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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p>
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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p>
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
not feelin’ the turban-tie combo.
How about the purple pagh and the brown suit? Works or not?
I am not feeling it either, my surd friends normally match the Pagh and the shirt or tie or something. Looks like the man needs a wardrobe assistant.
Oh yeah, mix it up baby! 😉
That reminds me of the “you can run from us now, but sooner or later, we’re going to hump you” from Russel Peters.
Darshan Dhaliwal is everything right that is about American Dream. I also love the picture of him and Bush. They look like a couple of long time friends in that picture.
I can live with the purple/brown combo – on an uncle. But then again, my husband is my stylist, so what do I know!
Wow, do you really know enough about him to make that claim?
The American Dream is just that, it only takes a superficial understanding of the one’s who “prove” it to substantiate it.
I actually like the purple/brown combo! I think it’s the tie that throws things off.
Honestly, I wonder if people would come after him the same way if he weren’t brown. Maybe I’m a big jaded cynic, but business-people throughout the U.S. give obscene amounts of money to legislators to curry political favor. I’m not saying it’s right, but I bet there are other big-time offenders who have more clearly violated giving laws (I mean, $1180 over, and you don’t know if this figure should actually be split in 1/2? This is like splitting hairs). And as for drug paraphernalia, maybe he does own the most gas stations, but I feel this is like the DEA raiding desi stores for allowing too much Sudafed to be sold over the counter.
maybe Debra’s making the wardrobe decisions. happens.
“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 Â…”
You guys come up with such gems. 🙂
Exactly, comparing him to a white cab driver is nonsense (and that’s what’s being implicitly done with all this ‘American Dream’ talk) For comparisons to have any meaning they need to be done within the class heirarchy.
he sounds like elihu yale (who was 1/4 desi!), cecil rhodes, george soros, etc — all these guys are examples of the ‘ends justify the means’ logic of philanthropy through corporate irresponsibility.
That is ridiculous. It is completely unconscionable to put a gas station owner who may have some stations that do not adequately prevent the sale of drug-related items on the same level as people who brutally murdered hundreds of people in their colonial exploits. Why not put him up there with Carnegie and Rockefeller? It’s a stretch, at best.
Why not put him up there with Carnegie and Rockefeller?
John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil was one of the most ruthless business they ever will be. He took more mom and pops out of their livelihood……that it even bothered him, and therefore, a lot of philanthropy.
Please read Pultizer Prize winning book, The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
(#14)
not quite sure if elihu yale was 1/4th desi. he was governor general of madras at some point in his career and thus, was posted in india. so it’s more likely that a few desis are 1/4th elihu yale than the other way around!
people who brutally murdered hundreds of people in their colonial exploits
When , where and how? Please enlighten.
Rhodes Scholars, Yale University – you are complicit in the brutal murder of hundreds of people as long as you flash those maleficent credentials. It takes a commenter on SM to dig out what you have been hiding for more than a hundred years!
George Soros too? No he can’t be.
We have had a very similiar situation with gas station proprietors here in Richmond. Ghulam Arshad, Inc. own a bunch of businesses here and are the target of neighborhood clean-up groups. I’m not fond of these places that sell crack pipes and forties because they attract violent criminal type behavior. I’ve got one of these supply stores a block from my house and there is a shooting there about three times a year in the parking lot.
When , where and how? Please enlighten.
Maybe, she went too hype, there is a kernel of truth to some of her statements.
Please read bios on
Cecil Rhodes
Even George Soros has done questionable things.
These are my favorites qoutes for John D. Rockeffer.
Re: #16 The Prize seems to only regurgitate populist screeds about Rockerfeller. Titan by Ron Chernow seems to be a much more nuanced portrait of the man, and his philanthropy was probably more because of his religious beliefs than a response to guilt.
I knew of friends who have worked at these gas stations of Dhaliwal’s in Milwaukee in 2000-2002 and I can vouch for the seediness of the neighborhood and coarse clientele. Like Dhaliwal said, he tried to prevent things like roses in a tube, blunt cigars etc. from being sold because it could also double up as drug paraphrenalia. It’s quite inconceivable that somebody who has a multi-million dollar business would actually indulge in dope-dealing (if his entire business and wealth was generated from something besides dope-dealing). This is no example at all of a business built upon, or wealth generated by, sinister means.
more because of his religious beliefs than a response to guilt.
yes, he (John D. R) was a religious man.
she went too hype
Euphemism for ‘ spreading canards ‘?
well, ok – there is a stretch – however, i was referring to their exploitation of natural resources, not necessarily human beings. mr. dhaliwal’s philanthropy comes from oil/drugs, whereas folks like rhodes took part in the diamond trade.
my apologies for being unclear.
Rockefeller and Swami Vivekananda
Money, Power, Success never comes along with its fair share of ethical dilemmas, Whether you’re an actor, politician or entrepenuer. I can bring myself to admire Dhaliwals rise as a self-made man and i have long given up on debating all the ethical questions that come in the way. Dhaliwals territory does not correspond to our maps and as long as he’s not committing mass murder I find his supposed faults extremely trivial.
Agreed, I’m not accusing him of dope-dealing. Furthermore, nobody, not even his critics are.
“Indulging”, “enabling”, “ignoring”…before you know it, Dhaliwal could end up with prime agricultural real estate in north-eastern Afghanistan. I kid…but I think we’re jaded enough to know that business successes, especially from the minority community, will always be soft targets for all kinds of malignant social pathologies. So the burden of proof in such cases, especially on minority-sensitive bulletin boards and such, should always be on the accuser…and here, in this case, this is very feeble material to merit a doubting piece like this…
I think what’s more remarkable is the incredible financial/business success of so many men hailing from rural Punjab and rural Gujarat in this country. Hard work, perseverance, risk-taking, and guts.
You wonder how much control he has over the operations of an individual gas station that is leased out (i.e. to “lessees”). Perhaps he is being singled out a bit.
This guy is popular in the Chicago area and he is rich as hell. When ever there is a political election, you see him in the back ground on tv supporting the most popular canidate.
On a side note, his half white son’s wear turbans. Never seen that before, usually it is the white side that dominates the individual.
Uh, he actually chose it to match w/ Bushy’s tie, not his own. The selflessness…
yeah, you know exactly what the dutchie and phillies are for, but which gas stations don’t sell any of those? you can’t single the man out.
In your experience, do gas stations usually sell scales and glass tubes (the types crackheads use to make pipes)?
I’ve seen that before. In any case, it’s not always the white side that dominates. Look at our own Siddhartha and DesiDancer (forgive me if I’m being presumptuous, guys, I don’t really know how you relate to your non-desi halves). But that being said, I have seen the other extreme, half-desi kids with names like Brendan and Connor, in which the white side did dominate completely.
im my experience, never glass tubes or scales. but roses with glass tubes, certainly. and small scales are sold in quite a few gas staions and convinient stores throught the state of jersey.
Wearing a turban is more than “the desi-half dominating.” When his son does it seems that the family is trying to make a statement of his kind.
Personally I think theres nothing wrong with donating money in the hope that you will rise socially. In fact, I don’t think there are any large donors who don’t have at least some self-serving reasons for doing so.
Wow. Some of you are a sour bunch.
And the statement is what? That he’s a practicing Sikh? Don’t hate! 🙂
Aww, thanks for being so patronizing, guys! jilted_manhood, I am not spreading lies, nor am I hyperbolizing. Just because someone has endowed a scholarship or gave heavily for the founding of a university does not mean it is responsible to ignore the number of people who were killed or “put down” in the name of his business exploits. You are welcome to explore the details on your own, but Cecil Rhodes has a bloody history in Africa, particularly in his desire to build a railroad from “Cairo to the Cape,” and the British East India Tea Company (of which Yale – the person, not the university – was a player) did a lot of fighting and colonization of its own throughout South, Southeast, and East Asia during its attempts to “spread [i.e. absorb] markets.” My point in bringing it up was to offer context in light of the statement that Mr. Dhaliwal here is “just as bad as” people who were actively engaged in organized, privately (and sometimes publicly)-financed, armed violence against communities. Go ahead, point to and applaud the philanthropy, but don’t be so blind as to pretend you don’t know where the money came from.
And viet*namita, apologies, point taken 🙂 I don’t know if I entirely buy your point on there being strong parallels regarding profiteering from the violence of natural resource extraction, but it’s an interesting angle.
Somehow I think Camille would give a free pass to certain types of activists whose activism caused real-world suffering, like, say, that which led to the Vietnamese boat people crisis in the 70s.
MD, don’t you think it would be useful to actually know someone before conjecturing?
It’s always fashionable to lash out at rich, educated people, even ones who rightfully claim to know what is better for the poor, illiterate masses. Right now in West Bengal, the Tatas’ plans to build an automobile plant there is facing tremendous opposition from stubborn locals, most of whom are impoverished. Even the communist state government is gung-ho about the project. Even after the locals have been promised fair compensation for their lands along of course with the potential jobs at the plant, they remain intransigent. If anyone here knows the history of Tatas in India, they’ll agree with me that it’s going to be both an economic and social boon to the locals. The locals will ultimately come around but much precious time will have been lost, chiefly to their own and their state’s detriment. Now if someone like Cecil Rhodes or the Chinese government were in charge of this project, things would move faster and it’s possible some self-destructive locals are physically punished along the way. It’s all about the greater good. Hard for reactionary, shortsighted people to appreciate.
Much respect to Darshan Dhaliwal, and not just for the charity, but also for the business…which probably does more to alleviate sufferring and poverty than the charity (though, of course, that is not the purpose).
A noble life, indeed.
I’m not convinced that his turban doesn’t match his outfit. I think we need a higher resolution picture of the suit to be sure. The suit may look brown, but maybe it has purple tone in it, or purple stripes. We don’t have enough information, so who are we to judge on his fashion sense?
You may have a case for the suit, but no high-res picture is going to make that purple pagh match that red tie =)
If only we could see his fifty. Somehow, I’m just compelled to think that he has got to have better fashion sense. He’s just gotta.
The tie is orange and buff (Hermès?), but so long as the brown suit doesn’t have purple stripes, the combo is growing on me. I mean, this is the land of Madras plaid shorts and bubble gum pink polo shirts is it not?…matching etc. is such a sober concept. We are such crabs in a bucket.
What is it with some desi business people and the republican party.| Sitting next to Bush – dhaliwal looks like the maharaja of one of the punjabi principalitiy, who colluded with the british. Bush probably patted the turbanned uncle tom on his head for donating money to the bush/cheney machine…..disguting!
NoBush said: “What is it with some desi business people and the republican party.| Sitting next to Bush – dhaliwal looks like the maharaja of one of the punjabi principalitiy, who colluded with the british. Bush probably patted the turbanned uncle tom on his head for donating money to the bush/cheney machine…..disguting!”
I am 95% sure that this guy is a democrat. I assume so because he is always at the Governor of Illinois side, who is a democrat, at photo ops and was at his victory party.
That picture of him with Bush was taken on Guru Nanak’s Birthday, on which the White House invited a bunch of Sikhs over to help promote the Identity of Sikhs in the USA. It was not to donate money to his administration, from what I am aware of.