As usual, I’ve been keeping an eye out for desis in politics here in the U.S. Just over a month ago I read that Kamil Hasan had been appointed as a Member-at-Large of the Democratic Party by DNC chairman Howard Dean. There wasn’t too much about him at the time but today the San Jose Mercury News features him:

Kamil Hasan of Saratoga has a new job: collecting serious cash from the Indo-American community for the Democratic National Committee.

That job may not be as powerful as senator or congressman. But for the Bay Area’s roughly 155,000 Indo-American community members, Hasan’s appointment represents another step the well-educated, affluent immigrant group is taking to gain political clout. His goal is to raise at least $5 million through a newly formed Indian fundraising council in time for the next presidential election.

What’s most important, community members said, is that the appointment isn’t just about Hasan: It’s about the voice of the entire Indo-American community, about 2 million strong.

“It’s basically a seat at the table,” Hasan said in an interview at Hitek Venture Partners in Mountain View, a company he founded in 1995 that funds about 30 high-tech start-ups. “It’s a clear acknowledgment that the Indo-American community has made major contributions. We want to make a major impact on where this country should go, and to be involved as a player.”

A couple of things. First, is this really about the entire Indo-American community as Hasan believes? I don’t think so. This is about money and the members of the community that have it.

Kamil and Talat Hasan have long been leaders in the Indo-American community, where Hasan is known as a nice guy who plays golf at the Saratoga Country Club and a father who is strict about once-a-week family dinners with his daughters, Minal, 24, and Saima, 20. Hasan was born into a privileged family in Aligarh, India, in 1944. His father was a wealthy landowner. He came to the United States in 1968 to study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology….

“This is important because this says to the community, ‘We value you,’ ” he said. “And it’s a smart thing for the politicians to do, because this expands their base. And as we all know, this is a community with a lot of money.”

Those are two separate things. Valuing one’s money is a lot different than valuing the “community.” Or perhaps they are no longer separate things in contemporary American politics. Of course, Hasan also recognizes that he may have a problem herding cats:

The challenge for Hasan is to be the voice for a community whose members hail from one of the most diverse countries in the world. It’s not clear how many Indo-Americans are Republicans or Democrats, though Hasan is trying to figure that out. He estimates the breakdown is about 70 percent Democrats, 30 percent Republicans. Even within their own party, many Indo-Americans support different candidates for governor. Others disagree on whether to invest in local or national politics.

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The NYT, the Economist and several U.S. congressmen have been on a sanctimonious, anti-India tear after the India-U.S. deal for nuclear power generation.

The NYT op/ed committee for Dubya’s South Asia trip

They continue to define a nation of 1.1 billion in terms of the much smaller states of Iran and Pakistan; attempt to turn back the clock 30 years to before India had nukes; reward governments which proliferate nuclear weapons to the world’s most murderous regimes; and hypocritically kowtow to a nuclear-armed, authoritarian China while excoriating democratic India.

It’s just baffling why Mr. Bush traveled halfway around the world to stand right next to one of his most important allies against terrorists — and embarrass him… when Mr. Bush agreed to carve out an exception to global nonproliferation rules for India, it should have been obvious that Pakistani opinion would demand the same privileged treatment… [Link]

Fast-forward to Thursday’s nuclear deal with India, in which President Bush agreed to share civilian nuclear technology with India despite its nuclear weapons programs and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty… This would be a bad idea at any time… Mr. Bush might as well have tied a pretty red bow around his India nuclear deal and mailed it as a gift to Tehran. [Link]

President Bush wants to carve out an exception for India. That’s the worst possible message to send to other countries — Iran comes to mind — that America and its nuclear allies in Europe are trying to keep off the nuclear weapons bandwagon. Already, Pakistani officials are requesting the same deal for their country, although it is a request that is unlikely to be granted. Congress would have to approve this nuclear deal, and it should kill it. [Link]

What has emerged on Capitol Hill is an alliance of conservative Republicans, who are concerned that the deal will encourage Iranian intransigence, and liberal Democrats, who charge that the Bush administration has effectively scrapped the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty… “People are worried about the precedent of establishing a full-fledged cooperation with India while we’re wagging our finger at North Korea and Iran”…

“This deal not only lets India amass as many nuclear weapons as it wants, it looks like we made no effort to try to curtail them,” said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is Santa Claus negotiating. The goal seems to have been to give away as much as possible.” [Link]

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The Tamil Tigers can somehow afford a parallel government in northern Sri Lanka with a small navy, visa services and traffic tickets:

When you drive through the “border” post into their territory, you have to set your watch back half-an-hour to Tiger time…

During a recent visit, as I drove down a quiet country road, a Tamil Tiger policeman took out his gun… we were hit – with a speeding fine. There aren’t many rebel groups that take traffic violations seriously.

… it is one of the absurdities of the situation in Sri Lanka that you can find yourself debating the finer points of highway etiquette with a group better known for its devastating use of suicide bombers. [Link]

That anecdote actually lays bare the real reason for speeding tickets in every government: revenues. The Tigers get some of theirs by extorting from a community which generally supports their politics. They track which auntie has given money and which hasn’t and send enforcers to their homes in Canada (thanks, Ananthan). It’s their equivalent of taxation:

They apologized when they came knocking on her door one night… the men came sometime before winter began last year, and they asked for a monthly donation of $50 for the “Tamil cause.”

After an exhausting hour of debate, the Sri Lankan-born woman relented and agreed to $30 a month. But when she stopped her payments three months later, the men came back. Now they demanded a one-time payment of $2,000. “They said if I give them the money this time, they’ll stop coming…”

[At the LTTE checkpoint,] her luggage was checked and she was told to write down personal information, including her passport number, if she wanted to travel… into the Tamil Tiger heartland… to visit family…

After they stamped her Tiger papers in Kilinochchi, she says a man at the office talked to her about donations. He knew that she’d refused to donate in Vavuniya, so he told her that he’d sent her information to Canada and someone would be in touch with her after she returned.

That’s why she believes the men who came to her door last year were sent by the LTTE. “They know this information of how many times I refused to give them money and whom I refused,” she says. But she won’t go to the police because she fears for the life of her family both here and back home…

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