as a terrorist organization by the US. No news on her site or newsfeeds yet, but she’s also scheduled to play at SXSW this week. [BoingBoing]

Previous posts: M.I.A. signs with Interscope, M.I.A.: step up to blow up, Steel balls and pots, M.I.A. looked directly into my eyes!, and Military chic

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