Author Archives: amardeep

“My Kind of Exile”: The Silencing of Tenzin Tsundue

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Via DesiPundit, I came across a string of news articles and posts on Tenzin Tsundue, a talented activist poet and essayist of Tibetan extraction; in 2001 he won the Picador Outlook Non-Fiction essay prize for this moving piece of work. Tsundue was also born on Indian soil, and is therefore Indian in somewhat the same sense as I consider myself American. But with a difference: Tsundue’s people, the many thousands of Tibetans who have taken refuge in India, are effectively denationalized. They aren’t full Indian citizens (though legally they ought to be), and they can’t go back to a home country that doesn’t exist anymore.

In 2002, Tsundue got attention in the Indian and international media when he took advantage of a construction ladder and climbed the outside of a fourteen story building (Express Towers) directly facing the Oberoi Towers in Nariman Point, Mumbai. The Chinese Premier was in town, and when he and his delegation arrived at their posh, high-rise hotel, they were undoubtedly chagrined to see Tsundue in the building directly across, unfurling a 30 foot “Free Tibet” banner stitched together entirely out of Chinese flags. (More details)

One of the interesting comments Tsundue made at that time was in response to the danger he faced as hotel security officials were threatening to drop a materials lift above his head on him, when he refused to come down: “‘I did not worry about the threat being carried out, knowing that I was in India and not in China,’ he said.”

Telling words; are they true? The Indian government has recently placed a restraining order on Tsundue in connection with Hu Jintao’s coming visit to India (see Nitin Pai’s outraged post on this). Tsundue has been ordered not to leave Dharmsala during the Chinese Premier’s visit — on threat of deportation to Tibet! It’s understandable that the Indian government would want to protect the Chinese delegation from intrusive protesters, but I think Tsundue ought to have the right to go to Delhi and express his opposition to the Chinese occupation, especially since we know that Tsundue and other Tibetans will do so peacefully. India may be worlds away from China on matters of personal freedom and respect for human rights, but as this case shows, it’s still far from perfect.

One other thing: Nitin points out that the Indian news-media has yet to pick up this story. I did find something on “Telugu Portal,” but otherwise it’s mainly newspapers in places like Malaysia that are covering the story. [Update: There has been some coverage.] Continue reading →

Songs for the Sleepless

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It probably won’t surprise many people if I mention that these days we aren’t getting much sleep in my house. Our newborn, Puran, tends to wake up hungry every 2-3 hours at night. The feeding part is usually relatively straightforward; it’s getting the little guy to burp and then sleep again that takes some time and persistence. The best tactic involves picking him up and pacing for fifteen minutes.

One of my colleagues in the English Department suggested reciting poetry while walking; the sound of iambic pentameter is said to be soporific. But sadly, I’m not that kind of English lit. person — with my new-skool education, I never actually managed to memorize anything. Instead — and it’s not a bad substitute, really — we tend to sing to him, basically whatever pop songs come into mind (the Beatles are especially good: “I’m so tired/ I haven’t slept a wink…”; “Cry, baby cry/ Make your mother sigh…”).

One trick to make the late night hours roll along more quickly is a little game we came up with: take a classic Hindi/Urdu romantic song about sleeplessness, and tweak it slightly to fit the current context. For instance:

O ho ho ho, khoya khoya chaand, khula aasmaan
Aankhon mein saari raat jaayegi
Tumko bhi kaise neend aayegi (full lyrics)
Hidden, hidden moon; open skies
In your eyes, I’ll be awake all night
And how can you sleep either?

And the travestied version might be: 

O ho ho ho, khoya khoya chaand, khula aasmaan
Dikaar mein saari raat jaayegi
Humko bhi kaise neend aayegi

“Dikaar” means “burp.” You can see the old song at Youtube ; it’s Dev Anand in a film called Kala Bazaar. Continue reading →

Macacas, Youtube, and the Question of Respect

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Though I live and vote in Pennsylvania’s 7th district, the big race for me — and probably most SM readers — was really the Senate in Virginia: the “macaca” race. In hindsight, it’s surprising that George Allen didn’t seem concerned that the person he called “macaca” happened to be carrying a video camera, and probably didn’t even dream that the event being filmed would immediately be seen by millions on news shows, talk shows, and of course, on video sharing sites like Youtube (go ahead, watch the video again, you know you want to). It’s possible that this will go down as the first “Youtube” election, just as 2004 was the first “blogged” election — though notably, the blogosphere (dominated by liberal blogs) didn’t seem to make a difference in the outcome of 2004, and I’m sure it’s an open question as to whether Youtube had any real impact in the tight Senate races in places like Virginia and Montana.

“Macaca” was one of those strange insults you don’t know what to do with at first. As with many ethnic slurs (remember “rat-eater”?), it was unclear at first that it even was a slur, since “macaca” isn’t a word commonly used to describe (or insult) people from the Indian subcontinent. That isn’t really new; ethnic slurs thrive on ignorance, and often misdescribe the people they are aimed at.

As people looked up various possible definitions of the word macaca, they discovered that none of them are complimentary. Like most South Asians in the U.S. (see Abhi’s post, and the reactions to it), I immediately registered “macaca” as an insult, though I wasn’t surprised that many others didn’t see it that way. Eventually the mainstream consensus seemed to be that it was in fact an ethnic insult, and the next question for most South Asian Americans was, “will this matter to anyone?” Will anyone else be as offended by this as we are? More is at stake in that question than first appears. Behind it is a deep anxiety about acceptance and integration, about being equally valued and respected in American society. Everyone is on board (usually) if a public figure makes a remark that could be construed as hostile to other, more settled minority groups — the hostile response to Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade this summer was essentially unequivocal. And Trent Lott’s political career was ended derailed by a comment relating to Jim Crow. But are Virginians, and Americans in general, going to care about “macaca,” which affects a newer, smaller, and less visible minority community? As the macaca story gathered steam, there was almost a sigh of relief as the answer appeared to be “yes.” And now, if Jim Webb’s slim lead holds following a probable recount in the coming days, it will be hard not to see this incident as a decisive factor in the election. Continue reading →

Speaking of Self-Description: “South Asian”

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Taz’s post today had one of the strangest statistics I’d ever seen — that 25% of South Asian Americans had, in 1990, identified themselves on the U.S. census as “white,” while 5% identified themselves as “black.”

It made me think of a post by progressive Muslim blogger Ali Eteraz from last week, where he discussed his own variant of an identity term crisis, not on racial but religious terms:

I onced asked a little kid I know what he was. He was like, um, er, I am a Pakistani-Muslim-American. I was like, what the hell, thatÂ’s messed up, little kids shouldnÂ’t have to hyphenate their identities like that, man.

Then one day I was typing up a post and I was like dammit I am really tired of having to write out the whole word “American-Muslim” or “American-Islam.” It’s just tiring.

So I decided that we needed a new ONE WORD term to call ourselves. . . In the end, I decided IÂ’m going to use “AmeriMuslim” – it is easy to understand, and it sounds like “A merry Muslim.” So from now on, thatÂ’s what IÂ’m going to use as my identity, thatÂ’s what IÂ’m going to teach nieces and nephews to say, and thatÂ’s what IÂ’m going to use even in my actual publications.(link)

Given that Ali Eteraz is (I believe) of Pakistani descent, my first thought is to say, “well, why not South Asian?” If we want to limit it to just one word, why not “desi” or “deshi”? Of course, in a sense I already know the answer: if religion is the most important aspect of one’s identity, one obviously privileges it over ethnicity. (Analogously, I also know a fair number of conservative Sikhs who are adamantly “Sikh American” and not “Indian American” or “South Asian American.”) Continue reading →

“Don” – Paan + Tae Kwon = Long

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Actually, the new Shah Rukh Khan movie Don isn’t as bad as you might expect, given all the negative reviews (for instance). It’s also shaping up to be a box office success.

Farhan Akhtar is probably the most hyped director in the new wave of Bollywood film directors. Though he comes from an old B-wood family (his father Javed co-wrote the script of the original Don), Farhan’s first film, Dil Chahta Hai showed no signs of film dynasty nepotism. Dil Chahta Hai was considered a stylistic breakthrough because of the realistic (well, relatively) plot and its rebellious attitude, and it became an anthem of sorts for the post-liberalization generation. That sense of clarity or mission is missing here: in his remake of Don, Farhan devotes most of his writer-director energy into matching western action flicks, fight-for-fight, and stunt for stunt. On this he succeeds: I liked the first car chase, and I think the skydiving fight scene is probably a first for Bollywood. There is also a certain amount of Kill Bill theatrical viciousness here that’s novel in the Bollywood hero-villain iconography.

What most of the film’s critics have missed, I think, is the basic problem of identity this film symbolizes, a problem which is broader than just this film. Farhan Akhtar seems to be torn between two approaches: on the one hand, he could do a slightly tweaked version of an outdated version of India, from a “disco” gangster movie that wasn’t all that great to begin with. (Yes, I said it.) The upside is you get the warm-and-fuzzy nostalgia atmosphere, but the danger is the mindless perpetuation of the myth of the “glory days” of Bollywood and Amitabh Bachchan, as if we need any more of that. Or: he could make a slick, essentially imported style of action movie, with a few “traditional” songs added to appeal to the folks in UP (the “Mourya Re” and “Khaike Paan Banaraswala” numbers). This film flirts with both but doesn’t fully commit, which shows it fundamentally doesn’t know what it wants to be.

It may be a false choice, but the question continues to nag: will the real, contemporary Indian film aesthetic please stand up? Continue reading →

Asra Nomani, Daud Sharifa, and the Women’s Mosque

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Congratulations are due to Asra Nomani, who won this year’s SAJA fellowship for a planned project to go to Tamil Nadu to report on movement to build a women’s mosque there. The project has been initiated in the town of Pudukkottai, as a reaction against male-dominated mosques and local, male-only Jamaat boards, that have the power to decide many personal and marriage-related disputes in India’s Muslim community.

The movement is being spearheaded by a woman named Daud Sharifa, and has already received a fair amount of coverage in the past two years from major news organizations such as the BBC. (More stories can be found here [Outlook] and here [New American Media]). Despite getting quite a bit of attention, the project is years away from completion owing to fundraising difficulties.

However, as one reads more about Daud Sharifa, the symbolic project of actually building a women’s mosque (which would be the first one to be built anywhere in the world) begins to seem somewhat secondary to what might be her main goal: building a broad-based, national movement to support the rights of Muslim women. Since the government has done little to help (and sometimes much to hurt) the cause, Sharifa and her NGO, STEPS, have gone ahead and created a women-only Jamaat (“Congregation”) to arbitrate family disputes using a feminist slant on Islamic law. They have been in operation since February 2004, and get a steady stream of cases to resolve (according to this article, they get about 15 petitions a day).

Daud Sharifa’s justification for the project seems strong:

“The male jamaats are unlawful kangaroo courts that play with the lives of women. A mosque-jamaat axis is a power centre that controls the community. When women are refused representation here, we have no choice but to have our own jamaat. And since a jamaat is attached to a mosque, we have to build our own mosque.” (link)

Continue reading →

Let Alpana Select The Wine, Please

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A little while ago, Taz mentioned Alpana Singh in a post on influential desi women under 30. I recently discovered that Alpana, in addition to being the youngest person ever to pass the Master Sommelier exam, hosts a show called Check, Please! on Chicago Public Television. AND she has a book out: Alpana Pours: About Being a Woman, Loving Wine, and Having Great Relationships. The general vibe she’s going for in the book might be described as “Shiraz and the City”; the idea for it came from watching couples order wines at upscale restaurants:

Singh cringes when she thinks about the drop-dead gorgeous woman who dined at Everest with an equally great-looking date. The guy proceeded to order a $490 bottle of Champagne — and the unsure woman asked for a Diet Coke. That’s when she knew it was time to birth Alpana Pours.

“I may not be a relationship expert, but I saw five years of relationships” by advising couples on wine. “It was like [having] ringside seats,” says the Monterey, Calif., native.(link)

To sum up (ladies, are you listening?), Alpana declares: “Looking super hot in a really expensive dress can be immediately undermined if you order a diet cola.” (The book also has chapters with titles like, “Pairings: Wine, Hooking Up, and Dating” and “What Wines Go With Bingeing?”) While I’m definitely not the demographic Alpana is, um, catering to, I guess I’m fine with it as long as no one is serving Tunatinis anywhere, ever. Continue reading →

“The Billionaire’s Sleep”/ Tokyo Cancelled to be Filmed

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Manish’s post on Tokyo Cancelled a few weeks ago reminded me that I needed to finally pull the book down off the shelf, where it has been resting since S. brought it back for me from a brief visit to Bombay some months ago. I read it and was well-pleased (though perhaps not overwhelmed) by the imagination at work.

After a visit to Rana Dasgupta’s interesting homepage, I was intrigued to discover he’s signed off the filming rights for one of the stories in Tokyo Cancelled to a young Australian filmmaker named Robert Hutchinson. Hutchinson spent six weeks in India this past spring doing research on it for the screenplay he’s writing, and kept an interesting blog about it here. Aside from the fact that he misspells “Hindutva” at one point, Hutchinson has some interesting observations to make, both on India and on the script in progress. Here is how Hutchinson summarizes the plot for the film version of “The Billionaire’s Sleep,” which follows Dasgupta’s story quite closely:

Rajiv Malhotra is a billionaire who inherited an Indian steel empire and turned it into a trans-national concern with a focus on India’s ability to provide outsourcing services to the rest of the world. For him every moment of every day in every timezone is an opportunity to provide efficient services. His obsession with utilising every second of the day means he has never been able to sleep. This inability to sleep has also meant he is infertile and has not been able to produce an heir to his empire. His decision to have a ‘perfect son’ made for him through the use of genetic technologies is the inciting moment of the story. From that moment powers beyond his control come into play. (link)

That’s just part one. Note that it’s Dasgupta who uses the name “Rajiv Malhotra” (there is also a real person by that name, you may have heard of him; hard to know if any connection is intended).

Part two is where it really starts to get interesting: Continue reading →

Time to Liberalize Higher Education in India?

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I’m sure many readers saw the article in the New York Times on the coming skills gap in the IT sector in India. The basic gist is this:

Software exports alone expanded by 33 percent in the last year.

The university systems of few countries would be able to keep up with such demand, and India is certainly having trouble. The best and most selective universities generate too few graduates, and new private colleges are producing graduates of uneven quality.

With the number of technology jobs expected to nearly double to 1.7 million in the next four years, companies are scrambling to find fresh engineering talent and to upgrade the schools that produce it. (link)

A shortage of 500,000 high tech workers is predicted for 2010. Perhaps the only way to forestall a huge wasted opportunity would be if the government were to liberalise its policy on foreign universities, and allow for-profit foreign institutions to open up campuses — with some regulation. According to this Rashmi Banga editorial in the Financial Express, the many thousands of Indian students who don’t go to IIT currently spend $3 billion on education in the U.S. — money which could be spent in India itself. Banga also outlines some of the basic problems in the Indian system as it operates from an insider’s perspective.

This is not a new idea. Proposals have been floated, committees have reported, and bills have been passed — though none of it has really led to anything. The many U.S. universities that have pondered building campuses in India (including both Stanford and Yale) have all been repulsed by the continuing ban on for-profit enterprises and the miles of regulations, regulations, regulations. (You can follow the saga on the T. Satyanarayan’s excellent Education in India blog) The arguments against liberalization seem weak. Standards are really not that hard to ensure, and a set of simple regulations or guidelines to ensure an orderly process shouldn’t be that hard. The charge of “cultural sensitivities” is raised, but are cultural sensitivities served by the current system, where thousands of students go abroad to study? (And many of them end up sticking around in the places where they get their degrees?)

It also needn’t be solely about filling the voracious staffing needs of the big consulting, outsourcing, and banking companies; I imagine that a Yale or Stanford campus in India would be much more than that. I’m sure many U.S. academics in the social sciences and humanities would jump at the chance to have rich, lively intellectual exchanges with Indian students and researchers — without having to go through a lot of bureaucracy. Continue reading →

Gandhi-giri in Full Bloom

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Remember Lage Raho Munnabhai? This fall, it seems that many civic-minded Indians are taking the Gandhian techniques shown in the film and applying them to real-life problems and protests, with the demand for accountability from government officials being the most common application. Instead of Bandhs and riots, in the past couple of months protesters have been sending flowers and doing Pujas, hoping that people whose work shows signs of negligence and incompetence will “get better soon.” Here are some of the examples of “Gandhi-giri” I came across in a quick search:

And those are just a few examples; more are given in this recent Boston Globe article. My cousins in Delhi tell me that elderly people are stripping off clothes (this is directly out of Lage Raho Munnabhai) to shame government officials in charge of pensions to actually disburse their funds. And there are stories about pavement dwellers, in response to trash flagrantly dropped where they live by thoughtless passers-by, cheerfully (but pointedly) cleaning it up — again right out of the film.

It’s not all good, of course. Vidhu Vinod Chopra is reportedly using his own invention to lobby the government of Gujarat to give his film tax-free status, which it already has in many other states. That seems a bit much; “Gandhi-giri” may well just be this year’s fashion, which will get old as soon as other super-rich people start using it to demands perks and privileges.

Gandhi-giri: flash in the pan, or a sign of a real revival in non-violent civic engagement amongst Indians of all classes? Continue reading →