Monthly Archives: July 2009

Please help keep SM on the web!

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Dear valued SM Readers,

It is time once again for us bloggers at Sepia Mutiny to extend our empty hats and ask for donations to keep this blog running for another year. Remember, every time you visit our site it costs us money (my Amex Blue is bleeding red right now). We don’t bother you guys with any money-making ads on this site, nor do we sell out to the man and write what he asks us to write for cold cash. Do you really want us to plaster marriage ads all over the blog?

Much like NPR and PBS hold an annual pledge drive, we are asking you to donate whatever you can via our Paypal link. Keep in mind that we haven’t asked for any donations in over a year. If you don’t want to use Paypal but would rather mail in a check, then write me at abhi [at] sepiamutiny dot com for a mailing address. Donations will keep our website ad-free and crap-free for a year provided we can reach our target of $1000. That shouldn’t be difficult if some of the 7-10 thousand readers we get a day send in a pittance.

In the past year we have redesigned our site and have additional tweaks in the works based on your feedback. Within 24 hours you will also see us featuring artwork by South Asian artists. We would like to continue to make improvements but can only do so with your help now.

In addition to your donations now, over the course of year you can also help us out by buying a book, music, or other item you see written about on our site through our Amazon a-Store link (we’ll soon put up a permanent link). It will give us a nominal commission on each item sold that goes toward paying the bills so as to increase the time between pledge drives. SM can also be download for your Kindle.

Thanks in advance from all of us, and let us know if you have any questions by using our “Contact” link.

Continue reading →

Mid-summer political round-up

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I have just been too busy this summer to write about my favorite topic: desis in politics. Politics waits for no man however, and there is much afoot. First, most have heard by now that the Republicans want to make healthcare reform “Obama’s Waterloo.” If that be the case who better to play the part of Gebhard von Blücher than the exiled Kenneth the Page Governor Bobby Jindal? The healthcare policy wonk is back baby:

“Governor Jindal has seen enough,” said Curt Anderson, a consultant for Jindal. “As a health-care policy expert, he strongly believes that the House Democrat[ic] plan would be a disaster for the long-term health of the American people, and the long-term health of the economy.”

That Jindal is adding his voice to the chorus of Republican critics of Democrats’ approach to President Obama’s chief policy priority — Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele will offer his own critique today at the National Press Club — is evidence that the youthful governor sees a role for himself in the national policy debate despite a rocky introduction to the country earlier this year.

Jindal, who is widely regarded as one of the rising stars within the Republican party, was chosen to deliver the party’s response to Obama’s February address to Congress. His performance was, to be charitable, weak and turned him — briefly — into fodder for the late night talk shows due to his resemblance to one Kenneth the Page. [Link]

If I was an angel on Jindal’s shoulder I would tell him to keep a low profile. There is no need to be the Republican casualty of the week this far in advance of ’12. And speaking of Republican casualties, how is Nikki Randhawa-Haley surviving the Sanford debacle? Not so bad as far as the money goes. She is hanging in at a respectable third place:

U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett — The congressman from Oconee County raised $500,000 in the second quarter; cash on hand, $975,011.

State Rep. Nikki Haley — The Lexington state representative raised $204,000 in the second quarter and now has $193,555 cash on hand.

Attorney General Henry McMaster — McMaster, of Columbia, raised $232,490 in the second quarter after raising $300,000 in the first quarter. McMaster ended the quarter with $1.1 million in cash on hand. [Link]

Recent reports indicate that Barrett’s campaign (or those tangentially associated with it) may be using dirty tricks against Haley. Continue reading →

Ajmal Kasab’s Day in Court

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Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving member of the squad that allegedly carried out the terrorist attack in Mumbai last November, has reversed his plea for a second time. He had initially admitted involvement in the attacks, and then denied it, saying his first confession had been produced under torture. But he decided to do his latest, and presumably final, confession in open court, where there’s no question of coercion. Also, he gives some new details about how he got involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani Jihadi group, to begin with. Interestingly, it wasn’t a driving ideology initially, but rather the desire to learn a certain “skill set”:

Moments before the trial’s 135th witness was to take the stand, the defendant, a young Pakistani named Ajmal Kasab, stood up and told the judge that he had participated in the attacks.

Speaking softly in a mix of Hindi and Urdu to a stunned and spellbound courtroom, he gave a detailed recounting of the planning and execution of the operation, beginning with his introduction to a Pakistan-based Islamic extremist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and ending with the rampage that hit two luxury hotels, a railway station, popular cafe and a Jewish center.

“I don’t think I am innocent,” Mr. Kasab, 21, declared toward the end of his daylong confession. “My request is that we end the trial and I be sentenced.”

Mr. Kasab spoke extemporaneously, without forewarning even his own court-appointed lawyer, and the court must now decide how to proceed.

Revealing new details, Mr. Kasab described how he became a Lashkar-e-Taiba soldier, a rare glimpse into the motivations of extremist recruits. He said he was working for a pittance at a decorating shop in the town of Jhelum, in Pakistan, a job he hated. He and a friend decided to become armed robbers.

Mr. Kasab said they went to the garrison city of Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad, with the idea that they would ask a jihadi group to train them to be militants. They would then use those skills to become expert robbers. They asked around in the city’s market for the mujahedeen fighters, and someone directed them to Lashkar-e-Taiba’s office. (link)

He decided to come out with the confession because he apparently heard about the secret dossier that Pakistan had delivered to India last week at a meeting in Cairo, confirming that Kasab was in fact a Pakistani citizen. The contents of the dossier had already been leaked to the Indian media.

To my ear, the details all fit together relatively well, including the timing of the current confession. What do people think? Is this “Tamasha” effectively over?

A few more links:

Reuters: Key Facts on Ajmal Kasab

TOI: Partial transcript of the confession in Urdu (Has anyone seen a full transcript of the confession anywhere?)

Daily Times, Pakistan: India leaks Contents of Confidential Dossier to Media Continue reading →

Perrier, Evian, or B’eau Pal?

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bhopal water 3.jpg

A few days ago, I received a press announcement for a new line of luxury bottled water: B’eau Pal. (Oo la la!) But the fine print was a little less enticing:

The unique qualities of our water come from 25 years of slow-leaching toxins at the site of the world’s largest industrial accident. To this day, Dow Chemical — who bought Union Carbide — has refused to clean up and whole new generations are being poisoned.

An explanation? Suffice it to say that The Yes Men have been at it again. Continue reading →

Keep Your Hands to Yourself

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Ms. Bitch.jpg
Do you feel that? That icky sensation in the pit of your stomach where you think you feel funny about the image you are looking at but not quite sure how you feel about feeling that funny sensation?

The cover of the upcoming summer issue features a middle class white American woman holding several items that represent work and family life in a multi-armed Hindu deity’s pose. I get the juggling metaphor, and the sour look on her face informs that she’s not too pleased with her conflicting situation. What I’m conflicted and not pleased about is the frequency with which American media and pop culture icons are co-opting South Asian religion to suit their aesthetic fancy.[bitch]
This cover reminds me of the Sotomayor cover that the National Review did (and that Abhi covered here). I’m conflicted in both these covers. On the one hand, neither cover excessively pokes fun at the religion but uses the iconography to express some deeper message they are trying to convey. I believe deeply that art should be given the freedom to express. But on the other hand, can we really call the Ms. Magazine cover ‘art’? It is the advertising front page of a magazine for commerce. And truthfully, I am discomforted by the fact that Ms. Magazine caters to a middle class liberal white women clientele. Question is, would I have felt different if they had depicted a brown woman in the same image, or if it had been a different magazine? Probably.
It’s completely inappropriate to utilize Hindu iconography in this context, mocks the religion, and diffuses the imagery of its “true” meaning. When a cultural or religious symbol is used for marketing purposes by cultural or religious outsiders that fail to convey respect for and understanding of the intricacies of that culture or religion, it is offensive.[bitch]

What we wind up with is more Orientalist perspectives circulating through movies, magazines and stores, more South Asians having to answer for an entire group of individuals about everything from food to yoga, and more ignoring national, gendered, class and sexual differences within the community…I also find it completely unacceptable for a feminist publication to blatantly marginalize women of color as a result of their appropriation of culture. It is a reminder of the divided nature of the feminist movement, and the continued tendency of white feminists to participate in the exoticization or “Othering” of women of color. [Feministing]
What does your gut tell you when you see this image? Continue reading →

Food For Thought: Riz MC’s “Sour Times”

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Via Pickled Politics, a music video for a Brit-Asian rapper named Riz MC (Riz Ahmed):

And here is the little blurb about the video on YouTube:

New Riz Music Video for ‘Sour Times’, created by a montage of clips of other people mouthing the lyrics. Collaborators include rappers Plan B, Scroobius Pip, actors Jim Sturgess, Tom Hardy, and musician Nitin Sawhney.

(Wait, who are all those people? I’d never heard of any of them besides Nitin Sawhney!)

I don’t say that I agree 100% with the message in the song; I’m posting it as food for thought, rather than as an endorsement. But I do think he makes good points regarding the new tendency to brand terrorist attacks by date (7/7, 26/11, etc); there’s also a provocative push-back on the news-media’s obsession with catching Al-Qaeda “supervillains.” It is basically just an action-movie fantasy to think that they really matter.

The part where I’m not sure I’m with Riz MC in “Sour Times” is the arguably sympathetic psychologizing of what drives people to commit terrorist acts. When you say “people do this because they’re marginalized by the system,” it’s a kind of justification (even if you take pains to point out, as Riz MC does, that it’s still wrong). Some people who’ve committed, or attempted to commit, acts of terrorism in western countries fit the profile of the angry immigrant screwed over by the system, but others do not.

Still, it’s a complex song — with a lot of different ideas. It probably deserves some attention. Continue reading →

The Arc of Religious Freedom in France

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capt.photo_1247495450439-1-0.jpg The Indian presence at yesterday’s Bastille Day events in Paris commemorated the sacrifices of Indian soldiers who fought and died in World War I and symbolized the current economic, military and political ties between the two nations. But the images of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as chief guest and the Indian troops who marched in the annual military parade, including a group pictured to the right led by a Sikh officer, also brought to mind the French law that continues to keep Sikhs out of public schools and prevents them from getting drivers licenses or serving in the military or public office.

Overlooked back in 2004 when France enacted the so-called French headscarf ban forbidding any conspicuous religious symbols in state schools or government offices, the tiny Sikh community of France has been fighting the law in and out of the courts since then (previous SM coverage). Continue reading →

Q&A with Minal Hajratwala, author of “Leaving India”

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As someone whose own family is dispersed over several continents (my husband often jokes that we can’t visit any new country without discovering that some distant relative lives there), I’ve often asked myself many of the questions that Minal Hajratwala did: How were choices made? What were the journeys like? How do they reflect the diasporic experience? That’s what I loved about “Leaving India” (soon to be reviewed here at SM by our very own Cicatrix). I thought it would be interesting to speak with the author about how she tackled the mammoth task of “deftly exploring … the unprecedented late 20th-century dispersal of Indians to every corner of the globe and their rapid rise in the places they landed” (see Washington Post review). MinalGlassesWeb.jpg

Q. You write in your introduction that you wrote this book to “find whatever fragments remain here, to trace the shape of our past and learn how it shadows or illuminates our present.” Was there an experience, an event, or some defining moment when you knew that an interest of yours had to become 7 years of your working life?

A. Not at all, it was a slowly growing awareness that somewhere in the midst of my dozens of cousins spread over nine countries was an untold story. The vague ideas swirling in my brain about migration, family, and the new visibility of Indianness in popular culture crystallized when I took a book proposal class with Sam Freedman at Columbia University, who gave me amazing guidance and editing, and asked a lot of smart questions. As I shaped it into a narrative spanning a hundred years, I became more and more curious about how all this happened, and then the questions themselves shaped my journey.

I was also naive; I thought I could research the book in a year and write it in another year. If I had thought it would be a seven-year process, I might have gotten cold feet at the beginning.

The rest of the Q&A follows below the fold. Continue reading →

The snack is sacred but the idiocy divine

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It seems that Burger King decided that Carl’s Jr had a good thing going using (Padma) Lakshmi to advertise hamburgers, so they ran an ad in Spain using Padma Lakshmi to advertise … Ham Burgers with the tag line “The Snack is Sacred.”

I don’t know about you, but even as a non-Hindu I found this pretty offensive. Lakshmi is the Goddess of wealth and learning, and they’re using her image in an ignorant way to promote a pretty cheap foodstuff. I mean, if you’re going to be offensive and use a Hindu Goddess to sell a meat product, why not go all the way and get your forbidden foodstuffs right? Hindus are most offended by beef and Muslims are most offended by pork. It’s like they couldn’t even be bothered to tell their non-Christian religions apart, even though Spain was ruled by Muslims for hundreds of years.

Of course, when news got out, a holy ruckus was raised, and BK issued a rare apology:

“We are apologising because it wasn’t our intent to offend anyone,” said spokeswoman Denise T Wilson. “Burger King Corporation values and respects all of its guests as well as the communities we serve. This in-store advertisement was running to support only local promotion for three restaurants in Spain and was not intended to offend anyone. “Out of respect for the Hindu community, the limited-time advertisement has been removed from the restaurants,” she added. [link]

At BK, we offend you our way.

Continue reading →

“Philanthrokid”: Bilaal Rajan

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You could call Bilaal Rajan of Richmond Hill, Ontario, a philanthrokid. That’s a term used in this article to describe kids who go beyond collecting coins for charity to become pre-teen fundraising phenomenons raising millions of dollars for charitable causes. As a fourth-grader Rajan raised thousands for victims of Hurricane Jeanne in Haiti. He continued fundraising following the 2004 Tsunami, coming to the attention of UNICEF, who made him a children’s ambassador and had him speak at schools to his peers about making a difference. He travels around the world to meet with children, including a trip last month to South Africa where he also met humanitarian luminaries Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

b.rajan.jpgAccording to Rajan, his philanthropic career started at age 4, when his dad read him a story about the 2001 Gujarat earthquake that inspired him to go door to door, accompanied by an adult, selling clementines to raise funds for earthquake victims.

I first heard about him in connection with the Barefoot Challenge, which seems to be more about raising awareness than about raising money. Rajan and those who participated in his challenge a few months ago spent a week barefoot to raise awareness of children living in poverty. Chronicling the events of that week, which included being kicked off a sports team and advised against attending a field trip in addition to fielding dozens of media interviews and being trailed by a photographer, Rajan explains the connection. Continue reading →