Manmohan Singh and Dubya are frolicking together like puppies. Bush even matched his tie to Singh’s turban, although G. Kaur couldn’t talk Laur into a sari. It’s all happening right now.
Bush rolled out full pomp and pageantry for Singh’s visit, with a bewigged fife and drum corps marching across the South Lawn during the welcome ceremony…Administration officials say the pomp was designed to emphasize the growing importance to the United States of India, a rising economic and military power whose newfound affinity for the United States is something Bush considers a major foreign policy success. [Link]
An American army band played the Indian and American anthems, and Singh will address Congress tomorrow. In return, Singh promised Bush a reenactment of the Salt March, with be-lungi’d freedom fighters marching across the lawn to a fountain at Rashtrapati Bhavan. (Elapsed time: 30 seconds.)
Hmmm, this a great moment for SOUTH ASIA and our common heritage, eh? I hope some silly party pooper doesn’t mention silly and “foreign” opinions like how one part of South Asia is a known supporter of terrorism, while the other is slowly being considered a rising global power and liberal democracy (another foreign concept to you second-gen “desis”, I’m sure). Now why would anybody be pissed when we try to blur that distinction, since we’re all Brown, after all…?
huh??
SarcasticIndian: It must hurt your brain that the Indian prime minister was born in Pakistan and the Pakistani dictator in India. Or that two of the provinces in Pakistan are called Punjab and Sind, which are in the Indian national anthem.
‘We’ = the diaspora and ‘anybody’ = residents of India. Yes, please why don’t you speak for me.
You can use ‘Indian’ for politics and ‘desi’ for culture. Huh.
You can use ‘Indian’ for the subset and ‘desi’ for the whole. Well will ya look at that.
SarcasticIndian in 1776: ‘Goddamn it, I’m a Virginian. Don’t call me an American.’
SarcasticIndian in 1947: ‘Goddamn it, I’m a Bengali. Don’t call me an Indian.’
SarcasticIndian in 2005: ‘Goddamn it, I’m an Indian. Don’t call me a desi.’
Lets see. We all know that most Americans associate turbans with Muslims. Now Americans will start associating Indians with Muslims as Manmohan Singh wore a turban. Maybe Sarcastic Indian will now stop referring to himself as as Indian.
Leaving aside sarcasticIndian’s clumsy attempt at sarcasm (not a fully trained Jedi), it is important to distinguish that in matters of American relations with countries in the subcontinent, South Asians in the U.S.are unlikely to reach a consensus. This is not inherently a bad thing.
This does not prohibit South Asians in the U.S. from working together where it is possible. But on matters such as military sales to Pakistan, or nuclear cooperation with India – our common brown-ness is unlikely to dissolve differences.
..they were both born in India….although one of the places in discussion is current day Pakistan.
Manny Singh, my nicca. I saw him speak at Lincoln Center last year. What a horror show. Not him. The crowd. Punjabi mundas thought they were at Basement Bhangra rather than at Lincoln F’n Center to hear a statesman deliver some keywords. Hollering at him like he was their boy from back in the day. Comical.
Amidst all this pageantry, I wonder whether anything substantial would really be achieved. As of now India’s UNSC bid has been shot down. Maybe the CEOs Forum has something better to offer.
And that was just Ennis!
The matching tie/pagri thing is the coolest part of this, by far: fashion diplomacy.
The rest of it is mainly for show (Manmohan Singh had also come down for a visit back in November, if you remember).
The picture of Rowe and the nuns is an interesting juxtaposition.
One the one hand you see nuns…People of God and on the other, you see the Devil’s Ambassador to USA, Karl Rowe; one of the greatest politically devious minds of the generation…
As regards the first poster…dude are u trashed or stoned ? If being south asian means i am going to be clubbed with pakis, then sorry i am no south asian… i am an indian first and last and nothing else.
It’s cool, the Indian-Australian continental plate will break apart to suit your version of geography.
Also, I’ve got someone at work on rewriting the history books. In the new version, India split from the cliffs of Dover.
You know, I’m happy that people don’t want to be called “South Asian” for fear of being grouped with Pakistanis. That just means less annoying people in South Asian crowds. Purge yourselves at will!
The typical “hot-blooded” Indian reaction to being branded “South Asian” by spewing vitriol on anyone who doesn’t, is understandable. I almost expect such a reaction.
What surprises me though is the verbal volleys from some SM’ers and second-genners. If people want to disassociate themselves from the “South Asian” tag and be identified just as “Indian”, I would expect you to respect it as their opinion/choice/prerogative and not demonize it. Come on, you guys are better than that!
Anyways the “South Asian” debate is getting old. Can we just move on?
Why stop at South Asian?
I am a hominid, a mammal and a vertebrate. I quiveringly stand in solidarity with my fellow blobs of protoplasm. JM-coelecanth bhai-bhai.
🙂
Dogs at the Capitol got more coverage on the major networks today! Even Mushy gets coverage when he comes to town, why India get no respect??? At least BBC spent time on the Indian in town… American world news is just local crap + Isreal + brown terrorists!
From the White House Press Briefing today following this morning’s joint conference by Bush and Singh:
I have realized from the numerous debates on other threads that the gulf between 1st generation Indians and 2nd gen “South Asians” is huge when it comes to matters of national identity. For us (1st gen), being Indian is deeply ingrained in our psyche.
For 2nd geners, it is more “skin deep” i.e a racial identity :brown/sepia..blah blah blah..
Associating our nation in the same category as Pakistan /Bangladesh is really repugnant to us, we have seen first hand the effects of terrorism from these failed states in our cities and towns .Governments do not exist in a vacuum, the policies of these fundamentalist governments have the majority support of their people. Some of the largest fund raisers for the jihadists in Pakistan have been the Mirpuri Pakis of Britain.,your fellow 2nd gen South Asians. Your brotherly “South Asian” Pakis were also responsible for the London bombing.
If 9-11,Madrid and London are not enough to shake you 2nd geners out of your deluded visions of a pan South Asian unity, nothing can.
Yes George, the gulf is huge. Accept it. Then get over it. I am sick to death of every post on our site getting highjacked by “one-track uncles” like yourself. You are quite right that nothing will shake me out of my belief in pan South Asian unity. Now that we’ve cleared that up why don’t you go outside and play?
That had me surprised too! But looks like India got the nuclear energy issue resolved in its favour.
Kudos to you George You really tickled these 2nd gen South Asian’s blood-> Abhi’s reaction noted.
Ha ha! Yeah, thanks for smacking these 2nd gen’r biatches, George. It’s not like we discussed this 3,627 times last week.
didn’t your veddy indian parents teach you that you it is impolite to visit someone’s house and call them “bitch” (or any variation of the same) while they are kind enough to entertain you?
no? too bad. i’m sure even bangladeshi and pakistani people whom you assume to be inferior absorbed that lesson, since they don’t visit our blog and sully similarly.
really, if it bugs you 1st gen’rs so much, why bother visiting Sepia Mutiny? hit the “x” in the upper right-hand corner (or the red dot, appositely enough, in the upper left) on your way out and shake our deluded dust from you feet. we biatches won’t miss you, promise.
Ummmm, L.A., NYC, D.C., and Chicago – the cities which the Mutineers currently reside in – are not common redneck hick towns, and they’ve all seen their share of terrorism and its aftereffects. This name-calling is getting really old and we need to move beyond a discussion of semantics if we want something more productive and progressive from our activism, labeled South Asian or not.
why bother waiting for the pakis or “bangas” to throw us in jail… you seem to have made up your mind about where we belong. do you think india has a monopoly on terror? or that muslims are the only terrorists out there? kindly look at the naxalites in AP and orissa or the militant organizations in the northeast. maybe pan asian unity is a better dream than your game of paranoid hate. the architects of your reality, the british, jinnah, nehru, gandhi… they’re dead and gone. its our world now. and its our dream. dont be hating coz we live in a “redneck hick town”
Oh, come off it please. I’m a First Generation Bangladeshi who doesn’t mind being called South Asian. And I know plenty of Indians and Pakis(my beloved FOB’s, first, second, whatever generations)who definitely wouldn’t throw anyone’s ass in jail. We’re all proud of our national identities, but in the end, we’re still all brown, and no one other than brown people themselves can tell the difference between the Bangladeshis, Pakis, Indians, Sri Lankans, etc. I find it hard to believe that there is a single South Asian who hasn’t been influenced by the cultures of his/her neighboring nation in one way or another. Personally, I think you angry First Gen’rs need to go get your own blog and discuss your problems there instead of insulting the Mutineers.
It is indeed refreshing that in this age of globalization and miscegenation, there are some fellow first-gen (or gen-X as the irritating desi media calls them/us) who are stubbornly insistent on maintaining their identity. Yes we are proud of being the back-office of the world. We are proud of our ability to don and doff accents at will and be anyone’s bitch in the call-center. We are truly fucking proud of the one medal we won at the olympics. And before any one points out this infinitely irritating factoid-yes we are very truly proud of the zero. We, the one billion indians, are…unique.
I forgot to add: I am doubly proud of my caste and religion and would never marry you George or 1st Gen’r. I’m sure he does not belong to my caste. Don’t you dare defile my surroundings anymore.
back off dude….that was so trashy(to say the least)…this is a blog maintained by the seconders so it bound to present things from their perspective….and the fact that their perspective is different from urs is no reason to start acting like the high school dud….
i only hope all of us make a better effort at understanding each other’s point of view and where its coming from(i know i sound like a middle school teacher)…..degenerating the discussion to a state of civil-depravity only serves to alienate people further,and,to borrow a bollywood phrase,shows ur own ‘aukaat’….
btw A N N A,i dont mind ur use of the phrase’you 1 Gens’but maybe you could have directed ur ire at the person and not at the group…having said that,i dont really blame u for reacting the way u did(not that u need a certificate of good behaviour from me!!)…chillax girl(too sexist?)…not all of us 1 gens come from the trenches….
i agree with ms about giving people space for their personal identities, but I think a lot of the response is about national chauvinism, as opposed to just personal identity. I also don’t think it divides so neatly among “1st gen” and “2nd gen” people–I know plenty of “1st gen” people who are more open-minded in their political affiliations than a lot of the India-first commentors here). And I’ve been skewered for having raised objections on different grounds to the “South Asian” label (although i’ll be the bigger person and admit their’s probably some internalized racism/bong chauvinism going into it).
In conclusion, I would ask the people who are so India-first–particularly 1st gen people–how many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis they’ve ever met–particularly when they were in India. And I would ask 2nd gen folks if you feel comfortable adopting an Anglo-North American identity instead of an American one since the U.S. and Canada are about as closely related culturally as India, Pakistna, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, etc.
And I also agree wtih everyone else that we should move on right after each of us has our say and doesn’t allow us to move on 🙂
For everyone who’s interested in still talking about identity, here’s an open thread on my blog where you can do so.
Manmohan Singh? Didn’t he used to work at a gas station in St. Louis?
I didn’t think any of the SM 6 ever tricked or misled their readers into thinking the Mutiny was anything but than a 1.5/2G forum.
if you don’t like it, change the channel…
What’s a 1.5 gen’r? I was born and raised in India but have now lived in the West for over half my life. Is it me?
1G- emigrated as an adult 1.5- came as a child/teen 2G- born here
so it depends how old you were when you came. My dad came in his 20s, so he’s not 1.5, he’s still 1G. He prefers to be called L-TOB (long time off the boat)…
1.5- came as a child/teen
Hmm thats problematic. So if you come here at 18, does that make you a teen ? an adult ?
The more conventional test is ‘accent’. If you have the slightest hint of an accent you are 1G period. If not then you are 1.5G/2G.
I’m sure there’s grey area of if you attended high school outside of India, or came here straight for college.
Text of Dr Manmohan Singh’s address to the Joint Session of Congress.
Wow, I’m quite intrigued by all this. I think I go with DD’s definition as opposed to accent as I have a mate who came here from Bangladesh as a young man but studied English religiously and has no discernable Banger accent, but he’s still 1st gen. I’d call the cut-off 16 years old, which makes me 1.5G. I’ve never had a label before, I’m veritably agog with excitement. However I’m mixed race, so I don’t know if that clouds things.
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blockquote>1G- emigrated as an adult 1.5- came as a child/teen 2G- born here
Dork that I am, I started getting creative and using the equivalent of Hausdorff Dimensions.
So if someone moved here when they were like one years old, I’d call them 1.9 generation. If someone moved here when they were 7, I’d call them 1.6 or 1.7. If they came at 16, I’d call them 1.1 or 1.2.
And of course you can complicate it more by taking into account the person’s actual worldview and the such. But then you start getting out of the realm of numbers and into understanding people, which would be a tragedy for all alike 🙂
Text of Manmohan Singh’s Speech at a Reception, Tuesday Evening
I call myself 2nd gen cuz I came here at age 7, and I heard that kids who came under 8 were considered 2G. I think it’s in a book by Diana Mehta who did research on 2G young desis all over US. I’d never heard of 1.5G though!
Did anyone catch the Jay Leno show last night? Leno showed a clip of PM Singh and Bush during his monologue (it depicted Bush brushing his teeth while the PM was giving his speech.) I was on the phone and had the tv on mute so I missed what was said. If anyone knows what that skit was about please let me know.
Question!!
why is it always that 2G more often than not seem to be referring to indian kids born in america.
Indians do migrate to other parts of the world other than UK, Canada and the US y’know 😉
and we have the saaaaaaaaaame identity crisis 😉