Category Archives: Issues

From Methodist Church to Mosque in Uneasy England

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Arshad.jpg From the NYT, a story about how “one pristine town in some of Britain’s most untouched countryside” voted to allow an unused Methodist church to become a mosque (thanks, Ardy):

The narrow vote by the municipal authorities marked the end of a bitter struggle by the tiny Muslim population to establish a place of worship, one that will put a mosque in an imposing stone Methodist church that had been used as a factory since its congregation dwindled away 40 years ago…
Britain may continue to regard itself as a Christian nation. But practicing Muslims are likely to outnumber church-attending Christians in several decades, according to a recent survey by Christian Research, a group that specializes in documenting the status of Christianity in Britain.

The mosque will exist because of one “passionate young professional of Pakistani descent”, who sounds tolerant and moderate in the article:

“We’ve been trying to get a place of worship for 30 years,” said Sheraz Arshad, 31, the Muslim leader here, his voice rattling around the empty old Mount Zion Methodist Church that will house his mosque. “It’s fitting it is a church: it is visually symbolic, the coming together of religions.”

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Animals, Mendicants, and Mumbai

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Earlier this week I went on a very long rant about this Dana Parsons article in the LA Times on the sex trafficking of Nepali girls. Today Dana Parsons’ column takes sensationalist trash to a whole other level. Normally I wouldn’t subject anyone to yet another lecture on primitivism, but I think this particular piece is too precious to keep to myself.

Parsons’ article concerns his attempt at something called “perspective.” He received an email recently from his cousin who is on business in Mumbai, filled with details on the horrible living conditions there. Because of this said email, Parsons now feels a sense of enlightenment and gratitude at the fact that he doesn’t have to live in the squalor that his cousin describes.

You can already guess where this is going. The column outlines the horrors of Mumbai, as narrated by Parsons’ cousin:

There are animals everywhere. Common to see dogs lying in areas by the road. I don’t know how they survive, but I’m told animals are sacred and you watch out for them. There are cows wandering through the streets.
We saw several naked people. Not always children. Several relieving themselves.
Our driver pulled over near some marshy area that I took to be rice fields. I got the camera out and was ready to shoot when we saw that the driver was relieving himself at the side of the car.

Ok, we get it — animals, nudity, and public urination, oh my! How is this substantive news by any standard, and more importantly, how can anyone find these details enlightening, as Mr. Parsons claims?

Truth be told, I’m really not surprised that there are people who view the world the way that Dana Parsons does. What I do find upsetting is that the LA Times is carrying this trash and passing it off as journalism. Then again, what else should I expect — time and time again I have been appalled at their international coverage. I will concede, however, that the LA Times is good for covering a few things, namely: state and local politics, the Hollywood industry, and most importantly, a certain college basketball team that’s going to rout Florida on Saturday. But even if the LAT has no intention of upgrading their international coverage, it’s time for them to cut Dana Parsons off from covering anything related to South Asia. He really needs to be stopped. Continue reading →

The Supremes and Arranged Marriage

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The Supreme Court has been asked to overturn a case arguing that under certain circumstances the fear of an abusive arranged marriage can be grounds for asylum.

The plaintiff’s request for asylum granted on appeal by the Second Circuit which argued that where forced marriages are valid and backed by law, the plaintiff “might well be persecuted in China – in the form of lifelong, involuntary marriage.”

The government is now asking the Supremes to overturn this verdict because they are afraid it would make America a haven for women fleeing abusive forced marriages. To be fair, they’re saying this is a decision that should be taken by Congress, and not the courts, but they also warn that this could lead to a flood of women in arranged marriages applying for asylum.

At the center of the case is a woman from China, not India:

At age 19, Gao was sold by her mother for the equivalent of $2,200 to become the wife of a man in her home village who, Gao says, will physically abuse her. [Link]

She was granted asylum by the appeals court, which extended the grounds under which one could traditionally apply for asylum:Approximately 60% of marriages worldwide are arranged

To qualify, an individual must show a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

In most cases, the persecution is meted out by a government. But the Second Circuit said in the Gao case that persecution could also stem from a personal relationship in combination with government-enforced customs.

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Cricket: And now for “a Happier, Less Toxic Tournament”?

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Day 16 of my miseducation in Cricket: for a hot minute, I do not love my India, not after our Red Snapper reports that crap like this was stated with a straight face: Get a grip.jpg

Just heard a reporter on NDTV interviewing disappointed fans in Bombay say to the camera — ‘It’s been a World Cup of tragedies, none bigger than India crashing out of the tournament’[Link]

Yes, that’s totally worse than someone’s neck getting snapped under the shadiest of circumstances. An anonymous tipster left a link to a BBC article by Mukul Kesavan–who has a book about cricket coming out in India later this year– on our news tab. I found it illuminating; I know next to nothing about this sport which Evil Abhi loathes so. 😉 Here’s a random assortment of what your favorite bimbette Bedi-impersonator learned and/or found fascinating at the Beeb:

For the television channels that bought rights to beam the tournament to these fans, Friday’s defeat was a financial disaster.
Since the Reliance World Cup hosted by India in 1987, South Asia’s cricketing nations have become more and more influential in the conduct and administration of the one-day game.
…India won the Cup in 1983, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have won it in 1992 and 1996 respectively.
Mainly, though, the balance of power in world cricket has shifted from England and Australia towards the sub-continent for commercial reasons: the dawning realisation that India owns the only mass audience there is for the game.
India and Pakistan had resumed cricket relations after a long chill in 1978, just as limited-overs cricket was starting to take off.
The compulsive need to confront the old enemy led to the creation of a cricket circus in the Gulf sheikhdom, Sharjah, where, on neutral ground, the sub-continent’s blood feuds were re-played as one-day tournaments for the benefit of increasingly feverish and volatile audiences.

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Wifebeating in India (updated w/ child abuse figures)

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In the past, discussions of domestic abuse have run aground because of the lack of good information. In general, we end up agreeing on three points:

  • Women are assaulted by their partners in South Asia
  • South Asian women are assaulted by their partners in America
  • Non South Asian women are assaulted by their partners all over the world as well

but we always lack the numbers to talk about how bad the problem is in different places and for different communities. For that reason, I thought it was worth flagging this statistic I saw in the recent NEJM article on AIDS in India:

37.2% of women in India who have been married have experienced spousal violence.

That’s more than 1 in every 3 women in India who has had a husband at some point. The numbers in the article varied by state, and unfortunately they provided these figures for only a handful of states (those where they had HIV figures). Still, here’s what it says:

State %age of women abused
India overall 37.2%
Delhi 16.3%
Andhra Pradesh 35.2%
Karnataka 20%
Maharashtra 30.7%
Manipur 43.9%
Nagaland 15.4%
Tamil Nadu 41.9%

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Bring Me the Head of Nina the Infidel!

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So, towards the end of my essay on acceptance, a commenter thoughtfully asked me to clarify what I meant by mentioning the fact that Nina Paley had lived in Kerala more recently than I had even visited it. Here’s what I said, which prompted her inquiry:

Nina has been to Kerala far more recently than I have; my last visit was back in the dark ages of 1989. In fact, she lived there, which is something I’ll probably never be able to claim. Who the hell am I or anyone else for that matter, to pull rank over that?

Did Nina’s stay in my parents’ home state give her carte blanche? No, of course it doesn’t. When I said that I wasn’t going to “pull rank”, I meant that I was going to acknowledge that others, even white others, might be more familiar with what everyone expects me to be an expert on, and because of that, I especially loathe the idea of playing the race card, i.e. I am desi, therefore I know more about (and/or get to restrict the unbrown from) my culture. If you read my post, you’ll know that I have a very intimate and poignant reason for why the part I italicized resonates with me.

I appreciate that Nagasai and Amitabh both opened a respectful dialogue about how they feel about Nina’s art but I also am known to be a fan of keeping threads on-topic, so I thought I’d spin this discussion off in to its own separate post, because the issues at play here are fascinating and significant.

What does Nina’s artwork mean to you?

What role does race play in all of this– how many of us would have the same issues we do if her name were Nina Patel vs. Nina Paley?

And how far do these “rules” go? Do some of you have a problem with the fact that I’m writing this post (i.e. that I’m a Christian, commenting on the appropriateness of Hindu imagery in art)? Inquiring and potentially bored mutineers want to know! Continue reading →

On Hybrid Vigor, Acceptance and Grace

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A banned commenter left the following pain on a thread yesterday:

I cannot stand it when black or hispanic women try to get into the “bollywood” trend. They are so superficially involved with indian culture and dont know shit about the true meaning/history behind why things are done. I doubt they have any respect for the indian culture; they just like the trendy-cool look of things.

I didn’t delete it, nor did I summon the intern to stop fanning me as I lounged on my throne, to do so at my behest. I was too overwhelmed, at how in much the same way a smell can invoke a memory consummately and instantly, bigotry could, too.

ANNA and the Cathedral.jpg

Reading the bitter words in that comment sliced my age in half with the precision of my Mother’s Wusthof carving knife; once my eyes left my laptop screen, I was sixteen again and utterly miserable. It was a Sunday morning, just after church, during the coffee hour, and I was waiting for my Father to finish chatting with one of his acquaintances, a local professor named Dr. Pappas whom he didn’t get to see regularly.

I never felt entirely at home at church, because I was Indian and it was Greek. Though my parents both come from indefatigable Malankara Syriac Orthodox bloodlines, my sister and I were not baptized in the church of our ancestors. The reason for this sounds droll when I narrate it, after I am inevitably asked why I’m Greek Orthodox; personally, however, it is borderline painful, as it created a chasm between me and other Malayalees which can never be closed. I find it bitterly amusing that the only time I was ever “confused” as an American-born desi was when I was trying to reconcile who I was as an Orthodox Christian. Continue reading →

I’ll Be Rooting For You, Kunal

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Via the newstab (thanks, KXB!) there’s an article on thirteen-year-old Kunal Sah of Green River, Utah, who will be representing the state in the upcoming Scripps National Spelling Bee at the end of May. Kunal’s story is unlike those of other brown spellers we usually hear about. His parents were deported last year after living in this country legally for sixteen years.

According to the article:

Ken and Sarita Sah were deported back to India last July after 16 years residing legally in this country. Ken Sah came to the country as a student, and later applied for asylum because the region of India from which he came was experiencing religious violence. Then Sah waited for an asylum hearing for nearly 10 years. Had 10 years passed without a hearing, Sah would have been granted automatic asylum. But three weeks shy of that 10-year window, he got a hearing, and was denied asylum. He appealed until he ran out of appeals last year. Tougher immigration laws after 9/11 made his request for asylum more difficult. He and his wife ultimately lost their battle to remain in the country.

Kunal, however, was born in the US, so he’s a citizen. His family owns and operates two motels in Utah. Kunal is currently staying with his uncle, who’s also overseeing the family business in the Sahs’ absence. The irony of this story, however, was not missed on a local journalist:

Patsy Stoddard, the editor of the Emery County Progress newspaper, describes Ken and Sarita as model citizens. “Our governor went to India to bring back a baby,” she says. “And yet here is a family torn apart, and nobody is doing anything about it.”

Regardless of anyone’s views on the immigration process, my heart goes out to Kunal.

In a telephone interview, Ken Sah is matter-of-fact. “It’s very tough. He calls every day, and he cries,” he says of his son. “He needs to live with his parents. But he doesn’t have that. We try to make him feel better and stronger.”

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Kenneth Eng Spills His Seed

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Speaking of unhinged people in media, we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention the train wreck that recently went down at San Francisco’s AsianWeek newspaper, where a complete idiot by the name of Kenneth Eng, 22 years of age, wet behind the ears, hot under the collar, too big for his britches and bats in his belfry, has been allowed to write a column called, interestingly, “God of the Universe,” in which he spewed moronic racist rants against white people, fellow Asian people, and Black and Latino people, apparently unchecked until his most recent gem blew the lid off the whole damn pot. Entitled, “Why I Hate Black People,” it explained, well, why Kenneth Eng hates black people. Though he also likes to call them Negroes. The column has been pulled and AsianWeek, which ran this guy’s infantile bloviations for a number of months, has now issued a pathetic, simpering apology, but the text has been preserved for posterity in various places on the interwebs. Here is a wee sample:

Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years. It is unbelievable that it took them that long to fight back. On the other hand, we slaughtered the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War.

You’ll find a link to a PDF of the whole thing here. Anyway, at the risk of over-extending this fool’s fifteen seconds of fame, I also wanted to draw your attention to his soapbox at Amazon, where he’s also peddling some really atrocious fantasy writing (there’s a link to excerpts on this page). He writes on his Amazon blog:

Let’s look at the muslim religion. They believe that music, dance, naked women and other such things are “indecent”. They think that some creature called “allah” will bring them peace, yadda, yadda, yadda. They think that if they bow every day, they will somehow be transported to a place called “heaven”, where everyone looks conspicuously human. I don’t know about you, but I masturbate all the time. It’s not going to affect me in any way, aside from making me need to take baths more often. And listening to O Fortuna will not make my head explode. Nor will spitting at every church I see make my intestines burst out of my abdomen.

Furthermore, most religious people I’ve met tend to be incredibly stupid/poor. They are usually black/hispanic immigrants who do not have the brains or the balls to understand science and thus resort to reading retarded stories about saviors and saints. (Oh, by the way, for those of you who want to scream at how “racist” I am for mentioning negroes and hispanics in such a way, go to someone who gives a sh*t).

OK, that’s enough of that. So what’s this AsianWeek anyway? Here’s a take from Neelanjana Banerjee, who was once a reporter and editor there. AsianWeek’s pitch to advertisers says the paper is aimed at “1.5, 2nd and 3rd generation Asian Americans” — basically the East Asian equivalent of a lot of y’all macacas reading this site. You’d think someone there would have had the sense to sever young Mr. Eng’s ties to the paper a long time ago. I’m all for free speech, but I’ve rarely seen a more compelling case for blacklisting (pun intended! ha ha Kenneth, I said blacklisting!) — or maybe just an good ol’ fashioned beatdown. Happy Friday everybody! Continue reading →