I was hesitant when I heard 60 Minutes was doing an interview with Governor Bobby Jindal because frankly, I didn’t think I could take sixty minutes of the sing-songy voice we heard on Tuesday night. But Jindal’s segment is only 12 minutes long. So I watched. And was a little bit impressed. Don’t believe me? Here, watch for yourself.
Watch CBS Videos Online
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m juxtaposing this clip with his speech earlier this week, but I actually kind of liked watching it. The segment shows him as an ethical, straight-edge, god-fearing, son-of-immigrants, birthed-his-third-child-himself family man. I think it was smart of him to do this interview so soon after the disastrous performance earlier this week, but I’m just not sure enough people watched it to nullify the effect.
It was interesting how Jindal and his wife tried to downplay the Indian factor when approached with questions of race. When asked if he felt any racial tension while being raised in Baton Rouge, he said he didn’t feel any and “they accept you based on who you are.” When asked about if his family maintained any Indian traditions, the couple responded, “Not too many. We’ve been here for so many years. We were raised as Americans.”
Personally, I think that maintaining Indian traditions is completely American and you should not have to marginalize one for the other. We are all Americans with a hyphenated back story. But I also think the question was poorly asked and I wonder if the couple would have responded differently if it was a Desi reporter asking the question with more nuance. I also wonder how much of what they say to media is political posturing verses what they feel about identity behind closed doors.
Overall, I think it was a decent bio-fluff interview with no real hard hitting questions from 60 Minutes. We didn’t learn too many new Jindal facts, though Manish listed some here. But I think what this interview did for me was remind me that there’s a brown* guy in politics gunning for Obama’s seat in seven years. But from the other side. And my kind of brown*. And that is kind of… remarkable.
*I say brown. Republicans say beige. Can someone explain to me why he’s the “beige hope”, not “brown hope”?
You see, I don’t want to judge Jindal’s personal choices on his religion or personal identity and self-definition, we are all free to take interest in or reject whatever we were born into, that is what is great about self-discovery and self-creation.
But I can really understand why this statement that DesiInNJ quotes is troubling, because it definitively asserts that being American cannot include any aspect of Indian culture or identity. So it’s back to the old story, that going to a Hindu temple is incompatible with being American, listening to Bollywood music is incompatible with being American. And that is an incredibly reductionist and narrow thing to believe and say. And an incredibly specious and intolerant thing to say too.
If identity is presented as a zero-sum game by those who call Jindal a ‘sell out’, I fail to see how he does anything other than present it as a zero-sum game himself here. It’s just wrong, utterly wrong.
Oh. I thought that Dharma, Kama, Artha, Moksha was a belief system.
Buuuut…I think I digress from the topic at hand.
I’m watching “The Story of India” as I eat extra hot lime pickle and sourdough bread. The first three episodes are being re-run on PBS-HD tonight, so I thought I’d tune in to get my mind off things.
And then I hear…
…
And later, after discussing gene pools…
251 · Billy said
When asked about if his family maintained any Indian traditions, the couple responded, “Not too many. We’ve been here for so many years. We were raised as Americans.â€
The Jindals said they were raised as Americans. He also says he went to pujas and read vedas as a kid. Fine, you can argue that going to pujas can be include as being raised as American, by that extension, everything can be considered American.
Not really. Besides many hindus don’t know about this. A belief system is something which tells you what to think in order to belong within that system. It includes objects of belief like God, and that he made this world, he has sons and prophets, the scripture is the word of god, commandments etc. Hindus by contrast have myths and epics and you’re free to take them or spurn them. By contrast, you cannot be a xtian and say you don’t believe in the Bible.
248 · Yoga Fire said
Another G W Bush, and his unwavering ways? I will take a Bill Clinton any day.
Not exactly. It’s just that the “orthodox” Hindu belief system was generally defined in opposition to Jainism and Buddhism which were the major alternative schools of thought. Then once Islam arrived it was just so thoroughly different that switching religions became like changing your entire world-view rather than quibbling about stuff like whether the atman is eternal or not, so with the Buddhists pretty much gone and the Jains being more or less Hindu in comparison to “the other” there really wasn’t much left for those remaining Hindus to argue about since it was no longer being challenged on its cultural or intellectual merits. When the Brits came we went through another period of self-examination and I’d say the philosophies of men like Ramakrishna and Vivekananda represent another belief system that starts to define Hinduism in opposition to Western belief systems (which include both Abrahamic religions as well as the (philosophical) materialism that was popular among the European intellectuals.)
So while the amount of disagreement allowed within Hinduism is much much higher relative to the more rigid commandments of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, that doesn’t mean Hinduism lacks an overarching understanding of the nature of the absolute. I guess “Hinduism” would be more like saying “Abrahamism.” It’s not any one belief system, but a variety of them that share many of the same basic assumptions.
I wasn’t trying to edit the quote, that’s normal shortening in this internet age. Anyone could’ve looked upstream if confused. If it seemed different, it was unintentional. But you did not answer to my point.
However, at the same risk:
Maybe, but if all followed that dictum to the letter, there’d be no point to this, or most discussions. It’s a gut feeling. It’s using one’s experience and world-view to make extrapolations. It may wield a wrong result, but that’s what discussions are for…you throw your opinion out and endure the backlash. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to make judgments on Jindal’s thought and other processes, because I am confident that I know something about the man…he’s a very public figure and I’ve researched him personally out of curiousity myself.
No, I don’t “know” why he made his decisions to change his name and religion, but I am reasonably sure of his motivation. If I’m wrong, it won’t make me like the little twerp any better. But then I can say that of most right-wing extremists.
“that doesn’t mean Hinduism lacks an overarching understanding of the nature of the absolute.”
Understanding the nature of the absolute is not a belief system. Geometry is not a belief system. Knowledge of architecture is not a belief system. Rules of grammar and music are not a belief system. Techniques are not belief systems. I bet you cannot even say the phrase belief system in any indian language. The western world, (including desis) is compelled to talk in these terms however because a belief system is an integral part of the culture.
On the contrary, I know some Christians who basically ignore huge chunks of the Bible at will. I know others who haven’t really read the Bible, they just have a rough framework of Christian/Biblical ideas about the nature of God and angels and demons and saints. If you ask them what religion they are they will either say something like “Christian I guess,” or some woo about being spiritual, not religious despite the fact that they do all the culturally Christian things, pray to God when they’re in a foxhole (figuratively speaking), and interpret the commandments and sermons as they wish.
While it benefits the clergy to claim that Christianity is what their colleagues in the ivory tower says it is, that kind of denies the amount of variety you will find on the ground. In the old days, before literacy rates started to push up and not everyone had read the Bible or had a clergy member around you would have found a lot more diversity and local flavor to “Christianity” than you do now. We are watching the process of centralization and regimentation happening to Islam right now, in fact. Arguably it’s happening to Hinduism too, but to a lesser extent. Things like [i]Amar Chitra Katha[/i] will inevitably start to standardize our understandings of the myths and stories that used to differ slightly between different groups.
By contrast, you cannot be a xtian and say you don’t believe in the Bible.
more data from pew religious landscape survey:
do not believe in god
mainline protestant – 1% catholic – 1% orthodox christian – 4% other christian – 1% jews – 10% muslims – 5% buddhists – 19% hindus – 5% other – 9% no religion – 22%
religious scripture written by men, not the word of god
evangelical – 7% mainline protestant – 28% historically black prot. – 9% catholic – 27% mormon – 4% orthodox christian – 29% other christian – 44% jews – 53% muslims – 8% buddhists – 67% hindus – 47% other – 74% no religion – 64%
no only can you be a christian and not believe that the bible is divinely revealed or inspired, but you can apparently even not believe in god 😉
That happened centuries ago with Tulsidas, and Ved Vyas.
Btw, when you talk about religion, the underlying assumption should be that you’re talking people who take it seriously and not those who never go to church or have never heard of the bible.
Then what is? I use “belief system” to refer to the set of logical assumptions you base your world-view on. Everyone makes them, even the hardcore atheists who categorically deny the existence of the supernatural are assuming things about the world, how they interact with it, and how accurately their brains can interpret it.
But what are Muslims and Jews and Christians arguing about if not the nature of God? The scope over which the debate takes place among them is pretty narrow in the broad sweep of things, but even within that narrow range, even though they agree that God is an entity in the heavens with a specific will that he wants to see carried out they still disagree over what that will is. I think it’s perfectly in line with the Hinduism :: Abrahamism parallel.
God is a logical assumption?
If some naked fakir tells you to breathe 50 times in a certain way and then you’ll experience such and such a state, is this a belief system, or a logical assumption, or a simple experiment?
But what are Muslims and Jews and Christians arguing about if not the nature of God?
books like Theological Incorrectness report a lot of data that sincere religious people can’t really make heads or tails out of the theology that they believe in. it seems more accurate to suggest that what 99.99% of muslims, jews and christians argue about is religious tribalism cloaked in theological language. but ask 99% of christians about the philosophical presuppositions of the athanasian formula and they’ll give you a blank look. similarly when you query most muslims in detail about tawhid.
a personal story. a woman raised as a buddhist in a chinese family told me about her conversion to evangelical christianity by way of dismissing how superstitious and unthinking buddhists were. so i prodded her on some christological issues and she had no idea what i was talking about. but i think she knew what i was getting at and stopped dissing buddhists from what point on.
Wouldn’t most of the people who “don’t know about this” (post 256) fall into that category? I mean, once you start disagreeing with certain ideas like the eternal nature of the atman (and other things in the Upanishads) then eventually we’d say “You’re not really Hindu, you’re leaning more towards being a ______.”
I realize the word “Hindu” is kind of like silly-putty and can stretch and squish in all sorts of ways. So I suspect we’re probably not working under the same definition here.
The “do X and Y will happen” is a simple experiment. The rationale as to why Y is something we should want, how the X – > Y process works, and so on are all facets of a belief-system which must necessarily be based on certain assumptions.
So I guess I should revise my earlier definition. The belief-system isn’t the assumptions themselves, the belief-system is a larger theory you construct about the nature of the absolute that itself rests on assumptions.
It warms my heart to know, there are others who don’t feel obligated to support him because he has Indian-American Parents.
…and he believes in exorcisms
Back on topic, please. Bashing Catholicism or debating how to define Hinduism are off-topic.
While that may be what it has become in some instances, I think there is still hope for things to be better. Like I said before, when I find myself in a religious discussion with Christians or Muslims my goal isn’t to convince them that Christianity or Islam is wrong, it is to try and use my own understanding of my beliefs to make them better Christians or Muslims. That partly involves admitting that as people they are making a leap of faith to believe what they do and the leaps of faith other people make aren’t their business. It also involves recognizing that their interpretations of their own scriptures are informed by the culture in which those scriptures were written and you can’t just transplant that from one brain to another.
Let them recognize that much of what they consider “religion” is really just cultural and tribal ideas like Razib said and most of those problems will take care of themselves. People are free to explore the philosophy without being held down by the politics that comes with all these other institutions interfering.
Razib @ 266 and Yoga Fire @ 267 – valid points. But the attitudes of the common man are nevertheless shaped by the authorities. This is why you see even athiests sounding like religionists. The religious trappings and vocabulary are changed into secular terminology but the underlying conceptual framework remains the same. Thus instead of speaking of the city of god and the city of humans, we speak of the separation between church and state. This idea does not sound shocking or stupid because it arose within a specific cultural context. But when applied to hindus, it is stupid to suggest that we must separate dharma from politics. Howcome every hindu has bought into secularism anyway? Why is there no quest for an alternate form of understanding. Why is the ascetic ideal the only true conception of morality? Why is war considered wrong and why is patience a virtue? Why are riches supposed to be despised? Why are the so-called athiests also trapped by the “shadows of god” as Nietzsche woud say. I don’t think it makes much of a difference if people don’t have technical understanding of religion, they’re overwhelmed by it anyway. This would explain why the western world ascribes belief systems to hindus. The west is compelled to see the world as a set of belief systems because of their own heritage.
So it the right term ‘potato’ or ‘coconut’, brown outside, white inside. Or does it depend on amount of spuds or hair on you?
sorry, didn’t see SM moderator admonishment. agree we shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.
LOL–so, carry on with your oh-so-authentic Indian life in NJ there, pal. You’re really a model for the Indian masses.
277 · rob said
I do what I like, whether it is classified american, indian or jamaican, I do not care. The only thing I care about Bobby is what impact his policies may have on my life, so understanding his motivation is imporatant to me.
236 · LeVar said
Thanks! I was wrong about the Southern Baptist friend. Sorry for that. But there are some things I find kind of sad about his article, namely the fact that his experiences don’t seem to have shaped his perspectives. He came “out” as a catholic, and received a lot of flak from his parents. You’d think he’d be more empathetic to gay kid who’ve come out to homophobic parents, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Yeah, right–that’s why you’re trotting out the term coconut and trying label Jindal with it. . . . yes, yes, you’re so well-adjusted.
280 · rob said
He was labelled long time back…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/27/AR2007102701088.html?hpid=topnews
Did you not hear his wife say ‘gosh’ in the 60 minutes interview?
People: he got into Harvard Medical School but decided not to go!? That’s way bigger than rejecting Hinduism, No? He rejected Harvard Medical School!! Bet his parents are still living that one down.
This is beyond self-hatred.
OK, so you’re now not only the authenticity police, but also the language police? Wow, did you get a plastic badge in your cereal-box or something?
I think Jindal doesnt appeal to me because he is a huge dork. The way he walk’s and the way he put’s that awkward forced smile on his face is disturbing. How can a man with so much knowledge, not know that people do not like being taked down to? He is socially slow. I know that is a shallow reason, but marketing is very important in life. It is the reason you might be smarter than your boss, but for some reason he is the boss and not you. He market’s himself better.
Excellent point! 😉
and spell’s [sic] better. 😉
Read Jindal’s essay on his conversion
247 · rob said
Speaking of a particularly vile kind of authenticity police…
282 · Manju said
I think that’s why he had to establish his med cred by birthing his third baby himself…
279 · pooja said
One’s the ordained right path, the other is a cardinal (pun intended, sorry Anna! 🙂 sin. What about that is so hard to understand?
I was wondering why Jindal’s security team was so late in arriving on this thread ….
Good to see ya. Lotsa cleaning to do O Gosh !!
BTW, Suki, your boy got a nice book deal!
Tragically, Bobby had too much in Brazilian equities, so our pay is down, hence the “less on the ball” reaction that you’re seeing–ah, well, one only gets what one pays for. . . .
292 · rob said
Ok. But good to see you guys on overtime late in the evening .
ciao
We here at “Jindal’s security team” don’t know what you mean by that random assemblage of letters, but we’ll assume it’s ok, b/c that just the kind of guys we are! 🙂
Anna #78,
Thanks for the kind words
Finally in the man’s own words (Thanks beigenrouge for the link)
. I am sorry to break it to you Bobby – Christianity is merely one of many equally valid religions. What is “objectively true faith” ? I honestly don’t understand what he means by that.
He has this to say about the Bhagawad-gita (emphasis mine) :
I love the way he damns with faint praise. Anyone who reads the Bhagawad-gita and comes away with such a superficial understanding of it has not taken the trouble to understand it. Even more amazing is what he considers to be the second tenet of Hinduism :
Really ! This is his understanding of a religion that places such great emphasis on understanding the truth – the true nature of existence, the true nature of your Self, that even strict theism is secondary to the pursuit of the truth.
He found a faith that works for him – thats great. But I don’t understand why he has to project his own misguided view of Hinduism.
Exactly right. There are too many people here who are always assuming the worst of this extraordinarily decent, intelligent, talented man who has dedicated his life, like Obama, to public service to the nation he was born. Some idiots here even keep insisting that he changed his name to Bobby for cynical political reasons, even after it is pointed out over and over that he adopted that nickname as a very young boy and that his legal name remains Piyush. That shows that there is a strong emotional and irrational component to the rampant Jindal-bashing going on here.
By the way, I have noticed that the most vociferous opponents of Jindal (who was born upper caste punjabi hindu) also happen to be among the most outspoken defenders of hindu casteism. That should tell us something about where these haters are coming from.
The sala speaks conversational Hindi.
Well, maybe Rush “Obama should fail” Limbaugh, in front of whom Steele grovels, will propel Jindal all the way to the top.
I have noticed that when people don’t have anything worthwhile to say, they often resort to bullshit character assassination rather than debate ideas on their merits.
I did a quick ctrl+F on this thread and the first time the word “caste” makes an appearance is in post 297. I think this should tell us what Prem- I mean “Dhoni’s” agenda is here.