81 thoughts on “Meet the Mutiny: SM interviews Candidate Raj Bhakta”

1. Then how about an interview with Vijay Prasad about Raj Bhakta. He’s desi.

   Well, if we went with that criteria, SM could interview anyone brown about any candidate– where would we draw the line? How many desis would we interview about how many candidates? Would we only cover political hopefuls about whom brown people you deem worthy have some sort of opinion?

   There’s something directly relevant about having a dialogue with a desi candidate who may attract interest (and contributions) from the diaspora, because of a shared ethnicity. Beyond all that, I’m far more interested in what Raj Bhakta has to say about Raj Bhakta, not what Vijay Prasad thinks about him.

2. And now some questions for Mr. Bhakta:

   1. Mr. Bhakta, is it in fact true that you tried to raise money from AAHOA? If this is the case, why would you seek to raise money from an organization that attempted to bring Narendra Modi, someone many human rights observers attribute at least partial responsibility for the pogroms in Gujarat, for your campaign?

   2. What is your specific policy proposal to end global warming–i.e. what specific set of laws and policies do you think the American government should implement (please include an opinion on the Kyoto protocol in your answer)?

   3. Mr Bhakta, you say that you “believe in small government, and clean government” What would you do to transform the Republican caucus to be less corrupt and driven by lobbyists? What assurances can you give voters that you will not vote in lockstep with the Republican Caucus in the House, as is practice in the House for both parties?

   4. What do you think of the recent effort by the House Republican leadership to tie a minimum wage increase (which hasn’t increased in several years) to repealing a tax on wealthy people passing their wealth on to the next generation?

   5. What is your specific policy proposal on providing universal health care to Americans?

   6. You say “I believe in teaching people how to fish in indeed of giving them hand-outs day by day. In this sense, IÂ’m a Republican.” Who do you believe is accepting handouts? What specific programs are they receiving them under? What would you replace these programs with?

   7. According to statistics from the Department of Justice, a Black male in the United States in 2001 had a 32% likelihood and a Hispanic male has a 17% likelihood of entering state or Federal prison at some point int heir lives, in contrast to 5.9% for White males. To what do you attribute this?

   8. Again according to statistics from the Department of Justice: “As of December 31, 2001, there were an estimated 5.6 million adults who had ever served time in State or Federal prison, including 4.3 million former prisoners and 1.3 million adults in prison.”

   To what do you attribute this?

   1. You were arrested twice for DUI. What have you learned from this?

   2. You say “ItÂ’s always been my intent to run for political office.” Why did you, as a child, want to run for office? How do you respond to those that would argue this indicates deep-seated political ambition rather than a commitment to Pennsylvania’s 13th district or the issues that affect it?

   3. Do you support the current U.S. funding of the militaries of both India and Pakistan? Why or why not?

   Thanks sincerely, Saurav

3. Mr. Bhakta, is it in fact true that you tried to raise money from AAHOA? If this is the case, why would you seek to raise money from an organization that attempted to bring Narendra Modi, someone many human rights observers attribute at least partial responsibility for the pogroms in Gujarat, for your campaign?

   Oh give me a break. So now all the hotel owners of America are Hindu fundamentalists eh?

4. here’s something directly relevant about having a dialogue with a desi candidate who may attract interest (and contributions) from the diaspora, because of a shared ethnicity.

   My point (as well as others’) was balance–I mean, you have a link to volunteering for his campaign at the end of the post…you’re not exactly being impartial here to disparate political views.

   I just threw out Vijay Prasad’s name as someone who might be critical of his views and is desi, since you’ve stated that as your criteria. If you don’t want to give his opponent space, at least give someone critical of his views (besides Abhi, who is constrained by the fact that he’s the host here) an opportunity to comment in depth (as opposed to having to throw out questions which may or may not get answered).

   But maybe you’re right and it’s better to just let things play out as they will. If that’s the case, I’m just curious what rules you’re applying to how Mr. Bhakta answers questions. Is he required to answer all questions? Does he choose which questions he has to answer? Do you?

   In any case, I appreciate the experiment and the opportunity to pose questions directly, though I think it could have been a little better thought through.

5. Oh give me a break. So now all the hotel owners of America are Hindu fundamentalists eh?

   If I told you that an organization that had sponsored a visa for a prominent member of the IRA to come speak at their conference and had later been solicited by Ted Kennedy’s campaign, you don’t think that would be legitimate grounds for a question? It may be a tough question to answer, but I hardly think it’s out of line.

6. In any case, I appreciate the experiment and the opportunity to pose questions directly, though I think it could have been a little better thought through.

   Of course you do.

7. Mr. Bhakta, is it in fact true that you tried to raise money from AAHOA? If this is the case, why would you seek to raise money from an organization that attempted to bring Narendra Modi, someone many human rights observers attribute at least partial responsibility for the pogroms in Gujarat, for your campaign?

   I was waiting for this one. Hallelujah !!! Oh yeah, you missed the customary Hitler reference !!

8. Mr. Bhakta, is it in fact true that you tried to raise money from AAHOA? If this is the case, why would you seek to raise money from an organization that attempted to bring Narendra Modi, someone many human rights observers attribute at least partial responsibility for the pogroms in Gujarat, for your campaign?

   Shhhh….You dont want the H-1b warriors to know this or they would start lining up outside his house to fund his campaign.

9. Saurav & AMFD:

   Re: AAHOA

   Ah, the guilt by association argument. I agree, Saurav, it’s “hardly think it’s out of line” to bing it up, but where does one draw the line at support and mere association. After all, I recall AMFD saying he’d done some work for CAIR, to which Vikram (I think) provided some evidence of CAIR’s association with terrorists…a tactic, I recall, that AMFD did not take kindly to.

10. Manju: I am not suggesting that Bhakta should or should not take money from AAHOA. I am merely pointing out the fact that associating Modi with AAHOA with Raj Bhakta might make Raj Bhakta an attractive candidate in the eyes of most H-1B warriors. Btw the analogy of CAIR does not work here. The analogy would be of one or two individual members of AAHOA associating with Modi after once working for AAHOA.

11. I guess I should have said some H-1B warriors and not most H-1B warriors as I am speaking from mostly personal observations.

12. If I told you that an organization that had sponsored a visa for a prominent member of the IRA to

    Like Gerry Adams who comes to USA every year@ St. Patrick’s Day and meets all the prominent Irish-American politicans. He does not have a clean slate either:

    Adams has stated repeatedly that he has never been a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), but some British and Irish state papers released under the “thirty year rule” named him as a senior IRA figure in the early 1970s. He was arrested after the La Mon bombing in 1978 (in which 12 Protestant civilians were burned to death) and was charged with IRA membership. Adams denied the membership charge, threatened to sue reporters who repeated the charge,….

    I guess Gerry Adams is too sexy as a Sinn Fenn leader to be protested, Hmm Saurav.

13. When does desi pride descend into the moral equivalent of white pride? We didn’t come here on slave ships and we’re not exactly powerless. Our brown skin does not determine our politics, as Saurav’s articulate posts clearly demonstrate. And while there may be some “desi issues”–like outsourcing–there’s hardly any desi consensus on these issues, as anyone who reads SM knows. And even if there is, does that make dissenters desi Uncle Toms?

    So Mr. Bhakta wants help from the South Asian American community b/c we are South Asian. I suppose one issue that unifies us would be that we are opposed to discrimination. But at this pace we’re about to have the Pogo moment: “we have met the enemy and it is us.”

    Mr. Bhakta should be elected because his politics are good for all Americans. Period.

14. Perhaps Al Mujahid’s eloquent comments about desi Republicans would be something that Mr Bhakta might want to address…

    Al Mujahid for debauchery on July 16, 2006 09:16 AM The Desi republican ragheads are too busy camouflaging their head gear so as not to get outed while they attend the Conservative Action Political Conference to listen to their political gods. Link

15. Vikram,

    I did not try to excoriate Bhakta as I was respecting Abhi’s wishes: Myself and the other bloggers will moderate. This means please be polite and respectful to our guest. Hopefully we get this kind of direct interaction with others in the future and it would be a shame to set a bad example here

    …..so I did not ask Bhakta about my July 16th comment.

    Btw I do apologize to you for not replying to your two emails on CAIR. I do intend on doing that though. Peace.

16. My point (as well as others’) was balance–I mean, you have a link to volunteering for his campaign at the end of the post…you’re not exactly being impartial here to disparate political views.

    saurav, so what? it’s a desi blog and it’s perfectly legitimate to profile desi candidates. i would never in a million years vote for the brother, but i was very glad to see the questions posed to him and also his responses. i think we’re all mature enough to form our own conclusions and opinions. we don’t need to be spoonfed some opposing view.

    I just threw out Vijay Prasad’s name as someone who might be critical of his views and is desi, since you’ve stated that as your criteria. If you don’t want to give his opponent space, at least give someone critical of his views (besides Abhi, who is constrained by the fact that he’s the host here) an opportunity to comment in depth (as opposed to having to throw out questions which may or may not get answered).

    but saurav, this is an open comment thread. anyone here is welcome to put forward that critical perspective. we don’t need to reach out to vijay prashad or anyone else to get an opposing perspective. you could write one up and post it in the comments. anyone could.

    But maybe you’re right and it’s better to just let things play out as they will. If that’s the case, I’m just curious what rules you’re applying to how Mr. Bhakta answers questions. Is he required to answer all questions? Does he choose which questions he has to answer? Do you?

    again, who cares? the point is, abhi said what the rules were: in this case, the interviewee was free to pick whichever questions he wanted. and the interviewee did just that. so anyone with an iota of political judgement can make up their own mind about raj’s answers to the questions he answered, and his non-answers to the questions he didn’t. again the presumption here is that everyone reading this blog is mature enough to form their own opinion. now if raj was running against another desi candidate and we only featured one of them, then of course that would be wrong. but he isn’t. a pennsylvania political blog can do a balanced critique of the two candidates. that isn’t our mission here. the brother is a republican, he’s running, good for him. i wouldn’t vote for him (and he won’t win anyway), but i’m glad we let him have his say here.

    peace

17. again the presumption here is that everyone reading this blog is mature enough to form their own opinion. now if raj was running against another desi candidate and we only featured one of them, then of course that would be wrong.

    siddhartha, having opened this pandora’s box, and perhaps not in the most constructive way, let me just — tentatively, respectfully, gently, in the spirit of offering a suggestion about a self-described “experiment” — offer a response to what you say here that doesn’t presume lack of maturity on anyone’s part, for certainly that isn’t an assumption lying behind where I’m coming from at all.

    it’s one thing to profile desi candidates and not their non-desi opponents. doing an interview/dialogue of this sort, however, really does seem to be a different kind of endeavor for which a different kind of approach could be appropriate. especially for now, i emphasize “could” — personally, i don’t think that any of this falls into the category of “right” and “wrong,” and don’t want to be understood as suggesting that. not least because what you do with this space — your space — is hard enough work as it is, and that largely makes your choices your prerogatives. i get that, and i respect it a great deal. but i also emphasize “could” because i would hope that all of us could have more open and tentative dialogue more often, and a bit longer, before our positions harden into rigid debating postures and sniping with each other, as they so often do (mine included).

    all of those caveats having been said, my own tentative view is that having interviewed a desi candidate in this space, it does seem worthwhile to try to offer their non-desi opponents the same kinds of opportunities.

    for one thing, as you’ve suggested before (correctly, in my view), establishment politicians of both parties are self-referential and largely white. making the same opportunity available to a desi candidate’s opponent facilitates the opportunity to chip away at that and exercise some measure of engagement and accountability. the fact that we have a desi candidate — very much to his credit, and very much to all of yours for facilitating the opportunity — willing to take questions directly from mutiny readers and commenters gives us leverage to try to insist that his non-desi opponent engage our communities as well. but only if we think it important that she do so. i would assume that most of us here think that it is, otherwise we wouldn’t be reacting to things like biden’s comments in the way that many of us here did.

    for another thing, it would help us avoid falling too easily into the trap that our communities (and other communities of color) often fall into of feeling obliged to make judgments about whether to support candidates solely on the basis of their race alone — or put more bluntly, to conclude that we should be supporting brown people just because they are brown. if our communities are politically mature, then to some extent we all should be capable of looking both at race and beyond it, simultaneously, in deciding whether to support one candidate or another. (kinda like walking and chewing gum at the same time.) just because someone is south asian doesn’t automatically mean they deserve the community’s support.

    all of that makes it incredibly relevant what a desi candidate’s opponent does or does not have to say — and indeed, whether they respond by taking the opportunity seriously, treating it in a half-assed way, or just ignoring us altogether — when given the opportunity to engage our communities on substantive issues in a race like this one. at this level, raj’s campaign could be a victory for the community — even if he loses the election — to the extent that his presence in the race shapes the debate and the priorities to which his opponent pays attention. but that won’t happen by itself.

    so at the end of the day, perhaps the most important level of fairness involved here is not to one candidate or another — but rather to ourselves, as a community. the fact that raj is willing to engage this community gives us an opportunity with respect to his opponent that we could be trying to take advantage of. more than anything else, not trying to do so strikes me as possibly a missed opportunity. otherwise, perhaps we aren’t really doing as much as we could be, as a community, to make a dent in the number of situations in which we think we have little more basis on which to evaluate non-desi candidates than what they say about how many of us work at dunkin donuts and how many of us are doctors and engineers, or whatever.

    and trying to take advantage of that opportunity does not strike me as “spoonfeeding” or presuming lack of maturity on anyone’s part, though perhaps your comment was not really suggesting as much.

    buthavingsaidallofthatifyoualldontagreeitsyourblognotminesopleasedontgetmadatmeistillrespectallofyouandthinksepiaisfabulous. and please try to restrain the monkeys from launching tomatoes at me. 😉

    ducks for cover anyway

18. p.s. — i don’t vote for you to be like fox. to the extent i get a vote. 😉

19. a graphic illustrating the process of blog death.

20. Abhi – great interview. Thanks for bringing topics like this into the spotlight!

21. a graphic illustrating the process of blog death.

    I second that motion 😉

    Everyone, let’s be careful not to destroy this thread in classic desi style. Raj Bhakta is a well-known desi personality — here in the UK too to some extent, as I mentioned earlier — and Abhi has fortunately been able to secure an online “town hall conference” with him despite the demands on the latter’s time. Given Raj’s political aspirations I’m sure he could have made an excuse not to waste his time fielding questions on an internet blog from a bunch of anonymous South Asians whom he doesn’t know. But he didn’t. So I think both parties here deserve a round of applause and hopefully it’s been an enlightening and constructive experience for all concerned.

    Let’s not overcomplicate the matter. SM is not an out-and-out political blog (unlike its British equivalent, Pickled Politics), so for his part Abhi is under no obligation to pursue other desi candidates from the same — or opposing — political parties. I’m assuming he just thought this would be a good way for everyone “out there” to chat one-on-one (so to speak) with a well-known and fairly popular American desi person, ask him about his political thoughts if they wished to do so, and that’s all there was to it.

    I do, however, think it would be wise for “Evil Abhi” to not overreact too much to what was presumably some well-meaning objective, constrictive criticism (which is not to say it was correct, but getting different viewpoints is always a good idea), although I do fully understand why he may be sensitive to any actual-or-perceived criticism, considering that SM is his own private project and, of course, the effort it no doubt took to be able to secure Raj’s participation here.

    In any case, I think both Abhi and Raj deserve everyone’s thanks and appreciation for taking the time out to do this. I’m sure we all support them in that regard.

22. people… chill out.. it is a question/answer forum, ask questions, get answers.. it’s a very simple concept…

    these political/bashing debates between commenters really does get old.. and are pretty damn uninformative, and just plain feels like i’m watching a 4 year olds in a sandbox…

    as we try to respect raj bhakta, don’t forget to respect each other…

    the bean is over and out.

23. In any case, I think both Abhi and Raj deserve everyone’s thanks and appreciation for taking the time out to do this. I’m sure we all support them in that regard.

    agreed…

    as we try to respect raj bhakta, don’t forget to respect each other…

    and agreed.

24. i wouldn’t vote for him (and he won’t win anyway), but i’m glad we let him have his say here.)

    Lol @ Sid. Aw, come now: the real issue is that come Election night, whether Raj wins or loses, he’s almost certainly getting a third DUI.

25. I enjoyed reading this “meet the candidate” experiment and the discussion that followed. I have a couple humble suggestions that SM is completely free to ignore, but might make for a more constructive discussion next time. Given the number of questions directed at Mr. Bhakta, it is no surprise that his responses were somewhat lacking in substance as they had to be an inch deep and a mile wide. I suggest that next time the SM folks have readers submit questions, and then they can distill them down to 10 or so that will be sent to the candidate. The candidate can then take his/her time answering them and then those answers could be posted. Obviously this is dependant upon the cooperation of the candidate, but given that there are very few high profile desi candidates, they might be willing to participate. This approach might also be criticized by those who are critical of SM’s editorial process, but I think it is a more efficient approach that will lead to actual answers to important questions rather than the single sentence responses we received.

26. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

    -Ludwig Wittgenstein

    and i normally hate that pretentious f**k 🙂

    let’s not let tragedy of the commons reign folks.

    peace.

27. word to wittgenstein!

    true dat, razib, true dat. speaking for myself, i got love for all of y’all brown people.

28. Paging SM Intern…Paging SM Intern….

29. Wow! Two years after a fake-news-TV-host hauled a bow-tied anchor’s ass over coals on national TV (said anchor incidentally having accused sir Stewart of mollycuddling Kerry in an interview on his own show), we now have one fake-opinion-site accusing another fringe-news-blog’s moderator of ass-fanning to a bow-tied politician, ai Ayatollah! ,the symmetry boggles my mind.

    I invoke Shabana’s law following comment #58.

30. Per a reader’s good suggestion this comment thread has been cleaned up to get us back on track. Comments outside the scope of the interview have been deleted.

31. Really enjoyed this post; nice one, Abhi.