Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

Lions and Ducks and Shers, oh my!

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Gurminder Thind’s story is similar to that of the 6’6″ 295 lbs Nuvraj Singh Bassi who played for the Oregon ducks from 2002-2004(?). Like Thind, Bassi is a large Sikh from Canada, which is not known for producing football players. Nuvraj played for a Vancouver area high school, and was apparently decent:

Once a mighty duck

Proved to be an overpowering force on both sides of the ball for the Huskies, starting as a tight end and defensive end during the 1999 and 2000 campaigns while breaking into the starting rotation as a defender his sophomore season. The team captain earned all-Western Conference honors at both positions while acquiring defensive all-British Columbia Province acclaim. Hauled in four touchdowns for a program which ran the ball better than 60 percent of the time, finishing senior season with a 9-2 record and a loss in the playoff semifinals. [Link]

However, he struggled to find his place in college football and it doesn’t seem like he got to play much after his first two years:

The search to determine a position which is most compatible with his demeanor and physical skills has been one of his biggest obstacles to developing at the next level as the former offensive lineman returned to the defensive line for the start of the 2002 season. Gained valuable playing experience this past spring while injuries and rehab kept more experienced hands on the sidelines. Will now try to transfer those repetitions into a more prolific role as a junior. Began his tenure as a defensive tackle before being shifted across the line of scrimmage two years ago. Recorded two of his three Spring Game tackles unassisted. Offseason workouts will go a long ways towards determining his future fate. [Link]

I remember him not because of his football prowess, but because he was a keshdhari football player (unlike Thind) which led to treatment like this at the Sun Bowl:A comedian at a Sun Bowl event yelled that he had “found Osama”

During his routine, the comedian, Freddy Soto, remarked that the University of Oregon football team is diverse. Mr. Soto then stated said, “Where’s that guy?” as he made a circle around your head to indicate that the person to whom who he was referring wears a turban. When Nuvraj Singh raised his hand, Mr. Soto yelled that he had found “Osama Bin Laden.” [Link]

There are good reasons why some people didn’t find that joke funny.

After college, in 2005, he was drafted in the fifth round by the BC Lions. He seems to have been cut after a season, however, because he’s not listed on their roster now. Does anybody out there know what happened and what he’s up to these days?

p.s. the Lions do have Fiji born desi Bobby Singh playing for them…

Related posts: The Thind Decision

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I’m not afraid of Elvis

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I was looking at the photos from the recent Bhangra Blowout [thanks Amardeep] and was struck by the non-desi dancers in the photos. What confuses me is why I’m surprised at all.

Growing up, NYC was a giant thali of different cultural practices. Black kids did Kung Fu and Lion Dances, Chinese Americans breakdanced and rapped. Culture wasn’t “apna,” it was for anybody willing to put the time in to learn. I probably did as much Irish and Israeli folk dancing (yes, I’m a dork) as a kid as I did Punjabi folk dancing. I should be no more surprised to see a non-Punjabi, non-desi, dancing Bhangra than I am surprised to see a non-Latino doing Salsa, or a non-Korean doing Tae Kwan Do.

Still, I’m not used to it, and I think that other desis are even less used to it than I am. We tend to snark a lot about white people doing puja or yoga, criticizing their pronunciation, saying that they don’t somehow grok the soul of the practice. Well guess what – it’s not going to stop there and we ABCDs are hypocrites if we’re affronted. Let’s be honest, many of us sit here and learn the words to Hindi songs phonetically, just like the non-desi next to us. We’re cosmopolitan, not essentialist, in all other aspects of our lives.

We’re just scared that if somebody else can do these things, these things that we associate with our homes, cook our food, speak our languages, worship our God(s), dance our dances, sing our songs, as well as we can or better that we’ll lose our distinctiveness. That’s understandable but dumb.

Yes, I’m better at dancing Bhangra than most non-desis, but that doesn’t mean that I have the rhythms of Punjab in my veins, just a bit more practice than some. At the end of the day, it’s about talent and enthusiasm, not ancestry (and I cringe equally when I see most non-Punjabi desis dancing Bhangra). It just takes a little while to get used to the fact that these things are now … public, and open to all.

Related posts: White girls in Brooklyn appropriate Saraswati

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First Desi Viceroy of Kiwistan

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In some exciting news, New Zealand’s next Governor General is going to be a desi, Judge Anand Satyanand [Thanks 3rd Eye]. Satyanand was born and raised in New Zealand (his parents were Indo-Fijians) and last held the job of the Parliament’s ombudsman. I think he’s the first desi Governor General outside of a South Asian country.

Lord of the sheep, a true sepia mutton-ier!

You do realize what this means, don’t you? A desi is (nominally) in charge of the great country of New Zealand. He could veto all their new laws, order the government to dissolve, or command their army to invade Australia! Well, not really, it’s a symbolic position now, but it wasn’t always.

The Governor General is a vestigial organ left over from when the Empire became the Commonwealth. It’s the old Imperial Viceroy job; in India, Mountbatten simply switched titles with Independence. Once upon a time, it was a very powerful position:

Governors-General notionally hold the prerogative powers of the monarch he is representing, and also hold the executive power of the country to which he is assigned. This means that the Governor-General has the power to certify or veto law (Royal Assent), and is also the head of the armed forces in his territory… Because of the Governor-General’s control of the military in the territory, the post was as much a military appointment as a civil one.

The Governor-General may exercise almost all the reserve powers of the Monarch. Except in rare cases, the Governor-General only acts in accordance with constitutional convention and upon the advice of the Prime Minister. A rare and controversial case of a Governor General independently exercising his authority occurred in 1975, when the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. [Link]

And even though the role is largely ceremonial today, it’s an important symbolic position:

The governor general officiates at state functions such as the opening of the parliament, signs off on laws and appoints judges and commissioned officers in the military. [Link]

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The first desi Supreme Court Justice? (updated)

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As Dave mentioned earlier, the lawyer arguing one of the most important cases in front of the Supreme Court right now is a desi – Neal Kumar Katyal.

The future Justice Katyal?

He’s so illustrious that he has even been mentioned as a possible future (Democratic) pick for the Supreme Court:

At a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution on the Senate hearings on Judge Roberts, moderator Stuart Taylor, a columnist for the National Journal, pointedly asked panelist Katyal if a future Democratic president nominated him to the Supreme Court, which could well be, would he also be as evasive as Roberts was at the hearings?… [Link]

To give you a sense of why this is a plausible conjecture, here are just some of the highlights from his resume:

  • He clerked for both Justice Breyer and Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. He also worked for now Justice Roberts the summer after he graduated from Yale Law. [Link]
  • “In 1998-99, Katyal served as National Security Adviser to the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice” [Link]
  • “He … served as Vice President Al Gore’s co-counsel in the Supreme Court election dispute of 2000” [Link]
  • He “represented the Deans of most major private law schools in the University of Michigan affirmative-action case” that was settled in 2003. [Link]
  • In 2004, he was responsible for the case that “struck down the Guantanamo trial system as unconstitutional and a violation of the Geneva Conventions.” [Link]
  • In 2005, at age 34, Katyal was named one of the the leading “40 lawyers under 40” by the National Law Journal
  • He is listed as a speaker by ICM, one of the largest literary and talent agencies around. They also represent Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster.
  • Even with all the time he spends in court, he’s a Professor at Georgetown Law.
  • And yes, ladies, he’s married. That means even his Punjabi parents are happy!

Katyal is the lead lawyer in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Amrit Singh is one of the lawyers involved in Ali et. al. v. Rumsfeld, and Vanita Gupta argued the Tulia case. Looks like we’re doing alright in terms of representing in the field of civil liberties, no?

Related posts: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, The art of the book review, The “Devils” Advocates

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The Britannia Cartel (updated)

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Dave’s post about the British Raj reminded me about the seamy underside of the British East India Company, namely its business in drugs. Imperial trade in opium was central to the success of the British empire:

Indian opium helped the British rule the world

By the early part of the nineteenth century, British Indian opium had stanched the flow of New World silver into China, replacing silver as the commodity that could be exchanged for Chinese tea and other goods…Opium revenues in India not only kept the colonial administration afloat, but sent vast quantities of silver bullion back to Britain. The upshot was the global dominance of the British pound sterling until World War I… [the] data supports, without opium the British global empire is virtually unimaginable. [Link]

The British energetically encouraged poppy growing, on occasion coercing Indian peasant farmers into going over the crop. By the end of the 1830s the opium trade was already, and was to remain, “the world’s most valuable single commodity trade of the nineteenth century.”(4)… [Link]

The definition of a drug cartel is a group with a monopoly on the distribution of an illegal narcotic. The empire, in the form of the East India Company, fits the bill quite neatlyWithout opium the British global empire is virtually unimaginable:

In 1773, the Governor-General of Bengal was granted a monopoly on the sale of opium, and abolished the old opium syndicate at Patna. For the next 50 years, opium would be key to the British East India Company’s hold on India. Since importation of opium into China was illegal … the British East India Company would … sell opium at auction in Calcutta on the condition it was smuggled to China. In 1797, the company ended the role of local Bengal purchasing agents and instituted the direct sale of opium to the company by farmers.

In 1799, the Chinese Empire reaffirmed its ban on opium imports, and in 1810 the following decree was issued:
“Opium has a very violent effect… Opium is a poison… Its use is prohibited by law.” [Link]

Certainly, the British ended up doing many good things in India. Still, we should acknowledge that the roots of the British Raj lie in something as dirty and illicit as the Medellin cartel. That a bunch of dirty narcoterrorists could give birth to the world’s largest, and (relatively speaking) one of its more humane empires, is perplexing indeed.

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Beards are back!

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Don’t blink or you might miss my 15 seconds of being hip and cool, but the Grey Lady’s fashion section informs us that the hottest look today is a full beard:

A bearded Ralph Lauren model. I look just like him, but more handsome, and with brown skin and a turban.

At hipster hangouts and within fashion circles, the bearded revolution that began with raffishly trimmed whiskers a year or more ago has evolved into full-fledged Benjamin Harrisons. At New York Fashion Week last month at least a half-dozen designers turned up with furry faces… [at] the John Bartlett show… more than half the models wore beards: untidy ones that scaled a spectrum from wiry to ratty to shabby to fully bushy. [Link]

Wow. For the last three decades, Americans have seen the beard as anathema. The very word means a person who diverts suspicion from someone in both the contexts of betting and sexual orientation. To grow a beard is seen as dishonest, or at the very least, career suicide:

… [A] study in Australia showed that 92% of women and 79% of men would rather not work with people who have facial hair. It also found that senior managers think beards make men look shifty, unattractive and too old. [Link]

Remember Al Gore? He grew a beard to signal the fact that he was a private person who had left public life, and he shaved it to signify that he was once again a political actor. Unlike in India, the American public doesn’t trust a bearded politician:

The last president to sport a mustache was William Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913, while the last bearded president, Benjamin Harrison, left office in 1893. [Link]

We have female senators and black senators, but we do not have a bearded senator… I believe that we will have a female president and a black president before we have another bearded president. [Link]

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A (rented) womb of one’s own

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Desi women have now joined desi men in the business of assisted fertility. When you combine Indian medical prowess with lots of poor people you get pharmaceutical testing, organ sales, and now a thriving business in surrogate motherhood [Thanks to wgiia for alerting me to this story]. This sector is now worth roughly a half a billion dollars a year and growing rapidly.

Daksha, a shy Gujarati woman in her early 30s, wants a child – but not for herself. The baby is for the “Britishers”, the couple seated in the lobby of the Indian fertility clinic. It is the first time that the British Asian couple, Ajay and Saroj Shah, from Leicester, have met Daksha. The 31-year-old is “loaning” her womb to them for 150,000 rupees (£2,000) and is candid about needing the money. Her shop job pays only 2,000 rupees a month. [Link]

Daksha is getting paid six years of salary for this service, and the desi British couple involved have gotten away cheaply (why am I not surprised?). Another story gives a price almost twice as high for a Scandanavian couple:

Mehta is, in fact, renting her womb out to the couple for a cool Rs 4 lakh to Rs 5 lakh. [Link]

Like everything else in India, however, local prices are far cheaper than prices in the west:

… it costs £100-300 to advertise for a surrogate mother in India versus the £1,000 charged by a British daily. Not surprisingly, an advertisement for a surrogate mother has been appearing in Indian newspapers and magazines in a dozen cities once a week for a couple of months [Link]

[One] couple … will be spending nearly Rs 10 lakh on the entire process, far less than the Rs 26 lakh to Rs 35 lakh they would have had to fork out at an in vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinic in California, which they had considered earlier. [Link] … They opted for the Indian clinics to save 2.5m rupees (£31,000). [Link]

At about £3,000 in Britain, an IVF cycle costs five times what you might pay in India. In addition, in Britain, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has outlawed payments, but a surrogate can be reimbursed for a maximum of £10,000 to cover expenses; the payments often fall between £4,000 and £10,000. [Link]

In the US, a single IVF cycle is six to eight times more expensive than in India, where it comes for Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh — or half of what it costs in the UK. [I realize that these figures are inconsistent] The refinement of such techniques and their low cost is what is spawning the boom in surrogate motherhood. And it helps that the amount earned for bearing a child for somebody else can be as high as a middle-class office-goer’s salary for two years or so. [Link]

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Desi athletes take the gold

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Desi athletes have picked up a series of gold medals in the 2006 Commonwealth games in Melbourne. I know it’s not the Olympics, but the sight of a gold medal hanging around any brown neck is rare enough that it is worth remarking on. India is ranked third of all countries (after Australia and the UK England), with 12 gold medals, while Pakistan and Sri Lanka each have one. [By comparison, Australia, the host, has 42 gold medals and the UK England has 18]

Invoking every Goddess before serving sure slowed things down

These recent victories wont give brown people a reputation for being jocks though. At least five of India’s gold medals are from air rifle events. While I’m sure this requires skill, I can’t imagine that it takes either stamina or strength. The Indian women’s table tennis team also won a gold, but only with divine intervention:

In table-tennis, India’s women’s team won a closely fought match against Canada, winning 3-2. “I prayed to the Goddesses to please give me strength to perform well for myself and India,” India’s Mouma Das is quoted as saying by AFP news agency. “I felt in my heart they heard” [Link]

This isn’t even badminton fer cryin’ out loud, let alone “real” tennis. How much pride am I supposed to take in the fact that it took all the Goddesses in the Hindu pantheon to win a table tennis competition without any Chinese athletes! And air rifle and table tennis account for at least half of the Indian gold medals.

The most macho gold medal was won by the Pakistanis who set a new Commonwealth record in weightlifting:

Pakistan picked up its first gold medal of the Games with a win for Shuja-ud-din Malik in the men’s 85kg weightlifting event. Malik’s combined 343kg in the clean-and-jerk, including a new Commonwealth record of 193kg, placed him ahead of Cameroon’s Brice Batchaya. [Link]

I’ve got my fingers crossed, hoping that desi athletes can redeem themselves by doing well in some more strenuous sport, like Netball or Lawn Bowling. During the last Commonwealth Games, the Indians won 30 gold medals. Would it be too much to ask if half of India’s gold medals this time were in sports that desi mothers would disapprove of?

UPDATE: Wgiia, ms and Soooraj remind me that India’s first gold medal was earned by female weight lifter Kunjarani Devi and that two of India’s 12 medals are in women’s weightlifting.

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Malaysia: Fobs too sexy for jobs

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It’s pretty common for bigots to complain that outsiders are intent upon luring, seducing and despoiling their women. The defense of the motherland is intimately linked to the defense of mothers, and women in general, who have to be protected from the depredations of the evil other. It’s also common for nativists to complain that there are too many immigrants, and that those who arrive under legal cover often stay to do something else. However, it’s rare to complain that illegal immigrants pose a national danger because they’re just too good looking.

Warning: Bangladeshis will not be allowed into Malaysia if they look too much like this man!

Until now.

Malaysia is being swamped by thousands of illegal Bangladeshi workers who are gaining entrance on the pretext of being students, according to reports… Home affairs minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said the men end up doing menial jobs in response to a labour shortage. [Link]

Malaysia has a manpower shortage, and Bangladeshi men are arriving in Malaysia to fill the gap, to give Malaysia what it needs. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in this – it’s completely natural. Why should the minister object, then?

Home Affairs Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said Bangladesh workers were still spotted on construction sites and in restaurants despite a ban on their employment two years ago over concerns they were causing “social problems”. “They have blue eyes and look like Hindi film actors and they create social problems here,” Radzi was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times of the reason for the ban…. Hindi films are popular amongst Malaysian women, as are handsome male Bollywood film stars. [Link]

Ahhh … that explains it. Bangladeshis are too sexy for their jobs (too sexy for their jobs, so sexy, they’re fobs). Can you just imagine the Malaysian ambassador asking the Bangladeshi PM to make sure that only ugly “students” go to Malaysia? [Give us your tired your poor, your ugly masses yearning to be free, the unattractive refuse of your too too sexy shore … ] And what does it mean that no such restriction is imposed upon Indians?

I’m sure that today, all over Dhaka, Bangladeshi college students are walking around, catching reflections of their butts in shop windows, and comparing each other to movie stars. “Dude! You so look like SRK! I’m not kidding man, you really do! You’ve got the same blue eyes as he has!”

[Thanks also to technophobicgeek who blogged this story on the News tab]

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Liberté, Égalité, montrez les cheveux

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The French turban ban – it’s not just for school children any more. [Thanks to Greg and Al Mujahid]

Chirac: You can’t drive in my country. But you should take our toxic waste, and buy our goods. And keep that Mittal guy away from us! We’re civilized and you’re the natives, remember?

Manmohan Singh: [Must not slap guest across the face. Must not administer thapad with my left hand …]

France’s highest administrative body ruled Monday that Sikhs must remove their turbans for driver’s license photos, calling it a question of public security and not a restriction on freedom of religion. [Link]

This, of course, is unequivocally full of steaming hooey. Firstly, it clearly is an abrogation of religious freedom for Sikhs. Secondly, it doesn’t even make sense! Unless they’re planning on banning driving while turbanned, this is going to make it harder for the police to compare drivers license photos with the individuals driving.

This ruling is a reversal of an earlier ruling that sided with the Sikh plaintiff on a technicality, and means that any future appeals will have to be conducted at a pan-European level:

The Council of State’s ruling reversed its own decision in December in favor of Shingara Mann Singh, a French citizen who refused to take off his turban for a license photo in 2004… Singh’s lawyer, Patrice Spinosi, has said they could take the case to other tribunals, such as the European Court of Human Rights. [Link]

None of you can drive in my country either! Off with all of your turbans!

The ruling comes just after Chirac’s visit to India, where he was greeted by protesting school children. Personally, I can’t believe the gall of this faint Gallic shadow of De Gaulle, shaking hands with the Prime Minister while pushing policies that would make it virtually impossible for Manmohan Singh to get a license there.

Then again, this entire trip was about jointly selling French goods and French merde, so I shouldn’t be surprised. France is hoping to supply India with nuclear technology, warplanes and civilian aircraft:

France is … hoping to strike key defence deals with India which is in the market for 126 new warplanes, a purchase worth billions of dollars. A deal for the supply of 43 Airbus commercial aircraft to state-run Indian airlines was also signed during the visit in a deal estimated at $2.5bn. [Link]

At the same time, Chirac defended efforts to prevent Mittal from taking over Belgian based steel maker Arcelor, saying that there was no racism involved:

Mr Chirac said on Monday that in principle France had absolutely “nothing against a non-European taking over a European company”. “The concerns that have been expressed are entirely legitimate. I do not understand what the fuss is about,” he said. [Link]

It’s the old dual standard – free trade for you, but not for us, right? Keep this up, Jacques my boy, and you’ll be eating Freedom Fries with your humble pie the next time you visit India …

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