SM reader Janani rightly calls out some jerk who works at Star 98.7 in Los Angeles, via blog:

To Whom it May Concern:

I am a 2nd-generation East Indian American, and two nights ago, around 8-9 PM, I heard your nighttime deejay do a skit with a man pretending to be from India, named “Swami.”

…having your AMERICAN actor pretend (terribly, i might add) to be a man from India, complete with an exaggerated accent and a bumbling personality, turns the Asian immigrant into someone who should be LAUGHED AT. This is a sentiment that I would have expected 20 years ago – in fact, these are the same jokes I heard as a child on the school playground – but not now, when the Indian population has worked hard to earn a legitimate place in America’s ALLEGEDLY multicultural society. And FYI – Swami isn’t actually a name, but a title given to Indian spiritual leaders. So thanks for debasing Indian spirituality at the same time.

I don’t really expect anyone to read this, and if you do, I don’t know if you’ll understand my disgust or take the time to respond. But as someone actually invested in the idea of the United States as a land of opportunity for EVERYONE, I was severely disappointed that even in this small skit, your station revealed that society’s acceptance of all creeds, races, colors is often merely a facade. A parting shot of advice: if you can’t treat a culture or ethnicity with some degree of sensitivity, keep your mouths shut. We’ll all appreciate that much more.

So I went to Star 98.7’s site, and I was charmed by their openness to feedback:

If you have comments or suggestions we’d like to hear them…. so drop us a snail mail or email to share your thoughts with us.

BUSINESS LINE 818-559-2252

starprogramming@ClearChannel.com

Also, one of their main advertisers is Sona Med Spas & Laser Centers…which is run by one Dr. H. Shah. Interesting. If I were Dr. Shah, I’d be making a phone call…

(from the tipline – thanks JT!) This sort of stuff is usually a tad too political for SM BUT, since it’s a desi-writer taking on another desi-writer, I figured it was well within Sepia Mutiny’s posting guidelines 😉

The fact that it’s by a WSJ staff writer I follow from time to time – Tunku Varadarajan – & that he provides a BEAUTIFUL skewering of Arundhati Roy was merely the icing on the cake –

When a friend learned that I was pondering a piece critical of Ms. Roy … he e-mailed me reprovingly to ask whether that would not be a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. But second thoughts can strike at the speed of light. No sooner had he hit the “send” button than he hit it again: “There are certain fish, however, in certain barrels, that cannot be ignored.” …A certain segment of the American intelligentsia connects gleefully with exotic leftists like Ms. Roy. In fact, the Ms. Roys of our age, and their fans and subsidy-givers in the West, enjoy a touching symbiosis. Arundhati Roy, I’d venture to say, is George Soros’s political poster girl. Ms. Roy and her type pay the ultimate compliment to America by holding that all world events occur at America’s behest and that the six billion non-Americans on the planet are but helpless pawns, incapable of doing anything–especially anything bad–without Uncle Sam’s imprimatur.

Those are just a few of the plentiful nuggets in a very well written & succinct piece.

As if dowry deaths, gender-influenced abortions and other social ills didn’t make me ill enough, now I can read about NRIs who return to India and marry purely for fiscal reasons, with the intent to abandon their naive new brides;

Baljeet Kaur gave her life savings and a scooter as dowry to marry Harvinder Singh in 1986 with the promise she would leave Punjab and join him in Canada where he drove a taxi.

A few weeks later, after pocketing 400,000 rupees (8,510 dollars), Singh went back to Canada, promising his then 24-year-old pregnant bride he would return for her within a year.

“But he never come back,” Kaur said. “Whenever I asked my in-laws about him, they used to beat me and tell me to get lost. After a couple of years, I moved to my mother’s house. My son doesn’t even know who his father is.”

Kaur is one of an estimated 16,000 women in the Punjab who have been abandoned by suitors working abroad who come back home briefly in hopes of finding a wife who can pay a dowry.

Sixteen-thousand. That’s insane. And before you question my use of the word “intent” in my introduction, read on:

“It’s a very planned crime by the entire family,” said Adarsh Sharma of the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCD) which is investigating the cases.

Continue reading →

I promise this will be my last knee-jerk crosspost of material from Marginal Revolution. There’s so much of it and it’s such great quality. But today, Tyler gives us the economists-eye view of a question that has plagued Desi’s for generations – Marginal Revolution: Should you give money to beggars? –

In Calcutta I confront this question every time my cab stops. Put aside the usual debate about selfishness and altruism, assume you will give something away. To whom should it go? Why not give it to the gentleman sleeping under a piece of cardboard who is poor but not begging?

Tyler’s answer elegantly waltzes between Game Theory, Public Choice, and classical economics all in the space of less than 200 words. Fantastic.

As someone who collects and wears saris eagerly, I was surprised and interested to learn that international trade with China has severely affected the artisans who create the iconic Benares/Varanasi sari;

“With our business coming to an end my six children have turned into beggars,” says Razia Biwi, wife of a silk weaver in the northern city of Varanasi. “They move from door to door with a bowl each and eat whatever the kind neighbours give them.”

The Varanasi silk industry is in turmoil.

For centuries it has produced exquisite handloom silk. Of India’s 10m weavers, this city – also known as Benaras – in Uttar Pradesh boasts nearly 13%.

…The problems started in 1995, when demand for Varanasi silk suddenly dwindled.

There was a sudden influx of Chinese silk traders, who imported cheap yarn to the local market.

They even competed against Varanasi traders by hiring local weavers from the city.

The extreme poverty has caused some to resort to drastic, disturbing measures; Ghulam Rasool of Kotwan sold his two-month old child to a wealthy family “where he would get his daily meals”. Rasool’s choice got some attention;

Their story touched the village and with its help, along with police intervention, they got back their son along with a sum of 10,000 rupees ($220) compensation from the government.

Rajan Bhal, general secretary of the Varanasi Cloth Industry, says: “This was one isolated case in the entire town where the government came to the family’s rescue.

“The government otherwise seems uninterested in reviving this traditional art in the city.”

I’ll never look at my saris in quite the same way again.

via the beeb.

That is the question that an article on Indolink.com poses:

…East Indian or Asian Indian, or Indian American or Indo-American or Desi. Or, to remove the slightest doubt, it may even require a mouthful as in “East Indian American” or “Asian Indian American” or “South Asian Indian American.”

Okay, I am already confused. I thought I knew my identity but now I am not sure. Labels matter to me. But…it gets even more confusing:

The ultimate dilemma is that in Britain and East Africa he is an Asian. In Russia, Southeast Asia, and Europe and Fiji he is still an Indian. In the Caribbean he is an East Indian. In Canada he may be an Indo-Canadian. But in America he can never be “Indian,” while at the same time his Asian identity is oftentimes suspect – thanks to the average American’s geographic illiteracy.

Whoa, can somebody please stop the room from spinning? Let’s go to the history books and see how it came to this. What were we “originally?” Continue reading →

Razib @ the ever excellent Gene Expressions links to a story on the genetic structure of the Kannada-speaker – Gene Expression: Genetics of Karnataka populations

For South Asians readers, Genetic structure of four socio-culturally diversified caste populations of southwest India and their affinity with related Indian and global groups:

The microsatellite study divulges a common ancestry for the four diverse populations of Karnataka, with the overall genetic differentiation among them being largely confined to intra-population variation. The practice of consanguineous marriages might have attributed to the relatively lower gene flow displayed by Gowda and Muslim as compared to Iyengar and Lyngayat….

Standard caveat, don’t read too much into one study!

Consanguineous was word of the day a little while back. 😉