India Abroad’s Person of the Year

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India Abroad recently held a gala banquet where it announced the magazine’s pick for “Person of the Year.” The event featured live taped messages from President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Rediff.com, which owns India Abroad, reports:

Special messages from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush were the highlight of the India Abroad annual awards conferred at a gala banquet at the Hotel New York Palace, which was attended by nearly 300 guests, on Friday.

Relations between the United States and India, on the ascendant for a few years but which soared since the July 28 Summit between President George Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Washington, DC, was picked for the India Abroad Event of the Year 2005 award.

In a specially videographed message for the occasion, Prime Minister Singh lauded the Indian American community for the enhancement in relations between the two nations, spoke warmly of his July summit with President Bush, and singled out India Abroad — the oldest, and largest selling weekly Indian newspaper in the United States – for its contribution to furthering Indo-US ties.

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p>Oh wait. You guys want to know who the Person of the Year was, right? It was the Purple-fingered one himself. Good ole’ Bobby Jindal. Bobby has been very busy of late and keeps getting busier by the day. It was just announced that he will accompany Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert on a trip to India. Dennis needed a local who could translate and was familiar with the ways of the Indians. I’m only kidding.

US House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert and Indian American Congressman Bobby Jindal will visit India in January ahead of President George W Bush’s scheduled trip.

A visit by Hastert signifies the importance Congress attaches to the July 18 agreement between Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, charting a strategic cooperation between the two democracies, including in the critical field of civilian nuclear technology…

Hastert, who is the third highest ranking official in the American government hierarchy, will be visiting India with Representative Jindal (Republican-Louisiana), who became the first Indian American to win a Congressional seat in 46 years after his victory in November 2004.

“And that itself is an indication of the rising importance of India, that the speaker of the House will be visiting India,” Representative Joe Wilson, Republican from South Carolina said. [Link]

What else has the Person of the Year been up to? By the way, can we use POTY for him now the way we use TMBWITW for Aishwarya Rai? Let’s consider it at least. Last week Bobby Jindal was on the House floor casting votes on important legislation before Congress left for the holidays. This included the immigration un-friendly H.R. 4437. He voted for the bill that many in the Indian American community consider to be one of the most anti-immigration bills to be written in a long time. Remember SAALT‘s take:

If enacted, this bill will be the harshest immigration policy in 80 years.

Hmmmm. You’d think that India Abroad would give its award to someone who seemed to be working to “further Indo-US ties” in the immigration department as well, no? Don’t Indians abroad want to make it easier to bring more Indians abroad? In fact, here is Jindal’s complete record on immigration. It’s not too hard to figure out his opinion of it. As it turns out, the vote on H.R. 4437 took place a few days after the gala dinner. The legislation did pass. Jindal shouldn’t be voting as an Indian-American but as a representative of his district in Louisiana and of his own beliefs, so I don’t fault him if he is voting his convictions, although I personally fault his convictions..

India Currents, a west-coast based smaller rival to India Abroad, also featured a year end “people of the year issue.” Jindal wasn’t even on the list of ten people.

My point is that Jindal doesn’t seem like such a good fit for this award given the type of paper that India Abroad appears to be. So the question I am left to ask is, was Jindal named person of the year because he won a seat in Congress? That is an amazing accomplishment and one worthy of respect. It doesn’t seem to me that it merits an award from India Abroad though, given the newspaper’s apparent demographics.

Thanks to an unnamed source for help on this post.

5 thoughts on “India Abroad’s Person of the Year”

  1. I think IA did well this year. He’s such a good speaker, reminds me a lot of Bill Clinton. That southern twang and a warmth to his voice, he draws you in. Last year they picked Monihi Bhardwaj which I personally was surprised about. She didn’t show up for the event, her father came instead. It should have gone to Vanita Gupta that year, she was a special award recipient. Sonal Shah was perhaps their best one. Swati Dandekar was the first one. I’m waiting for Bhairavi Desai to get it. She’s my hero.

  2. My nomination would be the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Lebanon, who all saw their freedoms expanded in varying degrees through their own efforts (here and there with help of course).

    It is becoming clear that India’s economic rise may play the geopolitical role that the US-China entente of 1975 (Nixon going to China) had in shifting the balance of power against the Soviet Union. Only this time India economic and military emergence will hopefully shift the power against China.

  3. The two women from the India currents list, Asra Nomani and Bhairavi Desai are more worthy, than Bobby “Purple finger” Jindal, anyday.

  4. Abhi, I suppose we could have seen this one coming. I mean, every time I’ve read one of Aziz Haniffa’s puff pieces in India Abroad about Bobby Jindal during the past year, I’ve had to stop myself to make sure I was reading the news section, and not a profile in the matrimonial pages in the back of the paper seeking a wife for the guy.

    Fortunately, HR 4437 has only passed the House of Representatives. Hasn’t yet reached the Senate, though there’s ample cause to be concerned that even the Democrats in the Senate might cave — even the two New York senators. It’s a truly awful bill, and Bobby should be ashamed of lending his support for it after taking so much money and gaining so much support from the community. But I’m sure that very few of the desis who have opened their wallets or supported him in other ways will open their mouths to say anything about this issue — too many “politically active” desis are neither Democrats nor Republicans, in any principled sense, but are simply Photocrats, donating money in exchange for a nice photo op.

    Janeofalltrades, I’m with you on Bhairavi Desai. One painful irony about Bobby Jindal getting this award, however, is that he has voted for a bill that could well make her job itself illegal:

    [Under HR 4437] U.S. citizens and other legal immigrants could also be charged with felonies for recruiting or referring undocumented immigrants for employment, even if they did not know that they were dealing with undocumented immigrants. As a result, organizations such as union hiring halls, non-profit groups, worker centers, day laborer sites, and other job placement and referral programs would be responsible for verifying immigration status for everyone they refer to a job, even though they are not the employer.

    Humanitarian relief volunteers in the U.S. already are facing these kinds of criminal charges:

    Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz were members of a group of volunteers called “No More Deaths”, a network of individuals and organizations set up primarily to try to prevent deaths of irregular or undocumented migrants, hundreds of whom die each year after crossing into the USA from Mexico. The largest proportion die while crossing the Arizona desert which has reportedly claimed more than 260 lives in the past year alone. Many of these individuals died as a result of exposure to extreme temperatures, such as the record high temperatures that were reached during July 2005. The three migrants picked up by Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz on 9 July 2005, were reported to have been extremely thirsty and hungry, suffering from persistent vomiting and from severe, crippling blisters which, if left untreated, could prevent a person from walking, a frequent cause of death in the desert. Strauss and Sellz were driving the three men for treatment by volunteer medical professionals in Tuscon when they were stopped by the United States (US) Border Patrol and arrested. Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz were charged with committing two felonies under federal law: transporting illegal aliens and conspiring to do so.

    These aren’t minor charges — Sellz and Strauss face “a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and up to $500,000 in fines.” But H.R. 4437 would make it infinitely worse, criminalizing the work of many of people working in faith-based charities, teachers, lawyers, health care workers, and even the constituent service employees of elected officials. Who knows, maybe even members of Bobby’s own staff, unless perhaps they have a policy of screening callers’ immigration status over the phone before offering any assistance.

    Gee, thanks Bobby! And thank you India Abroad.