Category Archives: Politics

The funeral of Hatim Kathiria

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Per his wishes, slain U.S. citizen and Army soldier Hatim Kathiria was laid to rest in his home town of Dahod in the state of Gujarat.  The BBC reports:

Thousands of mourners have attended the funeral in India’s Gujarat state of an Indian-born US soldier killed in Iraq.

Hatim Kathiria, a 23-year-old Muslim, who died in a rocket attack in Baghdad on 22 August, was buried in his home town of Dahod.

I hate to sound cynical on such an occasion but this is the first time I’ve seen such a large public Muslim funeral reported in the media that was not for a “martyr” or an innocent victim of collateral damage.  I know this is because such “regular” stories are not as sensational and so the media is uninterested, but it’s good to see an actual soldier being honored for giving his life in battle. 

His mother, Shirin, said: “He was my only son. His ambitions took him to the US and then to Iraq. We lost him, but he died a martyr’s death.”

Damn, maybe I spoke too soon.  It sucks that the word martyr has been co-opted by terrorists to the point where it’s hard to distinguish a true martyr (and I’m not sure if I know what qualifies a true martyr).

Of course there was also some drama that took place at the funeral.  Kathiria’s parents apparently didn’t know he was married.  Probably because the girl wasn’t Indian:

The crowd fell over each other to catch a glimpse of his Anglo Indian widow Lisse Jean Pierre, who reached Dahod along with the body.

Amid rumours that Kathiria’s family was unaware about the marriage, which took place earlier this year, a jeans and T-shirt clad Ms Lisse – also a US army specialist – met her in-laws. However, sources said the women of the Bohra community were not allowed to talk to her. She was also kept away from the media, which was present in large number to cover the incident.

So tight was the security around the Hussaini Mosque, where the last rituals took place that not even his close relatives were allowed inside. “Normally, Bohra community is better known for its trading prowess but we are proud of Hatim as he joined the US Army and laid down his life for a cause,” Kathiria’s cousin Abuzar Mirchiwala said.

Sigh.  Some things never change.

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Not Short, Just “Orthopaedically Handicapped”

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Just about any way you slice it, life presents us all with some pretty heavy challenges.  Especially in India.  Especially in Kerala.  And especially if you’re, uh, short.   The Beeb reports –

Dwarfs in the southern Indian state of Kerala have come together to fight for their rights.

The Kerala Small Men Association has 300 members across the state and is demanding what it calls “special recognition” from the government.

Why the crisis?   Well, apparently a former, primary avenue of employment has been beat down due to shifting consumer tastes and globalization –

“Earlier, we were getting opportunities to work in the circus but that industry has collapsed and most of us are out of a job.”

The universe finds ways to create balance.   And politics always finds ways to create conflicting special interests –

The [small men] association’s height limit is 135cm (54 inches – [4′ 6″])…The state also has a Tall Men of Kerala association with 600 members over six feet (1.82) metres.

6 feet qualifies you as a Tall Man in Kerala?   Dang, the Punjabi’s are gonna kick our butts.

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Not Your Mamma’s Muslim

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Bold strides by Muslim women this weekend. First Sania Mirza, now Hammasa Kohistani, who was just crown Miss England (thanks, Punjabi Boy!): SepiaMiss.jpg

Hammasa Kohistani, 18, said she was delighted to have been selected to represent England in the Miss World championships.
The brunette, who speaks six languages including Russian, Persian and French, looked ecstatic as the crown was placed on her head before a cheering crowd in Liverpool’s Olympia Theatre. [link]

Well, the BBC says five languages, but who am I to quibble. The Times of India deluged the poor girl in a typical purple gush:

LONDON: Move over our very own, Miss India. Miss England is on her way to Bollywood, the big time and beckoning stardust, now that a Muslim teenager with central Asian roots and a British accent has been crowned England’s most beautiful woman.

But stepped back for sociological analysis:

Kohistani, who was born in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, after her parents were forced to flee Afghanistan, is being touted in a less-than-overwhelmed Britain as the first Muslim to be crowned Miss England.

With beauty contests increasingly regarded as a politically incorrect and chauvinistic relic of a darker British age of cruising for seaside holiday entertainment, Kohistani’s victory has been kept off the Sunday front pages and the slender television news agenda.

But some commentators have expressed an interest in the social and ethnic change represented by Kohistani’s extraordinary win of the England crown, over and above 38 other peaches-and-cream complexioned ‘real’ English roses. [link]

sepiaMissjulia.jpg

Of course, this wouldn’t be a story about Islam without controversy somewhere:

Among those Miss Kohistani beat was another Muslim entrant, Sarah Mendly, 23, who was voted Miss Nottingham. Miss Mendly had been among the favourites but her entry caused controversy when Liverpool’s Islamic institute called on her to pull out because contestants are often scantily clad. [link]

If you squint, doesn’t Hammasa look a bit like Julia Roberts?

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Anarchy in the US?

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Sri Lanka is a tiny place. Maybe that’s given us a Napoleonic Complex, maybe we’re tired of being compared to snot. Throw in the war, the tsunami, the suicide rates…we know we can’t play with the big boys. Ain’t no way we can show them up.

sepiaNOhurricane.jpg Until now:

President Chandrika Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, in China on a state visit, sent messages of sympathy to Washington while her government contributed $25,000 through the American Red Cross.

So sure, it might not seem like much to our corporate-dough-raking readers. (coughmyannualsalarycough.) But that would be missing the point:

In a turnabout, the United States is now on the receiving end of help from around the world as some two dozen countries offer post-hurricane assistance. Venezuela, a target of frequent criticism by the Bush administration, offered humanitarian aid and fuel. [link]

But Condi, FEMA and the Prez seem to have differing views on accepting the aid:

sepiaNOrefugees.jpg

With offers from the four corners of the globe pouring in, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided “no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.

However, in Moscow, a Russian official said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had rejected a Russian offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid.

Still, Bush told ABC-TV: “I’m not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn’t asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country’s going to rise up and take care of it.”

“You know,” he said, “we would love help, but we’re going to take care of our own business as well, and there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll succeed. And there’s no doubt in my mind, as I sit here talking to you, that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city.”

As the news reports and first-person accounts roll in, it looks increasingly, incredibly clear that we have not been taking care of our own business well. Not well at all.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who crossed party lines to support Bobby Jindal for Governor) exploded with frustration in a local radio interview last Thursday:

I told him [the President] we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice.[link]

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Lord I never drew first, but I drew first blood

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As I’ve watched the news over the past week I’ve started to consider if I should purchase a gun.  I hate guns.  I’ve only held one once.  I have had one too many dreams where I was not only shot, but mutilated by gunfire.  I’ve convinced myself that I must have died from a GSW in my past life and so I’ve wanted nothing to do with them.  Indian families don’t really own guns.  Am I wrong?  Maybe I am just sheltered but I just don’t know any Indian families that own guns.  Most of my first generation relatives have never even mentioned gun ownership.  In India my family didn’t own a gun…well except for an air gun which they used to shoot geckos off the wall.  I could imagine that South Asian hoteliers, convenience store owners, and wannabe thugs are probably packing, but outside of that I’d be surprised.  How many South Asians do you know that either hunt or are members of the NRA?  Not many I’ll bet.  Recently I tried to talk my younger brother into buying a weapon.  In the state in which he resides you aren’t a man without a piece.  People wear them in plain sight on their waist he tells me.  Two weeks ago a man in a pick-up truck pulled up beside him as he walked along the road and asked if he was packing.  “No,” my brother replied.  “You should be,” advised the man.  It isn’t only bears and wolves but some crazies (everyone tells him so) where my brother lives that makes a gun a good idea.

So why aren’t brown folk strapped?  Part of it must be that many South Asian immigrants (and even those born here) don’t understand the technical details of the U.S. Constitution and the 2nd Amendment.  They didn’t need a gun in India so why would they here?  Why does it seem like we have a “duty” to carry guns in America?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. [Link]

The founding fathers in their infinite wisdom and fresh from the Revolutionary War, wanted to make sure that the populace had armed state militias that could rise up against the federal government if it made a move toward autocracy.  The phrase “well regulated Militia” however, was a loophole as wide as a football field and has led to the largest rate of gun violence in the world (guns do kill people).  The founding fathers also worked in another rule into the Constitution that also has bearing on this past week’s events in New Orleans.  Many people don’t know that the U.S. military is forbidden by the Constitution from acting (using their guns) within the borders of the United States.  A friend of mine who spent 8 years in the U.S. Army (and who was born and lived in India until she was twelve) asked me earlier this week why the military didn’t just take over down there.  I explained to her about habeas corpus (which is incidentally my favorite Latin phrase).

The right of habeas corpus has long been celebrated as the most efficient safeguard of the liberty of the subject.

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How not to win a war

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The Indian military’s alleged human rights abuses, shielded by a heavy-handed anti-separatist law, are provoking resentment in Manipur:

… there is the seething grievance against the Indian troops and paramilitary forces that saturate the state, and particularly against the sweeping powers they are granted by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which allows them to search, detain and interrogate anyone suspected of guerrilla activity…

Manipur erupted in anger against the law after the killing of Thanjam Manorama in July 2004. Ms. Manorama, 32, was taken from her home in the dark of night, shot dead and left in a field. Semen stains were found on her underwear, according to reports in the Indian news media. The military said she was a militant and challenged a state government inquiry into her killing, citing the Special Powers Act. An army spokesman said in a recent interview that there was no conclusive evidence of rape.

The attack against Ms. Manorama set Manipur boiling. In one of the starkest acts of protest the country has ever seen, nearly a dozen elderly women stripped themselves naked, stood in front of the military base in Imphal and held up a haunting imperative on a homemade white banner: “Indian Army Rape Us…” [Link]

The alleged murder-rape reminds me of a similar U.S. army case in Okinawa. In classic repressive style, foreign journies are banned:

Foreign journalists must have permits to even set foot in the state, and those are only rarely issued. India’s home minister, Shivraj Patil, in an interview earlier this year offered this justification for the virtual prohibition against foreign journalists: “Because you are so interested…” [Link]

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The next coalition of the willing

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The term “Coalition of the Willing,” when used to describe the troops in Iraq has been a bit of a joke over the last few years.  Everyone knows it’s 99% U.S. and British soldiers on the ground.  Right in plain sight however, the U.S. government is constructing its next coalition of the willing.  Guess who it probably hopes is willing participant #1?  First a bit of background though.  The CIA has been grumbling of late at the emergence of China as the U.S.’s main strategic threat (although I think it is global warming) in the next twenty years.

Beijing’s military modernization and military buildup is tilting the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait. Improved Chinese capabilities threaten US forces in the region.

In 2004, China increased its ballistic missile forces deployed across from Taiwan and rolled out several new submarines.

China continues to develop more robust, survivable nuclear-armed missiles as well as conventional capabilities for use in a regional conflict.

Taiwan continues to promote constitutional reform and other attempts to strengthen local identity. Beijing judges these moves to be a “timeline for independence”. If Beijing decides that Taiwan is taking steps toward permanent separation that exceed Beijing’s tolerance, we believe China is prepared to respond with various levels of force. [Link]

Also this:

The United States is closely watching China’s military improvements and hoping the country will evolve into “a constructive force” in the Asia-Pacific region, says Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

At a February 17 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld addressed questions about China’s military modernization — most especially of its navy… [Link]

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Mad Cow’s Desi Origins?

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Now here’s a topic that’s guaranteed to make folks squirm.   A group of Brit scientists think they’ve discovered the root cause of their country’s recent bout with Mad Cow disease.   Cynics, upon hearing the proposed theory, might argue that this whole thing amounts to a massive deflection of blame to the brown nether world –

LONDON – Mad cow disease may have originated from animal feed contaminated with human remains washed ashore after being floated downriver in Indian funerals, British scientists said on Friday.

…Professor Alan Colchester of the University of Kent in England says it may have been caused by the tons of animal bones and other tissue imported from India for animal feed which also may have contained the remains of humans infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

…In a report in the Lancet medical journal, Colchester and his daughter Nancy, of the University of Edinburgh, explained that many human and animal corpses were disposed of in rivers in India in accordance with Hindu custom.

The remains washed ashore in poor areas where bone collectors work.

“We are aware of a considerable risk of the incorporation of human remains with the animal remains that are collected. They are processed locally and some have been exported. In 10 years, more than a third of a million tons of material from these areas was imported into the UK,” Colchester said.

Needless to say, other scientists advise that these are waters upon which one should tread lightly –

“Scientists must proceed cautiously when hypothesizing about a disease that has such wide geographic, cultural and religious implications,” Shankar said.

Your old, crazy aunty from back in da homeland may have found yet another way to haunt her Western son from beyond the grave.    

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The spy who loved me

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My first memory of Brit Asian actress Archie Panjabi is of her in East in East and pigtails, kicking a soccer ball around the back yard. I next saw her burnishing her Asian cred as the bride in Bend It Like Beckham. So it was a pleasant surprise when she popped up in The Constant Gardener, a John Le Carré thriller adapted for screen by the director of the wonderfully fluid City of God.

Like Sarita Choudhury in A Perfect Murder, Panjabi plays yet another desi Tonto. Her character Gita, a member of the British High Commission in Kenya, is sidekick and confidante to Tessa Quayle, played by lovely, googly-eyed Rachel Weisz in a mummy suit. Ralph Fiennes’s self-effacing diplomat spends the movie decoding his wife Tessa’s secret life and eventual assassination. His British accent turns ‘Gita’ into the German ‘Gitte’; in the screen credits it’s massacred again as ‘Ghita,’ acolyte of ghee. Aside from the appellation snafu, Panjabi gets to turn up in a sari and plays the vulnerable diplomat quite serviceably.

The movie itself suffers in comparison with City of God. It’s just as long (around 2:10) but not nearly as light on its feet: blame the patient English for that. It’s a Big Pharma conspiracy theory intercut with an ad for Africa aid. Several passages are filmed in grainy Primer green with buzzing fluorescent lights and very un-starlike blood and grime. Other passages are stylistically familiar, filmed in extreme close-up with a shaky, handheld camera, the colors supersaturated and grainy. Fernando Meirelles turns a lake bed into red and blue abstract art. The couple-play is as natural as can be expected when the stiff English mate in a Calvin Klein linen closet; unlike Meirelles’ earlier film, by the end the protagonists have been thoroughly sainted.

Also unlike the kinetic CoG, this one takes the notion that movies should start with a bang and turns it on its head. The rest of the film keeps up that languid pace, so all the ad blurbs claiming it to be a thriller are overblown, to put it kindly. On one level, the über-boring title is truth in advertising; slack pacing is the enemy at these gates. On another, this is a visually inventive and deeply serious movie about the cat’s cradle between Western governments, African corruption and MNCs, with ordinary Africans caught in the middle — not to mention a posthumous, detective-story romance.

· Â· Â· Â· Â·

Ithought of the movie when I heard how a femme fatale penetrated the British High Commission in Islamabad:

Britain has removed its defence attaché in Pakistan… Red-faced and tight-lipped British officials said they were not ready to provide any details… Durcan had been recalled because he had been “tricked into a close friendship by the attractive woman”… But it described the woman as a “defence academic” who was “also believed to be an undercover agent for rogue elements within Pakistan’s intelligence services”. [Link]

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South Africa out of Sunali’s Nose! (slightly updated)

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Philadelphia, September of 2002.

“OhMyGod”, was the greeting my mummy blurted out instead of her customary, “Hi, mone”. “When did THAT happen?”

“Two weeks ago, Ma.”

“But…why?”

I shrugged. “Felt like it.”

“You know that’s not something a Christian girl should do,” she replied, eyebrows undulating with disapproval and consternation.

“Only Hindu girls can get their noses pierced?”

“Only Hindu girls SHOULD get their noses pierced.”

“Pashu tatti. It’s a cultural thing, Ma. Not religious.”

My mother snorted before telling me where I could store my opinions on culture and religion. “It IS a Hindu tradition. Maybe even a Muslim one. Try it with someone dumber than your Mother, edi.”

Anne Martin, the principal of Durban Girls High School in South Africa should have called my mom when she needed an expert opinion on whether piercing one’s nose is a “culturally-based rather than religious” practice. 😉

Who is Anne Martin? Why should she defer to my almighty Mom? Read on:

Sunali Pillay, 16, took her case to the Durban Equality Court claiming that she was being unfairly discriminated against by her Durban Girls High School which was not allowing her to wear a nose ring in accordance with her religious beliefs.

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