Category Archives: Politics

Trees married in Calcutta

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Residents in Calcutta, India have married together a pair of trees in hopes of warding off evil:

The marriage between the sacred trees — whose trunks were decorated with red cloth, streaks of vermilion and marigold garlands — was followed by a banquet attended by nearly 1,000 people. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Proving once and for all that it doesn’t really matter who, or even what, is getting married — an Indian wedding will always be way too big.

Reuters/Yahoo!: Indians ‘marry’ sacred trees to ward off evil eye

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Illinois likes politicians with weird names

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Illinois voters have gone and done something crazy once again. First they elected Ba-rack O-bam-a as a U.S. Senator, and now conservative DuPage County has gone and elected Moin Moon Khan and Esin Busche as township trustees. The Chicago Tribune (free registration required) reports:

No one would mistake a gathering of DuPage County Republicans for the United Nations, but the party took a significant step last week toward shaking its image as a party dominated by “old white-haired men” when Moin Moon Khan and Esin Busche were elected township trustees.

Party officials say as far as they can tell, Khan, an Indian-born longtime Chicago-area activist who works as a computer network administrator, and Busche, a Turkish-born chemist, are the first Muslim Republicans elected to public office anywhere in the state–and a symbol of the party’s new outreach effort in a rapidly diversifying county.

“This is a small office, and for me it may be a very small individual achievement,” said Khan. “However, I think it’s a giant milestone for the minority communities in general and the Muslim American community in particular.”

What’s even more astonishing is that Khan beat out someone named “Bob Wagner.” I found the following quote by Rasheed Ahmed, coordinator of the Illinois Muslim Political Coordinating Council, quite interesting:

Muslims don’t tend to naturally gravitate to either party, Ahmed said, because there are parts of both the Democratic and Republican positions that appeal to them.

There was also this little gem by Paul Hinds, chairman of the York Township Republican Party.

“We get pegged too much as 70-year-old white-haired men. That’s a stereotype we always have to work against,” he said. “That’s not what we are.”

Moon’s personal story is quite inspiring as related at NRI-Worldwide:

Khan, who came to the US in 1986 with, plans to become a journalist, switched to computers after getting a journalism degree from the University of Georgia, because being a scribe “was not financially lucrative”.

But politics was in his veins, he said, and when he moved to Illinois, he founded the Bihar Cultural Association and served on the boards of more than a dozen civic organisations in the past 15 years.

“Being a scribe was not financially lucrative?” Yeah, no sh*t. Continue reading →

White American Christians Emulate Arranged Marriages

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Abhi’s post about the Prom got me thinking about the non-trivial number of Christians I’ve met over the years who follow desi-like restrictive dating rituals. One friend of mine went no further than holding hands with his intended until they got engaged! Two seconds (literally) on Google yielded a (white American) group that proposes something very similar to “modern arranged marriages”

Let’s be honest for a minute, when we were looking for a spouse, we looked at all the wrong things. All the guys look for is how the girl looks. All the girl looks at is whether or not the guy is nice to her. Single people have a very poor track record in looking for the important characteristics of the heart when they are looking for a mate. On the other hand, there is nobody who knows children like their parents do (except God). So, parents will know the character traits of their children; their strong and weak areas, their likes and dislikes, and their personality. As such, the parents are in a position to make a more accurate evaluation of the compatibility of a particular man, or women with their own kids. Please note, I’m not talking about the parents choosing a mate without the child’s participation in the decision. What I’m saying is that the best possible decision will be made when the parents and child work together … If either they, or us as parents see a possibility in someone, we will mention it. Then, we will investigate that person, to find out everything we can about them and their family. If they still look like a possible candidate for marriage after this investigation, we will go together to talk with that possible mate and his or her parents. [cite]

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Who writes the history books?

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Whoever holds the pen, that’s who. As we’ve all heard, there have been lots of protests (some turning violent) in China, over the version of history found in some Japanese school textbooks. As anyone who, like me is a fan of Zinn’s “A People’s History” knows, you must always remain vigilant against inaccuracies in history and social studies. Some desis in the D.C. suburbs have been doing just that. As reported in the Washington Post:

Fairfax County businesswoman Sandhya Kumar teaches her three daughters about other countries, cultures and religions. She wants them to take pride in their Indian heritage and Hindu faith — and to respect and understand other views.

But when Kumar of Lorton scanned several world history textbooks recommended for Fairfax County schools, she worried that students would come away with a distorted and negative impression of her homeland’s culture.

“I thought the American children will think India is some Third World country with pagan beliefs and backward thinking, not a forward-thinking country,” Kumar said.

She and dozens of other Indian American parents launched a campaign to change the way their history is taught in Fairfax, the nation’s 12th-largest school system. Their lobbying has prompted school officials to rethink presentations of India and Hinduism in classrooms and has sparked efforts to develop a more sophisticated and thoughtful curriculum.

So what in particular was inaccurate in the textbooks?

Balaji Hebbar, a George Washington University religion professor who was one of three scholars hired by Fairfax County to review the books cited by the group of Indian parents, said he and his colleagues found few factual errors. But he said the lessons boiled down a complex culture to “karma, cows and caste.”

“It’s as if I were making a picture book of the United States, and I took pictures of the bad parts of D.C., the run-down parts of New York City and the smoke stacks of Cleveland and left out the Golden Gate Bridge and the Statue of Liberty,” Hebbar said. “I would be telling the truth, but I would only be telling half the truth.”

The very open and gracious way in which the school district responded to the parent’s concerns is quite encouraging to me, especially in light of all the craziness that usually seems to undo the educational system in this country instead of helping it become better.

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DC Event – The Hindu Equilibrium

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SM Reader Anjali, hailing from the Institute for Humane Studies, writes in to point mutineers towards a Desi-themed libertarian book preso at the Cato Institute in DC. Cato is far and away my favorite thinktank and seeing them directly take on Desi stuff is just too cool for words.

The Hindu Equilibrium: India C. 1500 B.C. – 2000 A.D. (Oxford University Press, 2005) BOOK FORUM Thursday, May 12, 2005 4:00 PM [EST] (Reception to follow) …India is an emerging economic giant. Deepak Lal will explain the role that modernity and tradition have played in that country’s recent moves to the market after decades of stagnation. Why has democracy succeeded and the caste system survived in India? Why did India switch to more liberal economic policies, and why is it likely to overtake China in the race for economic growth? Lal will provide answers to those questions and review India’s development challenges. Anne Krueger will comment on the record and prospects of Indian growth and poverty reduction.

Live audio and video streams from the event will be freely viewable on the web. Continue reading →

The “T-word”: only those with melanin need apply

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Last week, the media flip-flopped yet again on the issue of terrorism. When reporting on the three darker skinned guys recently arrested in the UK and accused of plotting a series of horrific bombings, the NYT, AP and other news outlets called the accused “terrorists.” However, when reporting on the recent plea bargain by Eric Rudolph, the T-word was absent from their coverage. The NYT only called Rudolph an “anti-abortion crusader and former soldier.” Reuters called him a “survivalist” and a “fugitive” but not a terrorist.

What gives? Might melanin and foreigness have anything to do with it?

Rudolph’s actions clearly met the US State Department definition of terrorism. His bombs “killed two people, wounded 120 others, and “terrorized” people in three states.” When he was caught, he had 250 lbs of dynamite stashed away, and a 25 lb bomb “filled with 20 pounds of screws as shrapnel” across the street from his next target.

His goal was political and intended to influence an audience … and the attacks were most definitely perpetrated against noncombatants by a non-state entity. The situation seems at least as clear-cut as many acts regularly labeled terrorism in the media.[cite]

Not only was Rudolph a terrorist, but he was a terrorist who justified his actions based on his religious beliefs. He was a member of an extremist religious group and cited a religion as the central reason for his attacks when he made his statement to the feds. After most of the bombings, letters came from the “Army of God” saying things like:

We declare and will wage total war on the ungodly communist regime in New York and your legaslative bureaucratic lackey’s in Washington. It is you who are responsible and preside over the murder of children and issue the policy of ungodly preversion thats destroying our people. [cite]

While the US government (to its credit) clearly calls Rudolph a terrorist, it may not be prosecuting him as vigorously as it does other terrorism suspects:

Curiously, the Justice Department allowed Mr. Rudolph to plead guilty and avoid the death sentence that in other circumstances the feds have been quite energetic in pursuing. The official explanation was that a trial and a death sentence would have made a “martyr” of this man, who as a high-profile fugitive for five years eluded a giant manhunt and became something of a folk hero in rural Appalachia…. Maybe the prosecutors thought they couldn’t get him and so opted for an easy plea. But there are powerful people for whom the spectacle of an unrepentant murderer for the unborn, a clean-cut movie star handsome Christian terrorist, posed political problems. Better to defend life in the abstract, keep the focus on the enemy at the gates and keep skeletons like Eric Rudolph locked up in the closet.[cite]

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Neobans

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The Neo-Taliban running Pakistan’s fundamentalist parties aren’t content with banning food at weddings. Now they’ve figured out how to recruit more sexually-repressed young men. They want to ban all ads featuring women:

Last week the six-party religious alliance that constitutes one-fifth of the country’s parliament, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) introduced a bill in parliament seeking a complete ban on women in advertising… It proposes one-year imprisonment for any ad agency that uses women models…

The neobans (for banning is what they do) want to turn the clock back to when only men could perform in public, teaching an entire generation of boys to dress in drag. They yearn for when NAMBLA-like encounters were the norm as long as female chastity was protected. Of course, women were treated as mere property and were at much higher risk of rape and murder, but it was all in the name of purity, right? It was all for the noble goal of keeping people’s minds off sex… by depriving them of it.

Yeah, that worked out well. About as well as another movement which went against fundamental human nature.

Of course, the neobans won’t be content with banning female images. They’ll go after the right of women to drive, then to vote. All Pakistan would be left with is rifle-toting bullies in pickup trucks beating up men without beards and women without burqas. Been there, done that, seen it on F*dCountry.com.

The more that a religious strain teaches personal spirituality, the less that political middlemen can manipulate the faithful.

Previous posts: 1, 2

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Sending jobs to America

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The F-16 debate to date has focused on the military balance between India and Pakistan. Many SM commenters have noted that even though India will be allowed to buy U.S. arms, it’s unlikely to do so because the U.S. has been an unreliable supplier.

Today a NYT story took the opposite tack: F-16 sales to India are good because they’ll keep the production line open in case the U.S. military ever places another order.

“The reopening of sales to Pakistan and the opening of sales to India extends the life of the production line, the Fort Worth operation and the entire F-16 supply chain throughout the country. It also provides the Air Force with a warm production line should it want extra F-16’s.”

Lockheed is talking like a business, not saber-rattling like the U.S. government:

“If India’s requirements are beyond any existing fighters, we are prepared to make upgraded F-16’s to India’s specifications with complete transfer of technology,” Mike Kelly, a Lockheed senior executive said in an interview last month with the Press Trust of India, a New Delhi news agency. “We have, in the past, taken up building of such exclusive fighters for the U.A.E. and we are prepared to manufacture F-16’s to India’s special requirements.”

India already writes software for Boeing and Lockheed :

Boeing… is already relying on Indian companies to provide software for its new commercial jet, the 787 Dreamliner…

The U.S. as hopeful suitor: it’s a newly respectful tone in the media’s handling of this story. Continue reading →

alt.muslim.com

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Although some of you may not realize it, one of the most popular brown “Mom & Pop” websites out there is alt.muslim.com, which was founded by a married Indian-American business student who grew up in California. From the Information Warfare Site:

“My name is Shahed Amanullah, and I created the Website altmuslim.com. I started the site because I wanted to see some more open dialogue and discussion and debate about things that are happening in the Muslim world.

“Before the Internet came around, Muslims lived in relative isolation and obscurity from each other. They never had to deal with Muslims of different colors, of different schools of thought, of different political persuasions. And when the Internet came about and these people had to find each other and see each other for the first time, it was really jarring. I mean, Muslim discourse on the Internet for the first several years was nothing but fiery debates and insults and things like that. Muslims need to learn together in cyberspace in a way that’s civil and respectful.

“Only now are people starting to get together as Sunni, Sufi, Shia, without it automatically meaning, ‘let’s have a theological argument.’ And that change has been happening slowly over time. Friendships have been happening between these different people, between Muslims in the West and in the Muslim world, between Shia, Sunni, Sufi, even between Salafis and progressives.

“I think one person put it that the Muslim community has an ‘irony deficiency.’ Because of that, we wanted to interject humor and wit into all the work we did, because we felt that it was a really good way to defuse tension and make the pill easier to swallow, so to speak. So one of the things we do, at the top of our Website, is we have little taglines that describe who we are, ‘cleared by Homeland Security,’ ‘no assets to freeze,’ ‘all the news that’s not fit to print.’

Ahhh. That’s just the type of humor that hopefully turns SM readers on (well most of them).

Going over to alt.mulsim.com we see that in addition to running the site, Amanullah and his wife are bloggers. His wife Hina, blogs about her recent experience with motherhood.

amanullahblog.jpg

Go check out the main news site. There are lots of good and often controversial articles posted. Great brain food.

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Religious ceremony buries children alive

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You’re in a restaurant or airplane, and someone’s rat-bastard tot will not stop crying at the top of their lungs. There’s something you can do about it, as long as you’re willing to risk arrest:

Indian police have charged 80 people for burying children alive in an ancient Hindu ceremony known as “the festival of pits.” The ceremony, in which children — some less than a year old — are buried alive briefly and then dug up, happened on Monday in southern Tamil Nadu state, The Asian Age reported on Thursday. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Reuters/Yahoo!: Indians charged for burying children alive

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