Category Archives: Politics

Plushy Kali

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Remember Ghee Happy? This was Pixar illustrator Sanjay Patel’s take on the Hindu Pantheon, done in a drawing style that was hipster crossed with the Powerpuff girls.

At the time, Manish observed that

… any kid-safe interpretation of Kali is bound to cross the line into kitsch. [Link]

Sanjay is now going from 2-D to 3-D. He has a mockup of a plush Kali doll [via BB], and is in the process of looking for a manufacturer. Presumably, he’s looking to market this as a children’s toy, although somehow I suspect it will end up in more hipster cribs than kiddy cribs.

This is where my intuitions fail me. The book and prints and apparel all seemed like things that might be purchased by (some) ABD Hindus. Certainly the remarks in the comments of the original post were pretty positive about Sanjay’s renderings.

Would the same be true about the plushy doll? If not, why not? Here, the fact that I’m not a Hindu gets in the way of my ability to imagine people’s reactions. Is there a difference between a children’s t-shirt and a doll? Hindu iconography has long been used for commercial purposes, is this any different? Is this something that you would buy?

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SAFM-It’s been brung

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A confrontation I imagine in my head set to the tune of Beat It by MJ (its funnier in my head though):

South Asians for Obama: You better bring it you desi Republicans

South Asians for McCain: Oh. It’s been brung.

Remember when I wrote the following in my post about South Asians for Obama back in February of 2007 (yes, a year and a half ago)?:

In order to be fair and balanced I thought I’d link to South Asians for Rudy, or McCain, or Mitt but I wasn’t able to find such fundraising sites. I would be forever grateful to anyone that could alert me to such a development though. [Link]

Well, this week (less than 100 days before the election) desi supporters of John McCain have answered the challenge! IndiaWest reports:

Indian supporters of Republican presidential candidate John McCain are trickling out of the woodwork to battle the groundswell of support created by the South Asians for Obama campaign.

Last month, Suresh Kumar, CEO of NexAge Technologies USA in Iselin, New Jersey, launched South Asians for McCain. The nascent organization has picked up 85 members in the three weeks since its inception.

On the West Coast, Atul Saini, co-chairman of the Santa Clara County Business Leaders for John McCain, is attempting to mobilize the large contingent of South Asian business people in the Silicon Valley to vote for his candidate. [Link]

It is interesting to hear which issues motivate these two founders:

McCain is open to free trade, said Kumar, adding that his candidate was not opposed to work going overseas as long as it benefited U.S. interests. The veteran senator also supports lower taxes, which is especially important to small entrepreneurs, said Kumar, adding that “Lower taxes allow free enterprise to flourish.”

Most important to Kumar was the issue of terrorism. “Terrorism is the over-arching threat to civilized society and there is no focus on this issue as far as the Obama campaign is concerned,” he said, adding that McCain recognizes the need for a coordinated global effort to combat terrorism…

Saini said Indians are natural McCain supporters. “We come from India and we are very conservative, business-minded people,” he said, adding that the enterprise-friendly initiatives of McCain’s platform supported South Asian entrepreneurs. [Link] Continue reading →

The Day the Music Died

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First of all: thank you for the opportunity to blog. I’m so excited!

And now, my post:

The city of Bangalore has banned dancing and live music in places that serve alcohol, according to this Indian Express article here.

And according to this friend of mine here:

abhi.jpg

one Abhi M., who along with famed playwright Girish Karnad and 100 other people, protested the outmoded rule. Karnad spaketh thus:

“It is tyranny of the police. It is against every artiste. Instead of going after criminals the police are going after musicians.”

[Note: Karnad’s first two lines rhyme. A true artiste, that one.]

Apparently Bangalore officials have decided to enforce a part of the decades-old Karnataka Excise Law that prohibits live music and dancing in places that sell alcohol. (Used to be, only the section barring women from dancing was enforced, which led critics to hire dancing eunuchs in bars across the city this past February. Too bad that wouldn’t even be clever this time around.)

Abhi tells me,

“it’s an outdated law that’s being dug up by immature and backward-thinking bureaucrats and cops.”

But those Bs and Cs have their defenses. Says Bangalore’s Police Commissioner in an NDTV article:

“There is no [dance] ban on discos. They have to obtain a license and they can function.”

The article goes on to say however, that not one such license has been granted in the past four years to the many places that have requested them, according to sources in the police department.

The law is being used to temper progress, and the upshot is that the city is confused. I saw it myself two years ago.

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Someone Named Dan Cox Chokes on his Foot

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…instead of having the humility and decency to remove it. He must really like the taste of toe jam (or not have anyone around who can administer the Heimlich). To each their ignorant own (thanks, anonymous tipster).

Who is Dan Cox, you are surely muttering? He’s the writer and producer of a documentary on the Governator, but no one here at the bunker cares about that– what’s more mutinous is his eyebrow-raising post over at Mediabistro’s “Fishbowl LA” blog, which one of you was sharp enough to catch and release our way. The title of his post is “Spielberg wants Bollywood“, and its relevant text is below:

Steven Spielberg, ever the iconoclast, is just saying NO to the studios these days. As has been reported over and over, he’s doing a deal with India’s Reliance ADA Group.
The India contingent is putting up a billion bucks to give Spielberg carte blanche (or however that translates to Indian) to make and distribute whatever he wants.

(snip!)

Regardless, Speilberg’s looking and the majors are all considering (but not relying on, ho ho) his Reliance cash, but invariably it’s likely that Spielberg will be back in bed with Universal, where all of his filmic links have been in the past, whether DreamWorks SKG or Amblin.

No, it is not to be made fun of, you asshole

The India Reliance deal is supposed to be completed this week. We’ll see if Spielberg starts wearing a Sari or has a red dot implanted on his forehead. [link to stupidity]

Classy. Now I’m no big-shot, one documentary-creatin’ Hollywood insider, but I do understand “American” words loud and clear; I mean…the American language surely exists, because such a successful person would only conjure a tongue called “Indian” if it were true, no? He wouldn’t be THAT lazy or willfully ignorant? Oh, wait…

I’m not going to back down from anything I posted.There was nothing negative intentionally spoken or implied about Indian or Pakistani of Hindi or Bengalese culture. There was simply an amusing look at why and how Steven Spielberg is more interested in $1 billion from an Indian contingent than he is in finding it on Wall Street or from the studios or from his backyard. [link to stupidity]

THAT is from a comment he posted, in response to outraged readers who called him out for his inexcusable kundi-holery. He says his piece was “simply an amusing look at…”, I say “you know exactly what you were doing and for that, YOU SUCK”. Tomato, thekkalikya.

But wait! THERE ARE MORE CRINGE-INDUCING WORDS WHERE THAT CAME FROM!

Now, maybe it wasn’t all that amusing.Maybe I come off as a club-footed xenophobe. [link to stupidity]

Remove two “maybes” from that quote and lo! It’s suddenly, magically accurate.

But hello India, what I wrote also wasn’t a diatribe about the sub-continent.
I’m fully aware that a sari is a female garment as well as the fact that a red dot on the forehead is not there to be made fun of. It may have cultural or religious relevance. But what should be made fun of is the fact that Spielberg is taking his money from whichever provider that he can find, whether his head is adorned with pink polka dots. [link to stupidity]

Oh, honey…I’m so sorry to break this news, but…India ain’t reading you. India (unlike me) has better things to do with her time, than read you. Also, if you are fully aware of who wears saris and what red dots might signify, then Dan, you have no excuse for what you wrote. Continue reading →

Kal Penn Hearts Obama

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Yesterday, I attended the ASIAN AMERICANS FOR OBAMA EVENT WITH ACTOR KAL PENN, in Macacaville, VA. No, I’m not shouting at you, I’m just too lazy to reformat what I copied from the press release that uber-Dem Toby Chaudhuri was kind enough to send me. 😉 Like all good desi events, it didn’t start on time, which was highly awesome for those of us who were fighting our way from DC to Farlington during rush hour, in the hopes of seeing the biggest brown actor of them all stump for Obama.

So many references were made to a certain set of movies with which you are all familiar, that I have resolved to not mention them once (not! once!) in this post; instead, I’m going to give you the highlights of what Kal Penn said, about his favorite contender for the potentially-soon-to-be-not-White House.

Penn got personal, as he speeched at us with tales of his grandfather’s involvement in the struggle for India’s freedom and a more recent influential event in his life– a phone call he received from a good friend, from Texas, asking for advice.* This friend was struggling to finance his education, and he had been offered a job with Satan with Haliburton, driving trucks through Iraq for $90,000 a year. It was a tempting, and obviously perilous offer for someone making minimum wage. Penn was deeply affected by the awful situation his friend was in and that’s one of the reasons why he’s taking the time to get involved and motivate people across the country to support Obama; he sincerely believes his man has a plan.

The actor, who is currently starring in one of MY favorite shows, “House”, commenced his entertaining remarks with “Happy Macaca day!”. Indeed, it was the second anniversary of the infamous event which transformed our community in to some monkeys with which to reckon.

The one-hundred plus people in attendance seemed to enjoy his message…and the event itself, which was lively, upbeat and well-stocked with delicious food. Seriously. While I can’t personally vouch for the chicken–which my friend had fourths of– I CAN say that after Penn was hustled in to a waiting (yet fuel-efficient) SUV, I devoured the best samosas I’ve EVER had. Toby and Ruby…who was your caterer?? Continue reading →

The Brown Man’s Bible

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Publishing and republishing the World’s Most Popular Book (no, not Harry Potter) has spawned a mini industry of sorts. Variations of the Bible range from the classic to childrens to denim-bound Spanish. There are even serious discussions about whether Ebonics might be the best way to capture its nuance. And, of course, there have been Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Guju, and other desi language versions for decades.

Wikipedia notes –

The Bible continues to be the most translated book in the world. The following numbers are approximations. As of 2005, at least one book of the Bible has been translated into 2,400 of the 6,900 languages listed by SIL,[5] including 680 languages in Africa, followed by 590 in Asia, 420 in Oceania, 420 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 210 in Europe, and 75 in North America. The United Bible Societies are presently assisting in over 600 Bible translation projects. The Bible is available in whole or in part to some 98 percent of the world’s population in a language in which they are fluent.

Joseph & Mary, Loincloth & Sari, Turban & Bindi

To the list of the world’s interpretations of the Bible, India now adds another contribution…. the New Community Bible. While most desi Bible translations start with the King James text, for ex., and directly translate into local languages, the NCB is written in English but instead incorporates Indian cultural elements into the book –

THE words of the Bhagavad Gita and the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi have found a place in a controversial Bible published in India.

An illustration depicts the holy family as Indian villagers: Mary wears a simple sari and has a bindi on her forehead, while Joseph has a turban and loincloth. There is also a full-page portrait of Mother Teresa, the nun who served the destitute on the streets of Kolkata, with the words: “Pure and blameless religion lies in coming to help orphans and widows.”

Promoters of the New Community Bible claim it will help Indian readers by drawing on “the rich culture and religious heritage of our motherland”.

A team of 30 scholars worked for more than 15 years on the new edition.

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The Birth of the Indian-American “Celebrity?”

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My friend Reshma recently emailed me to ask if I could highlight a fundraising event in NYC she was holding for Obama. Reshma, formerly of South Asians for Hillary and South Asians for Kerry, is one of the members of Barack Obama’s new Asian American Finance Committee (other members mentioned here). Normally I would have just placed the event info on our “Events Tab,” where you can highlight just about any desi-related event. There was something about this event that was different though and I couldn’t put my finger on it until I re-read her email again. Then it struck me that the event itself represents a political first…as far as I know. This is the first time that such a large group of Indian American “celebrities” is being deployed in favor of a Presidential candidate. I am putting quotes around the word celebrities not to minimize the successes of some of these individuals but rather to contrast their pull to what we traditionally think of as Hollywood political celebrities (e.g., George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Angelina Jolie, Jane Fonda, etc.). In the past, both parties have relied on wealthy DBDs such as Sant Chatwal or various tech entrepreneurs or medical doctors for their campaign donations (from mostly first generation Indian Americans). Obama and his committee are taking a different approach, perhaps because he doesn’t want McCain to call him D-Punjab.

In all the loud talk of unity amongst the campaigns there is at least one tear jerker, or sort of – a controversial Indian American supporter of Hillary Clinton, appears to have not found favour with the Illinois Senator Barack Obama in the post-union phase of the Democratic party for 2008 presidential elections.

Sant Chatwal, known as one of the most effective fund raiser among the Indian American money bags, is not in the list of Asian Americans Finance Committee officials announced by the Obama campaign. [Link]

Instead of enlisting only rich “uncles” to help bring in the cash from our community, Obama picked a much younger group and that younger group in turn thinks young desi celebs may be the way to bring in the cash for their candidate (although this is probably just one of many ways they are considering). Their target demographic appears to be very similar to the type that reads SM:

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The power of email squatters

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The recent issue of The New Yorker had a cute story, that I can totally relate to, about one particular G-Mail address account created four years ago:

On July 27, 2004, a friend invited Guru Raj to create a Google e-mail account. A recent graduate of the University of Virginia, Raj, then twenty-one, was watching the Democratic National Convention on a television in his parents’ basement, in Norcross, Georgia. The beta version of Gmail–available by invitation only–was less than four months old at the time, and largely unproved, but Raj’s U.V.A. e-mail account was set to expire in a few weeks, so he decided to give Gmail a try.

At first, Raj tried to create an address using his own name, but, remarkably, both gururaj @ gmail.com and rajguru @ gmail.com were already taken. So he tried the name of the young senator from Illinois who was giving the Democratic keynote address on TV. To his surprise, it worked, and, moments later, barackobama@gmail.com was quietly born. “I’m not some cute little Indian boy who grew up in America with political aspirations,” Raj, the first in his family to be born an American citizen, said recently. “I just thought it would be kind of funny to create an e-mail address based on a random senator whose name no one could spell…”

Over the next four years, as Gmail became the third most popular Webmail provider in the U.S. and Obama became a serious contender for the next President of the United States, Raj used the account for his personal e-mail. In the fall of 2006, he received, for the first time, a message intended for the Senator. By February, 2007, when Obama formally announced his candidacy, Raj was daily receiving dozens of misdirected notes from all over the world.[Link]

I found this anecdote rather funny because on my (now-defunct) personal blog I wrote of encountering the same problem. Back when G-Mail first came out I snapped up three addresses. Two of them were quite obscure but the third one was the equivalent of “smith @ gmail.com.” Needless to say, over the years I have received all kinds of random emails from people who intended their message for someone(s) else. For example, I get at least two marriage-related biodata emails (complete with pictures) each week. I also get lots of people following up on a job interviews or medical results. A lot of these emails come from India. I am always faced with a choice: do I help destiny along by informing the sender of the error or by remaining silent? I randomly go either way (I know, this is probably evil and megalomaniacal).

Raj, who now works for a software consulting company in Washington, D.C., never replied to these, or to any other e-mails meant for Obama, not even to tell an excited would-be pen pal that he is not, in fact, the Democrats’ presumptive Presidential nominee. “It just became an interesting portal into Americana,” he said. “From the beginning, I had no intention of manipulating anyone.” .[Link]

Yes! See, Raj gets it. Its just like being the postal worker whose job it is to open all the mail addressed to Santa Claus. Nobody expects him to fulfill the expectations of every letter (or even a few letters), but at least someone can bear witness (even if they are biodata packages).

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Commander Selvam of Atlanta: What Do You Think?

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[UPDATE: After arresting Commander Selvam last fall, the police have decided drop charges against him, for lack of evidence. See Atlanta Journal Constitution]

Reader MacWalla sent us a tip to this story, which ran on a local Fox affiliate in Atlanta:

It’s about an Atlanta based swami named Selvam Sidhar, also called Dr. Commander Selvam (though his real name is apparently Annamalai?), whom the reporter finds to be a fraud. There’s also a second part I would strongly recommend here, where the reporters went undercover to book a “beer bash and barbecue” in the Temple’s main hall, and Commander Selvam readily agreed to have meat and alcohol served on the premises. After the Fox reporters called the next day to “out” themselves, big banners reading “Hindus Only Allowed — No Trespassing” went up around the temple.

Some of the footage they use, showing his house (heavily mortgaged), and his car, isn’t by itself an issue for me. If anything, the $900,000 mortgage on the house suggests he doesn’t actually have as much money in the bank as might be expected. Is this exposé overblown at times?

Finally, the reporter responsible for the recent story on Fox Atlanta, Randy Travis, has a blog post up, with 179 comments on the story.

[UPDATE: After arresting Commander Selvam last fall, the police have decided drop charges against him, for lack of evidence. See Atlanta Journal Constitution] Continue reading →

South Asian Youth Political Involvement

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Hey everyone, nice to meet you and thanks for Abhi’s kind introduction. For the next few weeks, I’ll be aiming to give an 18-year old desi perspective on politics, news, and general issues I think are important to my generation. In the lead up to the DNC, I’ll obviously be talking about youth involvement in politics, but there are many general interest issues that concern young desis and I’d appreciate your input for and on subjects – email anytime at ravi [at] sepiamutiny dot com.

Youth political interest in this election is certainly as high as it has been in a long while, and the rise of Barack Obama and presidency of George Bush have significantly contributed to this undeniable trend.

As I set out to confirm historic levels of young desi involvement in American politics, I met with a significant amount of trouble, as specific statistics on South Asian involvement are very hard to find (let me know if you find any!) However, CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), has done some interesting research on Asian American trends, and the results were interesting. A close examination of the CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) “Civic Engagement Among Minority Youth” survey (a PDF link), shows promising trends in the area of political participation –

  • 15-25 year-old Asian-Americans have the highest rate of volunteerism for political candidates and groups of any ethnic group in the U.S.
  • 15-25 year-old Asian-Americans have the highest rates of signing email petitions, boycotting and contacting officials of U.S. ethnic groups
  • In 2006, 71.5% of young Asian-Americans reported a belief that “Government should do more to solve Problems,” the highest rate of youths of any ethnic group, as well as the highest confidence in government regulation of business

These are impressive statistics, and my personal experience has shown that South Asian youth involvement has grown far more this election year. The Obama campaign, in particular, has inspired young desis (including myself) to volunteer, campaign, opine, and raise awareness about the importance of this year’s election. His story, as the son of an immigrant father from Kenya who has risen to be Senator and now Democratic Nominee, could be the story of an Indian-American candidate at some time in the future.

Another campaign, however, had also generated considerable enthusiasm from young South Asians, and that was libertarian Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. Youth who are tired of reckless foreign intervention and misguided government spending have turned to Paul’s staunchly principled libertarian campaign as an ideal of what a true principled politician, and America, could stand for. The campaign had an Indian-American at the forefront of its grassroots effort:

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