Category Archives: News

“Internet Hindus”: Another Twitter-versy

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After reading the recent article in the New York Times on corruption in the IPL, I went over to Amit Varma’s blog, India Uncut, to see if he had any comments on Lalit Modi et al. I didn’t find anything right off, but instead a reference to yet another Twitter controversy that I’d missed, in this post.

A journalist with IBN Live, Sagarika Ghose, had posted a few Tweets (for example) lamenting that a group of what she called “Internet Hindus” had attacked her for comments she had made: “Internet Hindus are like swarms of bees. they come swarming after you at any mention of Modi Muslims or Pakistan!”

Other journalists have also picked up on the phrase. Here is an interesting column by Ashok Malik in the Hindustan Times that picks up on the critique. Amit also linked to a column by Kanchan Gupta defending the “Internet Hindus” here, along the lines of “screw the pseudo-secular MSM,” though I personally wasn’t all that impressed by the overblown rhetoric. (Call me an Internet Skeptic.)

Actually, Amit Varma’s own comments on the phenomenon of extremism on the internet seemed wisest to me:

If Ghose was, indeed, bothered by trolls, she would have done well to keep in mind the old jungle saying, ‘Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and the pig enjoys it.’ The internet empowers loonies of all kinds by giving them a megaphone–but no one is forced to listen to them. The noise-to-signal ratio is way out of whack on the net (Sturgeon’s Law), and any smart internet veteran will tell you that to keep your sanity, you need to ignore the noise. Ghose, poor thing, had tried to engage with it.

We all know that people are more extreme on the net than they are in real life. The radical Hindutva dude who wants to nuke Pakistan on the net will, in the real world, sit meekly at Cafe Coffee Day arguing the relative merits of Atif Aslam and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. (link)

Yes, exactly. Varma goes on to discuss Cass Sunstein’s recent study on “group polarization,” and has some thoughts on what that might mean for India-Pakistan relations. It’s worth reading the whole thing.

Meanwhile, here is my own humble contribution. There is indeed such a thing as an “Internet Hindu” — by which I mean, someone who expresses extreme views online while living a very moderate or even secular lifestyle in the real world. But there are also Internet Muslims, Internet Sikhs, Internet Christians, and Internet Marxsts — all of them potentially irksome if you say something they don’t like. Hindus do not have a monopoly on saying extremist things online.

I’m really not interested in having a discussion along the lines of “who are the worst offenders?” if it’s at all possible not to go down that route. (Pretty please?)

Rather, I would be curious as to whether we could use this as an opportunity to reflect on the issue of “group polarization” Varma mentions, and how and whether the habit of talking to people on the internet is a factor in magnifying differences. How have your own views and habits changed as a result of being on the internet, talking about issues related to the Indian subcontinent? What are some positive effects, and what are some negatives? Continue reading →

Dubai Can Bite Me, Ctd

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We have often had harsh things to say about the treatment of South Asian guest workers in Dubai/UAE in many posts here (for instance), but here is one that hit home for me as an academic.

Syed Ali is an American citizen of Indian descent who teaches sociology at Long Island University. In 2007, he was in Dubai on a Fulbright with his family. One day before he was to leave the country, he got a knock on the door, and five men in white robes and a woman in police uniform asked him to come with them. What followed was a rather bizarre kind of interrogation by the UAE police:

Then the questioning began. Why are you here? Who do you know? He explained that he was a Fulbright scholar, on a grant by the very U.S. government that was the United Arab Emirates’ main strategic partner.

Ali, now 41, was in Dubai researching about second-generation expatriates from South Asia for an academic paper about how professional Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis living in the Persian Gulf were adjusting to life and work far from home, in a place where they could live in for decades but could never gain permanent residency. He was shocked that his line of inquiry would set off alarm bells.

“It ended up I was interviewing people who were quite well off,” he said. “That’s why I was so really stunned. I never had any sense that there was anything objectionable about what I was doing. No one had any serious complaints about being there.”

Yet despite the reams of information they had on him, “there was a lack of basic information that they didn’t get or have or really understand,” said Ali, who wrote about his experiences in Dubai for Britain’s Guardian newspaper. They didn’t seem to get what a Fulbright was. “‘We think you’re working for the ‘Jewish,’ ” one interrogator accused Ali, who is a secular Muslim. “‘Maybe also the CIA.'” (link)

Note that he was researching white collar workers, not the folks working in construction (whose miserable working and living conditions have been amply documented). Eventually they let him go, warning him not to return to the country to do any further research: “The research you are doing is creating divisions in our society and we will not allow it” (See Syed Ali’s original account of his experience here.) They also took his laptop and the IPod he had been using to record interviews. They later returned the computer without its hard disk, and bought him a new IPod instead of returning the old one. So much for the months of research!

Now Syed Ali’s book, Dubai: Gilded Cage is out from Yale University Press. Revenge is a dish best served with coverage in the Chicago Tribune (above), The LA Times, and the Independent.

Maybe someone should mail a copy to Dubai’s secret police: here’s that scurrilous book by the “Jewish” “CIA” agent named … umm… Syed Ali. Continue reading →

Chemical Cremation?

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A bill headed to the California State Assembly, and expected to pass, will be of special interest to our Hindu readers, especially “environmentally conscious” ones. The question is, should chemical cremation be legalized as an alternative to combustion cremation (the latter having a larger carbon footprint)?

Funeral homes and crematoria want to use a liquid chemical process to dissolve bodies instead of cremating them with fire.
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“It’s green. It’s clean. It’s environmentally friendly and it reduces the carbon footprint,” said California state Assemblyman Jeff Miller (R-Corona), who wrote legislation to make the so-called bio-cremation method legal.

Miller said his bill was prompted by a funeral home director in his district who might may buy a bio-cremation machine. The measure would broaden the definition of cremation to include the use of either both fire or and water. Two committees already have approved the measure unanimously, and the full Assembly must pass it before it goes to the Senate. [LAT]

Chemical cremation is properly known as “resomation.” The website of a Scottish company explains the process and benefits:

The coffin is placed in a special chamber and, instead of fire, resomation uses a water and alkali based method which uses the same chemistry as in natural decomposition but is much quicker…

The resomation process takes roughly the same time as cremation and the funeral ceremony will be the same. However, it uses less energy than cremation and produces significantly less CO2 and avoids putting mercury and other harmful contaminants into the atmosphere…

After resomation, bone remains are left behind in the form of pure white ash. As with cremation these remains can be placed in an urn and returned to the loved ones. Relative to cremated ash, resomated ash is fine and pure white as can be seen in the photographs on the right of the page. [Link]

So far only one state, Florida, has passed a law legalizing this form of cremation (although services are not yet operational).

So what do the Hindus out there think? The resomated ash does look finer and should be easier to disperse. This process has the side benefit of making it really difficult to go all Sati. But in all seriousness, part of the point of cremation is that you are doing away with your body because it is a discarded piece of nothing once your eternal soul has left. The act of turning the body to ash aids in releasing the soul. If one believes that, then resomation should be no problem. Right?

Continue reading →

In Britain, the Ethnic Hostility is a Tad Less Subtle…

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British National Party (BNP) Parliamentary candidate Bob Bailey ran into a group of three Desi toughs in East London while campaigning earlier today, and the following is the result:

If you look at the reaction in the YouTube comments, as well as in the coverage of the story at the Daily Mail, there is an overwhelming consensus by readers that the Asian “thugs” got what was coming to them.

And yes, it’s hard to deny that the smaller South Asian kid in black started the physical altercation by spitting in Bob Bailey’s face. Unfortunately, the commenters on these sites are using the incident to unleash wads of racist bile… Pretty disgusting to read.

At least at Pickled Politics, the commentary on the incident is more sane. My favorite comment there is “Platinum786,” who writes: “If someone spits at you and you punch them, fair enough it’s almost instinct. If that leads to someone punching you back, pushing you, you fight back, again that is instinct. Once they’re on the ground, kicking them, that’s BNP” (link)

My own question is this: what exactly was Bob Bailey saying as the youths approached him on the street? My suspicion is that they thought he was accusing them of being “robbers,” but he may not have intended to say that. Can anyone work it out?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter that much — a brawl is still a brawl. But I can’t help but wonder: was this thing was the result of a misunderstanding caused partially by British accent differences?

Update: Here’s a little bit of backstory on Bob Bailey. Quite the character! (Now I understand better why he was on foot to begin with…) Continue reading →

Go Chili, Go Chili…

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Just a brief post on this: Surya Yalamanchili, the Democratic congressional candidate from Ohio we mentioned last week, just won the primary in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District.

He defeated David Krikorian by 650 votes; last week, Krikorian made comments about the difficulty a person with the name “Yalamanchili” might have in winning an election. Yalamanchili is going on to face the sitting representative for the district, Jean Schmidt, in the general election in November.

Surya Yalamanchili has won the Democratic primary for the 2nd District congressional seat.

With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Yalamanchili appeared to have beaten David Krikorian by 650 votes and Jim Parker by more than 4,400 votes.

The race took an unexpected turn last week, when Ohio and Hamilton County party officials condemned remarks attributed to Krikorian about Yalamanchili.

State and county Democratic officials and Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt sent letters saying that Krikorian owed an apology to Yalamanchili and the Indian-American community.(link)

At least now he can cross “best known for being a candidate on TV’s The Apprentice” off his resume. Continue reading →

A Pakistani man of U.S. citizenship?

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After the alleged mastermind — and I use that term loosely — of the attempted Times Squareshahzad.jpg bombing was arrested, I was intrigued to see how he’d be described in the media on first reference. Was he a Pakistani, a Pakistani-American, a Pakistani native with U.S. citizenship, an American of Pakistani descent, or an Ameristani?

Here’s an early AP story (after his U.S. citizenship was established): A Pakistani man believed to be the driver of an SUV used as a car bomb in a failed terror attack on Times Square was taken into custody late Monday by FBI agents and local police detectives while trying to leave the country, U.S. officials said. [Link]

Here’s a later AP story: Seized from a plane about to fly to the Middle East, a Pakistan-born man admitted training to make bombs at a terrorism camp in his native land before he rigged an SUV with a homemade device to explode in Times Square, authorities said Tuesday. [Link]

Here’s the Wall Street Journal: A naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Pakistan admitted to federal agents on Monday that he attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square this weekend, according to court documents filed Tuesday. [Link]

Here’s Slate: Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistan-born American citizen arrested on suspicion of being Times Square’s would-be May Day bomber, did not act alone. [Link]

Here’s Al Jazeera: An American former financial analyst has admitted attempting to detonate a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square. [Link]

Here’s the Washington Post: The arrest of a Pakistani American in connection with the failed Times Square bombing again put a spotlight on Pakistan as a global terrorist training hub, raising the prospect of intensified U.S. pressure to break up militant networks. [Link]

Here’s Newsday: Reports that American Faisal Shahzad flew to his birth country of Pakistan to train for the attempted car-bombing in Times Square highlight that nation’s long history as a haven and training ground for terrorists, experts say. [Link]

Here’s Fox News: A Pakistani man from Pakistan with strong ties to Pakistan has been arrested for the attempted car-bombing in Times Square. [Link]

Continue reading →

Tripta Kaushal is Guilty of “Worst Parking Job Ever”

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Last October, a Canadian Auntie from Richmond Hill— a town in the Greater Toronto Area– decided to go to the gym. She entered a parking lot, attempted to park her BMW SAV (no, that’s not a typo)…and gained international infamy for what happened next:

If you’re having trouble viewing that video, all you need to know is that it shows a blue truck in a parking lot driving in a wide arc towards a space. As the vehicle approaches the barrier which exists to keep cars in their designated parking spaces, you assume it will stop, but it doesn’t. Continue reading →

Who was “The Great Oom?”

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The Houston bureau of Sepia Mutiny (our southernmost outpost) has shuttered its doors, a casualty of the economic upheaval. The Houston bureau chief (me) has returned to Los Angeles to rejoin our offices there. One of the things I will miss most about Houston in my yoga teacher/class. A good yoga place is hard to find (even in the “yoga capital” of the U.S.). And isn’t it wonderful how so many of you nodded your heads in agreement just now. For many of us, finding the right yoga class is as important, and as difficult, as finding the right doctor. On the airplane to Los Angeles last night I read a blurb in a magazine that made me aware that many of us owe a debt of gratitude to one Pierre Arnold Bernard (a.k.a. The Great Oom). He had a significant hand in ensuring that Yoga is now essentially a part of everyday American culture:

… men and women came to his ashram on the Hudson River, two hundred acres of leafy real estate in Nyack, New York, that included a zoo, a yacht, airplanes and a dozen mansions that Mitchell could only describe as the “English countryside estates one sees in the moving pictures.” Bernard had made his fortune teaching yoga, and his students made up a Who’s Who of American life: college presidents, medical doctors, ministers, a spy or two, theologians, heiresses, a future congresswoman, famed authors and composers — some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world. Doctor Bernard, they called him, and like a benevolent physician he ministered to their needs, body and soul. He sheltered them, entertained them and gathered them together to teach them the art of living. They stood on their heads for him, worked in his fields, sang in his theatrical productions and performed in elaborate, professional-level circuses for his approval. Some of them came to delve deeply into hatha yoga and the philosophy behind it, some for romance and fresh air, some for the Bernard cure, having been abandoned by hospitals and mental institutions. These he literally led back from ruination — from ledges of despair, lethal addictions and Great War nightmares. How he managed to do this has remained his closely guarded secret…

But who was he, really, this uneducated savant who could lecture extemporaneously for three hours on the similarities between the philosophies of ancient India and the Gnostic heresies of the early Christians? This same man was known to stage a three-ring circus, manage a semi-pro baseball team, train a world-class heavyweight boxer, repair a Stanley Steamer automobile and whoop it up on fight nights at Madison Square Garden with nicotine-stained reporters. This last was where he was most at home, some said, shouting, swearing, happily chomping on a cigar. Who was this man of such wild contradictions, a name as familiar to headline writers of the 1920s as Charles Lindbergh? The answer depended to a large degree on who was doing the asking. [NYT]

Continue reading →

Pakistan’s New 18th Amendment: More Stable, Democratic Government

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Though the news hasn’t gotten a huge amount of attention in the U.S., given our discussions of Pakistan’s political situation a couple of years ago, it seems worth noting that Pakistan’s Parliament just passed, and President Zardari signed, a series of reforms designed to make the Parliament stronger and more independent of the executive. The package of reforms is included in a new Amendment to Pakistan’s constitution. Along with the Parliamentary change, there is also an attempt to clarify the relationship between the Judiciary and the Executive branches of Pakistan’s government, so we don’t see a repeat of the power struggle between the Chief Justice of the Pakistan supreme court and former President Pervez Musharraf that began in 2007.

The most detailed summary of the reforms are at the Center for American Progress. I would recommend readers read the whole article, but here is a list of the changes that will affect the relationship between Parliament and the President:

Removing presidential powers to circumvent the normal legislative process and limiting the amount of time the president may consider bills passed by parliament before approving them (Article 75)

Transferring the power to submit matters directly to parliament for a yes or no vote to the prime minister (Article 48)

Removing the infamous Article 58-2(b) instituted by President Musharraf, which granted the power to unilaterally dismiss parliament under vague emergency provisions

Consulting with the outgoing prime minister and opposition leader on presidential appointments of caretaker governments to manage the transition to a new government when parliament is dismissed (Article 224) ()link)

And that’s just one part of the Amendment. The part of Amendment 18 that leaves open some future areas of contention is the reform of the judiciary appointment system, where it seems like some of the planned changes are still up in the air. According to the CAP author, the most contentious issue in the Amendment thus far has actually been the plan to rename the NWFP along ethnic lines, as Khyber-Pakhtunwa. Riots by members of the Hazara community in the region have left several people dead. It’s too bad that there is some dissatisfaction, but the change does certainly make sense to me — Northwest Frontier Province is an old, colonial name that only made sense under the British Raj.

I’m curious to know what readers who have connections to Pakistan think of the changes. Will they be good for Pakistan in the long run? And what about India-Pakistan relations? Overall, I think it’s a really impressive roll-back of executive power — the real end of the Musharraf era, if you will. President Zardari has exceeded my expectations. Continue reading →

Sunil Chhetri, the Wizard from India

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chhetri.jpgI don’t follow soccer closely anymore, so it came as a surprise to me when a friend sent me a link to an article about Sunil Chhetri, the first player from India to sign with an MLS team. What in desi-heaven’s going on here? The Pittsburgh Pirates sign Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, the Indianapolis Colts give John Gill a reserve spot at defensive tackle, and now 25-year-old Chhetri is making waves with the Kansas City Wizards. Someone tell the Chicago Bulls to send their scouts to India immediately. The next Jordan could be jamming and juking on a court in Jalandhar.

Sunil Chhetri was little more than a name on a list when he first popped up on Kansas City’s radar.

The Wizards, like most MLS teams, receive dozens of letters, video links and DVDs each month from players seeking a chance to play professional soccer. The Kansas City staff feels guilty about not giving everyone a chance, so they take a look.

Chhetri immediately caught their eye, even in the limited video clips they were able to obtain. Find a way to get him to the United States and we’ll give him a shot is what they told representatives from the Indian team. [Link]

So Chhetri was smuggled across the Mexican border and taken to the Wizards’ headquarters, where the receptionist was excited to see him: “I’m so glad you came. Windows 7 has been giving me fits.” Actually, he showed up at the Wizards’ training camp in Arizona and dazzled everyone with his feet. And his nose.

Blurry-fast feet. Nose for the goal. Connected with the other players on the attack almost instantly. Good instincts, able to adapt to the team’s style of play without thinking about it. Quick to get the ball ahead instead of holding it too long. Hits well with both feet, uses his entire body to strike it. Pretty good in the air at 5-foot-7.

Even better, Chhetri had a burning intensity to go with his talent.

“We learned he’s extremely competitive, has a desire to be successful and when you have that, you can get a lot out of a guy,” Wizards coach Peter Vermes said. “If someone has the talent and they don’t have the fire in the belly, so to speak, every day you’re struggling to get those guys going. This guy just gets it.” [Link]

Continue reading →