Last week, on Thursday and Friday, a federal judge handed down sentences to the Sabhnanis, the couple in Long Island who were charged with enslaving and torturing their Indonesian maids (Previous SM coverage: 1, 2, 3). 
- Varsha Sabhnani, identified as the person responsible for torturing the maids, received 11 years in prison.
- Her husband, Mahender Sabhnani, was sentenced to 40 months in prison for allowing the crimes to take place and benefitting from them.
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p>The sensational details of this case caught the attention of the mainstream press, as did the resemblance of Varsha Sabhnani to a certain Disney villain. I can imagine this made other Indian families in Long Island, especially the ones who knew the Sabhnanis, a bit unconfortable.
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p>What I can’t understand is why their friend, Jotwani, thought that this would be a defense:
“This case is very frightening for Indian families here,” said Bharat Jotwani, a wealthy friend of the Sabhnanis’ who lives nearby. “We are all educated, nice people. We came here to make it…”“There is no way on earth any Indian family in the United States could do what they were accused of,” he said. “The [Indian] people I know here all feel this way. Anybody from India who has come here comes from a very good family…” [Link]
WTF? The Sabhnani’s couldn’t possibly be guilty because … they’re educated and nice people from good families? No Indian could possibly commit a crime? I know Jotwani’s speaking uncle-speak here, but I honestly can’t figure out what this would translate to in ABCD English. They couldn’t be criminals because they’re wealthy? Sometimes you just gotta shake your head and wonder …
Brownz have the same reasoning when it comes to being gay, funny enough. “gasp he can’t be gay – he comes from such a good family…”
The belief is that educated people come from strong families in which you’re taught the differences between right and wrong.
George W is proof against this.
The “good family” defense is used by everyone, not just Indians. My parents on LI have no Sindhis in their circle, so they can probably get an out by saying, “At least it was not a Bengali family.”
Yes, Jotwani is a douchebag.
The only thing frightening about this case is the treatment the maids received. It’s ridiculous how he is insinuating the they were convicting for being brown instead of convicted for being guilty.
Is it? I still don’t understand what it means!
An action is either criminal or not A person either committed that action or not A person is either guilty of a crime or not.
Where does a person’s family come into this? Is a family on trial or an individual?
Honestly, I’ve never heard this line of reasoning outside of desis.
Sometimes I have heard “Well he comes from a good Christian family” when watching the news about someone who has committed a crime. I think when people are part of a community, whatever it may be, they have a hard time believing someone in that community could actually do wrong.
“Honestly, I’ve never heard this line of reasoning outside of desis”
I am shocked by this piece of news……
It’s like, “He was quiet and kept to himself.” that you hear uttered by the neighbor of a serial killer.
2008 may go down as the year Indians made their mark on the tabloid crime scene. Slavery on Long Island, contract killing in Atlanta, accelerant-aided homicide in metro Chicago.
FYI – none of these crimes were committed by confused American-born and raised Indians.
I agree that the “good family” or “how educated” defense is largely Indian. They still have not discovered that being very able & a sociopath are not mutually exclusive. Here in Western media we have evil geniuses, in India movies we just have fat goons
Oh, c’mon Ennis; either you’re feigning surprise of out of touch with regular people. This is how normal people talk; in a sort of ethnocentric, tribalistic, borderline-racist framework often expressed in bombastic absolute terms.
Now lurking behing this scotch-weilding uncleji’s statement is an element of truth: people from good families are less likely to commit crimes, and wealth is often a signifier of good values, like hard work. though offensive to capitalists and progressives alike, sociologically speaking, where you come from is the best indicator of where you’ll end up. the abused child is more likely to become an abuser himself; the one from a family that values education more likely to get educated, and so it goes.
But he chose to express this thought in a completely unnuanced way mixed in with a good dose of indian ethnocentrism (ie racism) that’s patently offensive to the latte-drinking progressive class, so attuned to the subtleties of language especially when it reveals hidden biases like classism and racism.
I drink lattes too, but I put some johnny walker in the cup; so i’m not so shocked.
Yep, this is pretty common mentality among desis (esp older generation) saying that ‘cannot be true because he/she comes from a good family’. Or the reverse is ‘so and so cannot be a good person because he/she comes from a stinking rich family’. I have also heard from an African American recently that ‘she cannot be a bad person because she is Christian’. So, I think it is pretty common in different communities in a different way. People will generalize someway to defend their own.
The question remains: Why?
Were the (wealthy) criminals themselves damaged by their upbringing, in order to commit the abuse? (The “My Parents Didn’t Love Me Enough” defense.) Or were they just “born bad”? (If there is such a thing…)
I have NO idea. But I can’t think of the perpetrators as “normal”.
i think it’s laughable that wealth would be considered an indicator of moral values. wealthy families are also the ones that employ many servants, and although it’s not unique to richer people, i would never be surprised to see a wealthy family treat their servants like second-class citizens. (these are of course generalizations based on my experiences with “upper class” folk in the desh.)
i don’t know if the term “good christian family” is the same as “good indian family”, if you look at the cultural weight put on the two words. to me christian, in the american context, implies a wholesomeness/morality whereas in the subcontinent “good” usually refers to class/wealth/status and moral character is of little value.
5 · Ennis said
Come on, Ennis. You’re a lawyer. The entire legal profession makes its living in the grey areas of perception, and tries to create sufficient doubt, that maybe the guilty are not guilty, and occasionally, even the reverse.
You correctly note that Jotwani may be inarticulate. I think his basic point is not that educated or wealthy people do not commit crimes, but that not all the gory specifics of what has been alleged here could possibly have occurred given what is known about the circumstances. Also, to stretch this a little, wealthy people do commit crimes, but usually not ones that involve slicing people’s ears off with kitchen knives or feeding people their vomit. At least in American suburbia.
I’ve made this point before, but the overall guilty verdict does not mean everything said in court was proven to be true. It does not even mean they are actually guilty, just that the prosecutors were successfully able to convince the jury that they were, and/or that their own lawyers could not create sufficient doubt in the jury that they could be let off.
There are many other issues here. Do prosecutors coach witnesses? Of course. Do they choose certain cases to prosecute based on their perception of ‘deterrent effect’? Of course. Can juries be swayed? Of course. Can prosecutorial bias extend to the race and/or ethnicity of the accused? Yes. Could that have happened here? Shouldn’t we be asking?
Manju, You’re saying something different from what Jotwani’s saying.
After a crime, I’ve heard people wondering how little Johnny could have become a murder given the warm and loving family that he came from. They then say something like “I feel so sorry for his mother”
I’ve never heard somebody say, after the evidence has been laid out, and guilt assigned “Well, despite all the evidence, it couldn’t possibly be true that Johnny’s a murder because his mother was such a nice person” or more strangely “because his mother was so wealthy!”
Jotwani is saying the latter, your statement fits better with the former. Class is a lousy defense after the fact unless you’re from a system where different people have different rights, and your class determines your moral worth.
Are Sabhnani’s and Jotwani’s… Sindhi?
“If you encounter a snake or a Sindhi, you kill the Sindhi first”. I heard this from a Marathi friend.
That poor uncle has probably fought racism all of his fcking life, of both the subtle and not so subtle variety.. He has probably also experienced the xenophobia and racism that this country codifies into law. He underwent all this, to make sure his kids, pups like you, had a better life. He probably fought against all kinds of prejudice, to get where he is – Where folks don’t automatically assume that he is some kind of lower life form because of his skin color and his accent and his papers and the food that he eats and the art he can’t appreciate and the fashions he can’t carry.
Along comes this case, where two folks of INDIAN (in caps to reflect the size of the INDIAN in the newspaper headlines about this case) origin are convicted of this horrendous crime, and everything that he has worked for all his life, his IZZAT / RESPECTABILITY, him being part of a community that’s respectable, lies in tatters. And when asked by some pesky reporter, he tries to defend it.. may be in not as articulate a fashion as you pups would like, but then, you had a chance to go to fancy shmancy schools because of sacrifices made by uncles like him.
So young ABCD sardarji, at least try to understand where uncle is coming from. Before sitting in judgment on uncles inarticulateness, see how visceral an experience it is to see someone from your community being convicted of such a crime.
ennis, my guess is that absent a dead-body like in your little johnny argument, jotwani views this like a date-rape scenario, his word against hers. for him, the standard of “guilty beyond a resonable doubt” can only be met with a dead body and cruella holding a smoking gun, when you have wealthy indians from a good family vs. poor indonesians.
that’s just the way it goes in the old world, sometimes in the new too.
tera baap: can you tell us what sort of codified prejudices Mr. Jotwani fought against? did he march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge? did he stage a sit in at diners to demand that hindoos be served too? or is his civil rights work done mainly via deeming other Indians innocent based on their ethnicity and annual income?
Are you saying that only African Americans had to deal with prejudice ? Are you really that stupid know-it-all ABCD ? 😀
Simply because no Indians were lynched, doesn’t mean that they didn’t have to deal with their share of problems.
Tera Baap,
I don’t know if I speak for anyone but I believe your point can be better made without resorting to personal attacks.
20 · Tera Baap said
Very true. One time, I went to a bar and they didn’t serve Johnny Walker Black. But they had White Russians. I slapped the Indonesian next to me and left.
16 · TheBrownChamp said
LOL! I heard “If you encounter a snake or a Mallu, you kill the Mallu first!â€
Must be a variation of this for every region in the old country!
Manju #22
This is the funniest comment I have read here in a long time. Thanks for the laughs
LOL @ manju hahah
tera baap: you can keep rambling incoherently about how us “stupid ABCD pups” (who actually uses the word pups? lol)don’t know the sacrifices that you and your comrades made, or you can actually give examples of how racism against Indians is codified into law in this horrible land of bigots .
Shaane, don’t drag us in it. We’re down w/ them Ulhasnagar peeps. Motawanis, Armanis, all of them.
Yes, they were Sindhi. No, that’s no reason to start regurgitating anti-Sindhi stereotypes. As the above discussion reveals, some of the sayings about one group are actually madlibbed. Let’s not linger on this topic …
Sometimes I have heard “Well he comes from a good Christian family” when watching the news about someone who has committed a crime.
right, but isn’t that more from the sense of disbelief? Ie the reactions to the Columbine killings even though its a “good, wholesome [read: white], suburban town”? Not that his statements are justified, I just don’t think they are necessarily a defense, rather a register of shock and disbelief.
Tera baap,
Even though my dad broke his back to send his kids to fancy shmancy schools, he doesn’t suffer from the delusion that his respectability is tied up with that of every other desi’s and understands that the wretched come in all hues. Furthermore, my father is not so self-centered as to put his izzat over the izzat of those poor maids who will have to suffer the psychological fallout of their treatment for the rest of their lives. Please don’t pretend to speak on behalf of all of those in your generation for they are not you.
No true Indian?
Manju: “Very true. One time, I went to a bar and they didn’t serve Johnny Walker Black. But they had White Russians. I slapped the Indonesian next to me and left.”
HAHAHA!!
Sure.. Your daddy is the bestest and the most enlightened daddy in the whole world.. but spare a thought for those who are lesser mortals than your precious daddy.
At least try to understand, where Jotwani(?) uncle is coming from.. And what he is trying to protect in his inarticulate voice.
Why dont you ask your dad/mom ? I am sure they would help you understand 🙂
Yup.. model minority never faced any racism/xenophobia 😉
Sure.. Your daddy is the bestest and the most enlightened daddy in the whole world.. but spare a thought for those who are lesser mortals than your precious daddy.
whoa. relax buddy.
Tera Baap:
If you use the quotation codes, it’ll make it easier to read your remarks. In most browsers they’re listed right above the comment window, right after it says “Comments” Just highlight the code that you are quoting and click on the quotation marks. If you prefer to write html code, you want to use the blockquote tags.
Please don’t bait and don’t make personal remarks. The conversation degenerates very quickly when people start to do that.
“At least try to understand, where Jotwani(?) uncle is coming from.. And what he is trying to protect in his inarticulate voice.”
Well, notwithstanding the fact that they are “educated, nice people” apparently they were found guilty by a court of law. Could the Sabhnani’s afford good lawyers with their millions? Maybe the judge was racist? Even abused Indonesian maids are fairer skinned than us in the eyes of whitey.
@@CdnMedStudent
The post and subsequent comments were about uncles comments, not about the nature of Sabnanis trial and guilt.
Simply put, the author was expressing incomprehension, asking, Why would uncle say such a thing ?
To say that – yeah yeah, uncle is racist, uncle is caste-ist, uncle is first gen Indian-American, uncle is evil, uncle has bad breath, uncle is uncle – is simplistic.
It doesn’t take into account what uncles went through to get where they are and doesn’t question if their fear of being in the negative spotlight is justified or not.
i think the “uncle” here is the more normal than american born brownz who think his behavior and comment is strange. by “normal” i mean closer to the human average, not necessarily better. college-educated americans from a particular social and economic background are schooled in speaking and thinking of themselves and other people and groups in a particular way. sometimes it is hard to remember i think that that’s a specific folkway, even if it is the dominant folkway in american discourse (as opposed to discussion 🙂
after 9/11 many american muslims were skeptical that osama bin laden was behind that atrocity in anyway, or that muslims were. because by definition muslims wouldn’t commit that sort of crime. people have particular frameworks when it comes to their ingroups vs. outgroups, and their set of prior assumptions make it likely that they’ll engage in these sorts of rationalizations.
p.s. on a much milder note i have know of white secular liberals aghast that the offspring of so & so converted to evangelical christianity and is now a republican. the comments are often along the lines of “i mean, he had everything, it isn’t like he needed to be bitter about his economic situation, he had all the privileges in the world….”
I doubt that was Ennis’s intent – to simply categorize Uncle as a one-dimensional caricature.
Agreed – racism and xenophobia can be worse for DBDs than ABD (note I left out the C). However, that doesn’t justify standing by someone who mistreated others, even if it’s unthinkable that someone with that izzat could ever do this.
I believe the point is that we cannot pick and choose who to shun based on how respectable the person is, regardless of culture. It leads to an ethical seesaw – what if the couple were not respectable? Then it would be ok to shun them?
and just to make it clear, college-educated americans who are well versed in the sort of sensitivities which are now normative among that group have their own shibboleths and ingroup vs. outgroup ticks.
I think something that we can all agree on is that there is absolutely no reason to defend this couple, even if they do hail from the same country as our parents (or we) do. I think the point the OP was trying to make was that Mr. Jotwani had no basis for assuming the slavers were innocent because they were rich Indians.
tera baap: if you have encountered so much racism here in America, why don’t you return to your village in Hindustan where life was perfect?
does this mean that the educated good-familied desis that stay back in india are likewise incapable of committing a crime? or some magical transformation happens on the AI flight over?
are you arguing that he is implying that the sabhnanis locking up and abusing their employees was necessary to provide the sabhnani ‘pups’ with a better life? or that jotwani’s making illogical/unsupported statements is somehow necessary to giving his own kids a good life, or that his provision of said good life warrants ignoring his remarks or condoning of the abuse? in fact, i don’t even know how this relevant to the conversation, since we know little about jotwani. furthermore, he completely did a disservice to his community and its izzat, as you mention – he should have stated that despite the disappointing verdict, he hopes that it does not reflect poorly on the US-Indian community as a whole, since many/most (but not all) are law-abiding, hard-working members of american society. i understand that he may not have been sufficiently articulate in the spotlight, but you don’t say something unless you believe it. the worst part is, he didn’t say this personally about the sabhnanis – that they are wonderful people, i can’t believe they’d do this etc – he completely denied that an entire group is incapable of committing any crimes of any nature. your defense of jotwani is not much different than his defense of the sabhnanis – and at least he knows them personally.
I think lost in all this is the crime and the details of the crime that the Sabhnani’s were accused of. I wonder if the Uncle in question read the details or saw the evidence on the bodies of the maids who were abused. Here is a link to the NYTimes with some fairly graphics pictures. I think most of the people here are objecting to a blanket statement that the Uncle in question was making … almost in denial about the fact that people of a certain class and type cannot commit these crimes. It has nothing to do with previous discrimination but rather the immediate knee jerk reaction to defend anything of his class and type. It’s a thinking that goes with people like us do not do things like that … even in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. It’s comes with a certain sense of entitlement.
On another note, Manju put it much more succinctly and humorously when he described slapping an Indonesian over a perceived slight. At the risk of over explaining his point I’ll say some of the abuse I’ve seen by Desis of mexican and south american workers in their grocery stores and restaurants would make you cringe. It’s a power differential where even if you have no power in the larger society you can wield power over people you perceive are weaker than you.
Jotwani is an idiot.
Talwar
Johnny Valker >>>> if you have encountered so much racism here in America, why don’t you return to your village in Hindustan where life was perfect?
Aha !! Out comes the inner red neck..
Just as an FYI, the reason I came to America was to steal American jobs, fornicate with American women and in general spread my filth around.
I wont leave until I achieve all that, and theres nothing you or your daddy can do about it.. B-)
46 · Tera Baap said
Are you saying no self-repecting Indian would be seen dead with Johnny Valker Red?
“inner red neck”
speaking of prejudices which can be mooted in “polite” company…. 🙂
It’s a power differential where even if you have no power in the larger society you can wield power over people you perceive are weaker than you.
i think one can make a case that a rich brown long islander experiences particular disabilities in comparison to a poor white resident of appalachia. nevertheless, i think the reduction of power as purely a function of racial identity to the total operational neglect of class is something which often emerges among brown americans. despite the reality that there are many working class and poor brownz, the fact is that the community is on average an affluent once, and the children of the suburbs who went to “good schools” and landed “good jobs” are i think more likely to speak and address the issue of racial oppression than working class brownz who have more proximate concerns than the macro-level power structures in society (despite the fact that they are much more salient to them than a brown american MD who receives slights but still banks 200 K per year).
No. I am saying that uncles have worked really hard to get where they are and to help pups like you get where you are.. An inarticulate statement borne out of fear of having to face renewed prejudice – subtle and in your face – does not say anything about the world view of the person who made that statement.
FWIW, implicit in the statement is also the tacit position that a crime like the one that sabnanis have been convicted of is a terrible crime.
I think I already agreed the uncle was being inarticulate/obtuse with his statement, very much like you in fact.. 😛
Yeah Yeah.. I should be in jail just like the Sabhnanis.. OK ? Now band together with Johnny Valker and try your best to send my filthy ass back to desh. 😀
@manju
No.. every ethnic Indian, self respecting or not, should cower in fear when wannabe whites spout xenophobic garbage.