While most people are in favor of charitable giving, not everybody likes charitable givers. While some donors are seen as saintly figures, donating their hard earned cash for the benefit of the less fortunate, others are seen as social climbers trying to attain respectability by using money generated by less socially beneficial business practices. Consider the story of Darshan Dhaliwal, the gas station king of the Midwest, a man with both supporters and detractors: 
The University of Wisconsin-Parkside has received a $4.5 million contribution from Milwaukee businessman Darshan Dhaliwal. The donation, the largest private gift in the university’s 38-year history, … will help fund expansion of the university’s Communication Arts Building … The expanded facility will be named Dhaliwal Hall. Dhaliwal Hall will be the first new academic building on campus since … 1979. [Link]
Dhaliwal is a very wealthy man by all accounts, although it’s hard to know exactly how many gas stations his company owns, especially since he wont provide a figure. In 2000, a he confirmed that he owned at least 400 in 8 states, the “NRI of the month award” over the summer said that he owns “nearly 1,000 gas stations” across the country. This statement, from over a decade ago, claims that “Dhaliwal Enterprises… employs 5,000 people and posts annual profits that exceed $50 million.” In the end, it’s impossible to tell for sure with a private company. What we know is that he’s a very big fish, who operates gas stations in somewhere around twelve states between the coasts.
He has also been a controversial figure in Milwaukee. In 2000, he was accused by some community activists of not doing enough to prevent drug paraphernalia at his stations, sometimes by managers or clerks [see photos]:
There’s the crack pipes actually sitting in the Chore Boy box, on an empty register drawer, next to the ephedrine. Some of the clerks are embarrassed about having to sell this stuff. This is how the manager wants it done. [Link]… neighborhood leaders asked on numerous occasions to meet with Dhaliwal about their concerns with graffiti, loitering, drug dealing and other problems at the Citgo station. [Link]
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p>Dhaliwal disagreed, saying he was responsive and that he was also being singled out. In a 2000 article, he said:
… he sent a letter to each of the lessees at his 22 Milwaukee gas stations, asking them to stop selling roses with glass tubes, small scales, cigarette papers and Blunt cigars – all items that were known to be purchased for drug use.
The real problem, Dhaliwal says, is not that he won’t cooperate, but rather that the neighborhood groups are asking too much of him. He can’t understand why neighbors are singling him out as an owner, and not asking other area gas stations to comply. [Link]
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p>The story has further wrinkles. His opponents accused him of buying political support with large and sometimes improper political donations:
An analysis by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign of donations given between 1993 and October 2002 showed that Dhaliwal donated $7,000 to former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson and thousands more to more than 35 legislators, said the report. Three years ago, Dhaliwal was accused by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign of violating a state law prohibiting any individual from giving more than $10,000 a year to politicians. The group said Dhaliwal had contributed $11,800, but Dhaliwal said $5,500 of this had actually been donated by his wife, Debra Dhaliwal. [Link]
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p>While supporters responded that opposition to Dhaliwal was motivated by prejudice:
… the Indian ancestry of people at the Citgo station comes up in meetings. Even the cartoon shows Dhaliwal inside Butler’s office wearing a turban, while one of the characters on the outside is wearing a yarmulke and another is wearing a clerical collar. A “small faction” of people, Butler says, are bitter than another minority group controls so many businesses in a predominantly black part of Milwaukee. [Link]
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I wasn’t able to find later coverage of this issue, so it’s hard to see how it was resolved. Because these are harsh accusations, I do want to stress that even his severest critics did not single him out as directly involved in anything related to drugs, but instead blamed him for not doing enough to stop activity by his managers and clerks. I love the way they put it:
Mr. Dhalwali is a very smart man with a phenominaly lucky family. He was cool enough to help put a statue of Mathatma Ghandi in Milwaukee. We should be assured that he has enough control over his personal empire that when he tells several hundred store mangers to behave responsibly, they will comply. [Link]
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p>Because anybody who helps to put up a statue of (sic) “Mathatma Ghandi” must automatically be cool 
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p>Y’all can make up your own minds about the man, I’m neither trying to build him up nor tear him down. My point is simply that many major donors are people whose rise to wealth was also criticized, and that philanthropy is very much like sausage making …
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In case you’re curious, here’s more more of his back story from an article in 2000. The reporter sells his story as straight up “American dream”:
At 21, Dhaliwal met a Peace Corps volunteer who spoke of American customs that seemed unbelievably refreshing: moving out of the house at 18, dating who you like, going out to parties. Dhaliwal was hooked… In 1974, Dhaliwal met Debra, a third-generation Wisconsinite from Little Chute. With roots in Holland, Debra was like no one he could have met or married in India. They fell in love and married two years later…In 1977, Dhaliwal leased a gas station at N. 35th St. and W. Garfield Ave. for $300 a month. He taught himself to change oil and do other simple mechanical procedures, then began manning the station by himself. He would work on a car, run out to pump gas, run back to work on the car, and on and on, back and forth, for hours. It was also during this time that he and his wife had their first child, a son, Jespal. During his 16- or 17-hour workdays, Dhaliwal sometimes would hold “Jessie” in one hand and pump gas with the other.
“I enjoyed hard work,” he says. “I learned one thing – that hard work always pays.”
In 1979, Dhaliwal had saved $30,000, enough to buy his first gas station … Dhaliwal sold the station the same year and bought two others. The next year he bought a half-dozen more. For the next six years, he bought two gas stations a year, and in 1986, he bought 50 stations spread across Illinois, Indiana and Michigan from Chevron. [Link]
A modern day desi Horatio Alger!
Previous stories: Today’s Carnegies? , Desis and Philanthropy
From what I have heard, he underpays his employees, who are mostly Sikhs from Punjab. A large number of them are undocumented, thus afraid of being deported and easily exploited. Some people who know him, claim Dhaliwal donated money to bush for the 04 election.
I don’t know if he a democract or republican but both he and his wife did give money to Bush. However that does make him an uncle tom. The picture of him with Bush is from Sept 26, 2001. This was just 2 weeks after 9/11 when Bush met with sikh leaders after 9/11 due to the concerns about backlash against sikhs.
I think they just want to sleep with white women. Dhaliwal apparently succeded.
Hitler had facial hair too.
Its worse then that. The Bushs like to pat the underlings on the ass.
I heard he shot his dog.
This is why he supports bush. They just want cheap labour that can be exploited. Clearly the humane thing to do is keep these people out of this oppresive country. What self-hatred leads some peole to do never seizes to amaze me.
Clueless is right – it’s a post 9/11 meeting photo. It was taken September 26, 2001.
Yeah Damn straight I’m right. When it comes to pictures of Bush and sikh’s I’m the info guy.
Camille, well what the heck did you mean by that confusing comment in #40? You have no problem conjecturing that Dhaliwal’s philanthropy was built, at least, in part, on ‘holding other people down’. So, if you are going to say that we should pay attention to the negative effects of building up a business, I say we should pay attention to the negative effects of certain types of activism. What do you think of that larger point?
MD, I was critiquing the statement that Dhaliwal’s business was built on holding people down at the same “level of badness” as people like Yale, Rhodes, Rockefeller, etc. I can’t comment on your point about activism because you’ve left it so broad and open to interpretation that I have no idea what context you have in mind when making your statement.
If you’d like we can absolutely discuss offline. There’s no need to take up more space.
Camille, sorry, I just realized that I totally read things into your comment that I shouldn’t have. Oddly enough, I got mad on another thread when I thought someone did the same to me. So, sorry.
Big deal that his store is selling roses in a can. and thanks for letting me know what they are. My neighborhood gas station is owned by a Portuguese and he carries them too.
If the kids wanna do drugs let em buy it. What do any one of us care.
It was interesting folks brought on carnegie rockefeller etc. Carnegie\’s only fault may have been the market place being dumb otherwise folks would have seen through the pamphlets on competitors steel that was distributed.
Carnegie did good with his wealth, I dont know much about this gentleman. and I dont see anything wrong with his stores selling those roses.
Entrepreneurs types do more good than the lawyer/middlemen/professor types. Who probably are the real robber barons who get away with the works of others.
Also any desi interested in trying the blunt cigar with alternate fillers…. Next meetup should involve this.
Word on the street is Mr. Dhaliwhal has a reputation of promising to donate to Sikh charities, and ends up never doing so. I would look into this guy a bit deeper.
Wow! The internet is truly the great equalizer. It is easy to make ridiculous comments when you can hide behind a screen name. I won’t do that. I’ll be clear from the beginning, I am in fact one of his half white sons. And I can speak to many of your comments with more knowledge than hearsay or newspaper articles. First off I will not speak on my father’s fashion sense, it has been a point of contention between us in the past. I will only say that this picture’s resolution terrible, and the suit is actually black with light purple pinstripes. I will also comment that I am almost certain that my mother did not pick that outfit for him.
As far as the drug paraphernalia is concerned, of all of our gas stations, we do not run any of them. We lease them out to individual operators. We have found that a store is most successful when the operator has pride in the location. The lessee owns all of the inside merchandise while we maintain the gas. Our company as well as the brands that we sell under have certain requirements including cleanliness, uniforms, and not selling merchandise considered questionable. This may sound like a company line but I will back it up with this. I personally sit on community watch groups to rectify this situation. We have been able to bring in all of the operators that work with us as well as many independents. The core issues that we are working on is to make the items (blunts, rolling papers, roses) illegal. Our company sees no money from the sale of these items or any other items in the store. The problem the operator faces is that if they stop selling these items and the store down the street does not, they are losing there livelihood. The greater problem is the demand for these items for illicit activities, and from what I’ve seen and heard, if someone wants to do drugs they will find whatever means necessary to do them. As a side note, the employees at the gas stations (the ones we are supposedly bringing to the US and exploiting) are not our employees, rather under the employment of the station operator. It makes me terribly sad to read the animosity regarding the charitable giving by my father. One thing I have realized in my life, regardless of how hard you try, you will never please everybody. Neither my father nor myself was born with a silver spoon in our mouths. My father has worked for what he has achieved, and contrary to comments posted above, it has not been by exploiting others, especially not his own countrymen. He has always wanted to give back to the communities that have helped him get where he is. Whether the negativity is due to him not giving to someone’s particular charity or institution, or if people are just skeptical for his reasons, I don’t know. I do not always agree with his choices, but I do not condemn him for doing the things in which he believes. Especially when it is helping others. Finally, and most personally, to comment on the folks who want to have a laugh at the fact that my father married at white women (my mother), I really do hope you are actually more intelligent than you came across in your posts. My mother and father went to school together and fell in love, nothing terrible in that. They got married and had six kids. My mother, who is one hundred percent Dutch, can probably speak better Punjabi than most Punjabi kids born and raised in the US. My parents raised all of us kids with both of there faiths, telling us that neither was wrong. We were told there is one God and only different ways of worshipping him. I am a Sikh, with a turban and a beard. It is no political statement as some of you may believe. It is who I am and an important part of my identity. As a child I was confused by why I looked different than everybody else, the white kids with cut hair and the desis with brown skin. My dad helped me realize that I wasn’t going to be like anyone else, that I came from two distinct cultures that were both a part of me. And most importantly, that I should embrace. I will not sit here and say the Darshan Dhaliwal is flawless, nor will I say he hasn’t made mistakes. And as I already said, we definitely don’t see eye to eye all the time. I will, however, not hide behind an assumed name and make comments with little to no basis. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and you all entitled to yours. Mine is a little biased, but I have had more direct experience.