My friend Ankur sent me a Wikipedia link this morning that left me scratching my head…but also gave me a Colbert-esque idea. On Wikipedia there is actually an entry called “List of Indian Americans“ which features NOTABLE Indian Americans ONLY. After years of having no objective means by which to quantify success in the Indian American community, we finally have a means! No matter what you achieve in your career, unless your name is on this list your parents can never claim to their friends that their “beta” has succeeded! If your mom is at a party and brags about you to some auntie, said auntie will check Wikipedia on her Iphone and then wag her finger, nah nah nah. Are you on the list dear reader? Probably not loser. But you are in good company as neither am I (an obvious oversight, hmpfff).
So here is what I propose loyal SM readers. I want you to go this page an add an entry for yourself. Yes you Mr. Struggling Artist. All your friends love your art and know you are talented. Go add yourself! Yes you, Ms. Non-Profit worker. You save children in poverty-stricken countries. I think you should add your name as well. Hell, if someone wants to add my name I wouldn’t be opposed to that either. There are no bloggers on the list at all! Oh crap, there are. Anil Dash, Om Malik, and Rahul Mahajan. This is just not right.
For our Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Sri Lankan American readers, tough beans. You guys don’t even have an entry! The Mexican, Chinese and Irish Americans do though. I guess this means there is nobody notable from your communities. Can someone create a page for you guys please. Parents from these communities need an objective list as well.
Wuh?! You didn’t even make the list! Oh dear how will your parents ever live this down!
Desis write the craziest things on Wiki. If you try to do research on a caste on Wiki, you see the most self-loathing things ever. This will crack you up, but there was an article on Scythians. If you read about Scythians, there was a link that said that Malayalee Nairs are a Scythian race, which I thought was hilarious.
Moreover, there are Marathi Brahmin community who believe that they are “belonged to Berber race.(Egypt- Based Greeks)” . This is straight from Wiki under “Chitpavan Brahmin”.
Also, remember the movie “Borat”, where the whole movie made fun of Kazakhstan? Well, if you look up Saraswat Brahmin under Wiki, they take PRIDE in being from Kazakhstan. The Indian tribes arbitrarily pre-date and begin their history when they want in an attempt to WHITE-wash their history. Regarding Saraswat Brahmin: “The story of the migration of this community can be traced from Sintashta-Petrovka and Arkaim regions of modern Lower Central Russia near the border of Kazakhistan.” Why did they arbitrarily being their history here but not when humans migrated out of Africa around 50,000 years ago?
Pakistani americans do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistani_American#Notable_Pakistani_Americans
I stand corrected. I bet you aren’t on it though. 🙂
Berbers are not Greek, they are black, afro-asiatic.
To boston mahesh
everyone began their history from Africa. Its recent history that matters…and most Indians came from Greece…hence they are whiter than white in Nature.
i prefer to look at the fictional Indian Americans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fictional_Indian_Americans
Someone is trying to argue on youtube that some of the original Native American tribes were comprised of people from India.
I see that Shashi Tharoor is listed. He must be the first “Indian American” to run for office in India.
Any list without Raghubir Goyal is incomplete.
At Akhenaten: http://xkcd.com/202/
So…Nicolette Sheridan is on that list? Am I the only one who didn’t know she’s (partially) (according to Wikipedia) Punjabi?
That was just added by her agent, hoping she can get a part in the next Mira Nair/Deepa Mehta/Gurinder Chadha movie.
Interesting list. Kavya Viswanathan made it. Sunny leone did not make the list.
No, I was pretty surprised to see that too. Slightly tenous link imo but still.
“For our Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Sri Lankan American readers, tough beans”
Good beans!, there is a place for us Nepalese in wikipedia heart then!!, or are we considered North Asians, aka chinese amricans?
Also, remember the movie “Borat”, where the whole movie made fun of Kazakhstan? Well, if you look up Saraswat Brahmin under Wiki, they take PRIDE in being from Kazakhstan.
Most Amreekans probably hold Kazakhstan in higher esteem than they hold India… Especially after Slumdog Millionaire…
Well, after that sex tape, reality show, and now dating reggie bush…who wouldn’t?
I just want to point out that we have our own category for “Scripps National Spelling Bee Champions”. Facepalm.
“Good beans!, there is a place for us Nepalese in wikipedia heart then!!, or are we considered North Asians, aka chinese amricans?”
Nope, you are South Asians like us. =D Now you should put yourself on the list of notable Nepalese Americans!
Bloods vs. Scripps, yo.
“engineers” and “professors” count as “notable”!! hot diggity dog, the entire student body at IMSA needs to be on this thing.
Wikipedia has already taken such tactics into account.. they log I.P. addresses, and if your article isn’t edited again by some certain number of unique people in a certain amount of time, it will be deleted.
It always amazes me how people assume Wikipedia is some kind of all-out arbitrary flame war. If this was the case, how is it that the articles are of such high quality, often higher than what you get in a standard encyclopedia. My guess is that people, unfortunately, are afraid of freedom, and distrust its ability to generate a meaningful society. Wikipedia is living proof that this is not the case, and that free thinking independent individuals can, even without monetary incentives, create magnificent works of art.
not to mention, there ARE lists for Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Pakistani and Nepali Americans… They just aren’t listed under “list of …” Partially this is because the list may not yet be large enough to merit its own page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pakistani_Americans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepalese_American http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_American http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bangladeshi_Americans
There are individual articles in Wiki that are good and individual articles that are awful. At the end of the day it’s a good way to get a quick primer on something but something you should always take with a huge grain of salt.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance you know?
I already made my own page back when wikipedia wasn’t as popular and even then it didn’t last long(I actually think it might not have made it past screening it all). I even had citations backing up everything I said.
P.S. The articles in wikipedia pertaining to India were the worst before someone actually got around to cleaning them up. They almost looked like they were written by the Nazis.
Amartya Sen is an indian citizen (as are a lot of people in that list)
This is total bullshit, not just because I’m on the list, but because there’s no list of Scripps Spelling Bee losers! I could totally dominate that list.
I see in the Indian List that at least one is of Ceylonese/Sri Lankan origin (part 1/4 I guess). Rama P. Coomaraswamy, a cardiac surgeon.
From the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_P._Coomaraswamy
Rev. Dr. Rama Poonambalam Coomaraswamy, M.D., (1929 – 2006), was a cardiac surgeon, then a psychiatrist and later a Traditionalist Catholic priest and exorcist, besides being a prolific writer on Traditionalist Catholicism and Perennialist topics.
Rama Coomaraswamy, of mixed Tamil, English and Jewish ancestry, was the son of the famous Indologist Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, and of his fourth wife Luisa Runstein, an Argentine-born woman of Jewish descent. He is the grandson of the Tamil-Ceylonese lawyer and social pioneer Sir Muthu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. As such, Rama Coomaraswamy hailed from notable Tamil and English families.
“There are individual articles in Wiki that are good and individual articles that are awful. At the end of the day it’s a good way to get a quick primer on something but something you should always take with a huge grain of salt.”
I would wager its a better source than any print encyclopedia, for three reasons. First, its always.. literally always.. up to date. Second the articles are generally, particularly the highly popular ones, very well balanced in the sense that every interested POV is represented. Third, you if you miss something in a print encyclopedia you can’t simply ‘click’ on what you don’t know.. which I think is Wikipedia’s biggest benefit. Its possible to spend hours just clicking away if you’re so inclined. I’ve yet to meet someone who would happily read Britannica for hours on end.
Most importantly, you should take ANY source you read with a grain of salt. To suggest that Wikipedia articles, especially, need to be taken in such a way betrays that one might not do the same for say his high school history book…
Is this for real ?
A call to vandalise wikipedia from SepiaMutiny ?
This is disgraceful.
30 · sbarrkum on April 20, 2009 11:47 PM · Direct link I see in the Indian List that at least one is of Ceylonese/Sri Lankan origin (part 1/4 I guess). Rama P. Coomaraswamy, a cardiac surgeon. From the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_P._Coomaraswamy Rev. Dr. Rama Poonambalam Coomaraswamy, M.D., (1929 – 2006), was a cardiac surgeon, then a psychiatrist and later a Traditionalist Catholic priest and exorcist, besides being a prolific writer on Traditionalist Catholicism and Perennialist topics. Rama Coomaraswamy, of mixed Tamil, English and Jewish ancestry, was the son of the famous Indologist Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, and of his fourth wife Luisa Runstein, an Argentine-born woman of Jewish descent. He is the grandson of the Tamil-Ceylonese lawyer and social pioneer Sir Muthu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. As such, Rama Coomaraswamy hailed from notable Tamil and English families.
I have actually visited Dr. Coomaraswamy back in ’04 in Wilton or Milton, Connecticut.! I met his son, Frank, who is 1/8 Tamil. Frank is a principal or a teacher at a school down there. Frank is married and has at least 2 kids, who are 1/16 Tamil. They were all very nice and gracious, and I’ll never forget how happy and old-world Frank’s blonde-hair daughter was to see us. It blew my mind that these kids – who are 1/16 Tamil – still have their old surname, and they carry it with a lot of pride. They are keenly aware that their great grandfather was the first Desi knight.
Uhh the founder of CHIPPENDALES, is an Indian? What would our aunties say? 🙂
I find that to be quite discriminating actually. It’s like all the other people whose names is not on there, does not exist! That is outrageous! Who even came up with such a topic on Wikipedia?