Category Archives: Politics

Greetings and salutations

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In India an interesting debate has broken out over what exactly is secular and what is religious. In particular, can the government promote yoga?

At issue is a measure by the Hindu nationalist-led government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, that required public school students to practice the sun salutation and recite certain chants in Sanskrit during a statewide function on Thursday. The state government, controlled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., said that it complied with a central government policy to encourage yoga in schools [Link]

The Chief Minister (pictured right) defended this as part of a broader a health initiative:

‘The government was committed to creating awareness about yoga, which helps to keep the body and mind in good health,’ …The yoga policy envisages constitution of a council for practising yoga in the state, provision of facilities required for setting up yoga centres, selection and appointment of yoga teachers. [Link]

However, minority groups did not see this as innocuous:

The “Suryanamaskar” programme came under attack from minority communities and opposition parties who had dubbed it as “an effort to saffronise education.” The ruling BJP was trying to “incite religious passion under the garb of yoga” among school children, a spokesman of the Catholic Church of Madhya Pradesh said. [Link]

In particular, they took issue with the use of Hindu mantras:

Muslim and Christian groups in the state took issue not so much with the yoga exercise, but with the chants, which they said were essentially Hindu and in worship of the sun. They argued in court on Wednesday that it violated the Indian constitutional provision to separate religion and state. [Link]

What time is it? It’s yoga time!

On Wednesday, the court agreed with the plaintiffs, ruling that “neither the chants nor the sun salutation could be forced on students. [Link]” The MP government has responded by saying that the whole event was voluntary in the first place, but even this remains problematic as it would create a major public event from which non-Hindus would be discouraged from attending.

We’ve blogged before about how Christians in the US are concerned about Yoga, but this story reminds me more about the “War over Christmas” than anything else. It feels like the kinds of debates we have in the US about the suitability of Christmas carols for public events, or for Christmas trees for public spaces. Even in India, certain aspects of Yoga occupy a space between public and parochial.

While I do believe that Yoga can promote health, I think that the impact of doing a quick Surya Namaskar is pretty miniscule. This means that the state is either being transparently cynical, or various ministers believe in the almost mystical powers of yoga to produce health over and above the component physical movements. If it’s the latter, perhaps the opponents of this program ought to respond with some laughing yoga instead .

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Hungry children failed by state and market

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This is a week of good news and bad. The good news is that Goldman Sachs thinks the Indian economy is growing even faster than previously expected:

India could overtake Britain and have the world’s fifth largest economy within a decade as the country’s growth accelerates, a new report says… By 2050 India’s economy could be larger even than America’s, only China’s will be bigger, the bank predicts. [Link]

The bad news is that child malnutrition rates are still startling high in India. This week the PM felt a need to deal out thapars:

“Our prevalent rate of under-nutrition in the 0-6 age group remains one of the highest in the world,” Mr Singh said. “These are startling figures and the situation calls for urgent action.” [Link]

The situation remains astonishingly dire:

Last year the UN children’s agency, Unicef, said that the average malnutrition rate in some Indian states – such as densely populated Uttar Pradesh – was 40%. That is higher than sub-Saharan Africa where it is around 30%, Unicef said. [Link]

… Unicef report said half of the world’s under-nourished children live in South Asia….”South Asia has higher levels of child under-nutrition than Sub-Saharan Africa, but Sub-Saharan Africa has higher rates of child mortality…” [Link]

Most striking is the fact that the economic growth of the past 15 years hasn’t necessarily translated into better child nutrition, and that malnutrition has actually risen in some places:

A recent health ministry survey said that the number of undernourished children below the age of three had actually risen in some states since the late 1990s, despite higher incomes and rapid economic growth. [Link]

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No One’s Perfect, not Even Indian Girls (updated)

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Listen, my children to your Akka so old,
For she has a story, which today should be told.

Once upon a time, well over a decade ago
Akka received a call from a voice whispering lowÂ…

“Help. Oh my GodÂ…I don’t know what to doÂ…”
“Wait—Gigi? What’s happening to you?”

“Anneka, I can’t take it anymore; I just want to dieÂ…”
“Shhh, stopÂ…you’re a devout Catholic, I know that’s a lie.”

“WhatÂ…no smile? That’s hilarious, G. Laugh.”

But my own laugh faltered and fell back in my chest,
This was no cry for help, this didn’t feel like a test.

“Anneka, I love you, please always remember that,”

“You stupid bitch Geee, stop, take that back!”

“I won’t let you say Good-bye, this isn’t the end,
I refuse to let you take away my best friend.

I know you feel like you are already dead,
I know about the demons in your heart and your head.

But please, don’t do this, it’s a permanent answer
To a temporary—

She sobbed, “This is worse than cancer,”

“At least then people would feel sorry for—”
“Screw them, and if they judge youÂ…well, fuck them more.
I know; they and your past are impossible to ignoreÂ…


But I also know that I’ve never met anyone with a purer heart,
That you are spun from light and goodness, unlike this tart.

Gigi, where are you, I’m already in my car
Damnit, this is Davis, you can’t be that farÂ…”

“No, please, don’t. I’ve been enough of a burden to you—”

“Gee, I swear to God, I’m going to find you and slap you.”

“Anneka, please don’t hate me for what I’m about to do,
Promise me you’ll forgive me, I’m so sorryÂ…I love you.”

Click.

“GIGI!” I screamed in to an ominously silent phone,
yanking the german car she loved over to the shoulder, alone.

Redial, redial, redial, at least twenty times
Tachycardiac beats and my breath form rhymes. Continue reading →

Our Foremost Political Philosopher

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dineshbook.jpg“The worst nonfiction book about terrorism published by a major house since 9/11” is what Warren Bass, senior books editor at the Washington Post (and, the byline notes, a former staff member of the 9/11 Commission), calls the latest from desi Talking Android nonpareil Dinesh D’Souza. The book is called THE ENEMY AT HOME: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, a title that begs little further explication. Indeed, Bass points out at the end of a sharp review that’s less blustering and more cutting than that of Alan Wolfe in the New York Times, the whole exercise of D’Souza’s book seems so plainly intended to cause a kerfuffle in the blogosphere that I feel tawdry even bringing it up here, despite the Desi Angle (TM). As Bass notes:

Either D’Souza is blaming liberals for 9/11 because he truly believes that they’re culpable, or he’s blaming liberals for 9/11 because he’s cynically calculating that an incendiary polemic will sell books. I just don’t know which is scarier. One has to wonder why his publisher, agent, editors and publicists went along for the ride, and it’s hard not to conclude that they thought the thing would cause a cable-news and blogosphere sensation that would spike sales — a ruckus triggered not despite the book’s silliness but because of it. This sort of scam has worked before (think of Christopher Hitchens’s gleeful broadside against Mother Teresa or the calculated slurs of Ann Coulter), but rarely has the gap between the seriousness of the issues and the quality of the book yawned as wide. This time, let’s just not bother with the flap; this dim, dishonorable book isn’t worth it.

And perhaps, indeed, it isn’t. Still, as the rituals of the publishing biz dictate, Brother D’Souza has been getting his publicity on since the book’s release last week. Yesterday he had an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle that begins with a piece of logical reasoning that might have done Descartes proud:

The Pelosi Democrats sometimes appear to be just as eager as Osama bin Laden for President Bush to lose his war on terror. Why do I say this? Because if the Pelosi Democrats were seeking Bush’s success, then their rhetoric and actions now and over the past three years are pretty much incomprehensible. By contrast, if you presume that they want Bush’s war on terror to fail, then their words and behavior make perfect sense.

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Shilpa Shames Them All

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I’ve never seen a movie starring Shilpa Shetty. I’ve never watched Big Brother. I had no idea until this post on SepiaMutiny that Shilpa Shetty would be on Big Brother. Frankly, I didn’t read it because I didn’t care.

So why, in in the name of all that is sacred, have so many of my conversations in the past few days involved the unholy combination of a mediocre Bollywood actress and a revolting reality show?

Sajit recently tackled the growing controversy surrounding the show, so please refer to his post if you need to catch up. That’s were it began for me.

Then Mr. Cicatrix and I randomly channel-surfed our way to a ABC Nightline News segment on the how Shilpa’s quiet dignity was “Uniting India’s Warring Muslims and Hindus.” So sixty years after Partition, THIS is what finally unites?!

190_britain_2.jpg The House of Commons has weighed in. Tony Blair. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Indian Parliament has lodged a formal complaint with the British government. All this over remarks variously described as “girly rivalry,” “bullying,” and “racist abuse.” (link) Remarks made by people so stupid, one thought “Winston Churchill was the first black president of America.” (link)

The talking heads pontificated and culture critics scibbled op-eds. Is it jealousy? Class conflict? Bigotry? Ignorance? (link). Insecurity? Stupidity? (link). A set-up by the show’s creators? (link). Shilpa’s own fault? (Yep. Germaine Greer said it).

The semiotics of racism, of “poppadoms,” “can’t even speak English,” “Shilpa Fuckawallah” and “live in a house or a shack,” have been tossed about selectively and dissected to the point that it’s all just meaningless chatter.

So it was a relief and a surprise to read Martin Jacques’ article in the Guardian (thanks ultrabrown). Jacques, a Fellow at the Asia Research Center at the London School of Economics, roots around the muck to find a very solid reason for why this show is more than a tempest in a teapot, why it resonates so violently in Britain and abroad:

The test of our behaviour, of how racist we are, is no longer what the white British think. That started to change with the self-awareness and growing confidence of our own ethnic minorities. But the matter does not end there. The test now, in this instance, is what Indians in India think, how they perceive us.

As Goody raged and railed against Shetty on Wednesday night’s TV broadcast, she was like a cornered animal, lashing out in every direction against something she clearly detested but also feared and felt threatened by. She was confronted not only with the Other, but a hugely self-confident Other. What could be worse? It was a metaphor for the world that is now rapidly taking shape before our very eyes. (link )

I think he nails it. Continue reading →

On Defending The Others

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My friend Ansour forwarded me this beautifully written Anant Raut article which appeared in Salon.com earlier this week. Raut is a corporate litigation attorney in DC who is representing five so-called “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo. He wrote his piece as an open letter to deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs Cully Stimson, who urged the corporate clients of Raut’s firm to take their business elswhere in response to Raut’s decision to defend these individuals.

According to the article, Stimson stated,

When corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.

I actually don’t disagree entirely with Stimson. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Corporations do have a right to boycott law firms if they disagree with the causes that those firms support through their pro bono work. Similarly, I have a right to boycott Domino’s Pizza, since its founder, Tom Monaghan, is a philanthropist for causes that I disagree with.

That all being said, however, Mr. Stimson comes off as terribly paranoid. If you have to go as far as to bully law firms out of representing certain pro bono clients, it seems as though you must be afraid of those clients receiving a fair trial. Continue reading →

Diplomatic Impunity: Slavery in the Suburbs

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According to a complaint filed this week in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (thanks, tipster Ashwini!), in the summer of 2005 a Kuwaiti diplomat and his wife brought with them to the United States three Indian women as domestic workers. In order to obtain for the workers the appropriate visas, they presented contracts in which they promised each woman a monthly salary in the range of $1,300 for 8 hours of work per day, 6 days per week.

You know where this story is going. Once established at the residence at 7027 Elizabeth Drive in McLean, Va., according to the complaint, the couple proceeded to demand of the three women that they work non stop, 7 days a week, 18 hours a day, for which they were paid in the range of $250 each month, which they never saw as it was sent directly to their families.

The defendants, Waleed al-Saleh and his wife Maysaa al-Omar, abused the workers physically and emotionally:

They were subjected to threats and verbal and physical abuse, including one particularly violent incident in which Sabbithi was knocked unconscious after being thrown against a counter by Al Saleh. The women were often not allowed time to eat or to use the bathroom and frequently were deprived of food. Two of them were allowed one hour off a month to attend church. The workers had their passports taken away and they were isolated from contact with the external world.

“I was scared of my employers and believed that if I ran away or sought help they would harm me or maybe even kill me,” said Kumari Sabbithi, who is now living in New York. “I believed that I had no choice but to continue working for them even though they beat me and treated me worse than a slave.”

Some examples from the complaint: Continue reading →

Posted in Law

Red or Green?

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Red or green? It isn’t just the state question of New Mexico anymore. But we’ll pick up on that in a moment. As some of you may have noticed, I have a fairly liberal personal definition of what constitutes a Desi Angle (TM) for your consideration. Perhaps this is due to my own mixed-up background — subconsciously, I probably worry that if you define desi too narrowly, there won’t be any room left for my mongrel ass. But it’s also that desi angles pop up in the darndest places. For example…

I have been working almost everyday on the drive to the double-wide. The last couple days I moved 53 tons of #2 gravel onto the drive. I believe I will need one more load to have everything covered good on the drive and to have enough to put a few around the entrances to the barns. It gets really muddy anywhere the animals gather up in the winter. At the ends of the barns is a soupy mess. Mud doesnÂ’t bother the cows, but it is a breeding ground for worms. Goats are very succeptable to parasites so they donÂ’t do well in moist places. ItÂ’s also hard on the horsesÂ’ shoes. It seems to suck them right off. Not to mention I hate walking in it.

Monday I noticed someone had used my tractor while I was at work. Turns out BJ had to feed hay to Mamaw and Papaw StaleyÂ’s cattle. Papaw said she did it like she had been doing it all her life. I told him it was just that she had a good teacher. Today I went and set out some rolls of hay to the same cattle. Same story where he has their cattle. Pretty much a soupy mess. They have rented my great uncle FredÂ’s old place and have about 25 head running on it. A few weeks back someone shot two of his cows. They must have done it in the night and just left them to die. There is enough loss in farming without such senseless things as that.

Let’s play Spot the Desi Angle, shall we? In the preceding quote, the Desi Angle is…

(a) Great-uncle Fred is Hindu, and his cows were sacred

(b) The writer is a share-cropper at the Maharishi’s farm in Iowa

(c) The writer is a blogger for an Indian farm equipment company

(d) Don’t be fooled by the names. This story takes place in Madhya Pradesh.

And the answer is… Continue reading →

“Dharmacracy” – Dem Are Crazy

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In a proper Hindu spiritual life you must wake up long before dawn each morning and perform several hours of austerities to center yourself before you engage the tawdry goings-on of the material world. Well this morning I woke up before dawn and contemplated mystical concerns to do with Lords Vishnu and Shiva, as made manifest in my life by the writing of one Jonathan Haidt, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that tipster AfroDesiAc brought to our attention yesterday.

And I feel much wiser for the effort. Consider these insights:

As Democrats change the drapes on Capitol Hill and relegate Republicans to minority status, both parties would do well to look to the ancient East for advice on how opposites should — and should not — work together.

In Hinduism, two of the main gods are Shiva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver. They are not enemies but partners in the governance of the world, and Shiva’s “destruction” is really change, as in the change of seasons or of generations. Another Eastern tradition, the Manichean religion of ancient Persia, holds that the forces of good and evil eternally battle for control of the universe, and we humans get hurt in the process.

Which of these two models is most appropriate for our two-party system? It ought to be Hinduism.

Oh no! It’s the Ancient East again! I will let you read for yourself the full development of this argument — the article, by the way, is entitled “The Spirit of Dharmacracy” — but I ask that you consider whether, in your participation in American political and cultural life, you speak for Shiva or Vishnu:

Robert F. Kennedy spoke for Shiva when he said, “I dream things that never were and say ‘why not?'” … The conservative philosopher Irving Kristol spoke for Vishnu when he said, “Institutions which have existed over a long period of time have Â… a collective wisdom incarnate in them …”

If I want to see Professor Haidt confronted by a frothing-mad female superhero waving instruments of destruction in her numerous arms and hissing at him with a pitch-black tongue, does that mean I speak for Ma Kali? The professor inquires:

How can we make our two-party system more beneficial for the nation? What can we do to become more “Hindu?”

(Insert joke about fistfights in the Lok Sabha here.)

But wait! There’s science behind all this:

In my research on the role that emotions play in morality, I have found that acts of virtue, nobility and honor create feelings of moral elevation in those who witness them.

Alert the IgNobel committee! This is some (sacred) bullshit. Continue reading →

Bigot Brother?

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We reported earlier on Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty’s venture into the Celebrity Big Brother house in the UK. We thought things were going smoothly for her when reader Jai informed us that Shilpa was part of a reshuffle in the house where

“8 housemates voluntarily transferred into an adjoining, and significantly dodgier, “servants’ quarters”, with the intention that the 3 remaining celebrities would be treated like royalty by them. It appears that they all selected the lucky 3 on the basis of them having the highest status in the real world — Shilpa was one of them, along with Jermaine Jackson and a famous director called Ken Russell. So that’s an interesting indication of how they view her.”

Jai signed on again, despite starting a new job (congrats jai!), to let us know how things were progressing for Shilpa and the gang. It seemed she had bonded with the other major stars on the show, especially Jermaine Jackson and Dirk Benedict (Face from the A-team) who was crushing hard core on the Bollywood star. At the same time it seems, Shilpa was also the victim of a lot of bullying and even some acts of racism from some of the housemates (especially the ladies). Over the past few days, fellow participants have called Shilpa “dog, “”The Indian,” and have even mocked her accent. One of the Bullyers according to the Daily Mirror is previous Big Brother winner Jade Goody. Goody, who supports Act Against Bullying, an anti-bullying charity, was swiftly given the boot by the the charity because of her actions. Act Againts Bullyying called Goody’s behaviour “unforgivable”.

Jade’s mother Jackey too got in on the anti-Shilpa act. According to Caroline Malone, who was recently evicted, “Jade’s mum Jackiey hated Shilpa and constantly referred to her as “The Indian” which I found horribly insulting. Jackiey made life purposely difficult for Shilpa – shouting at her for no reason, criticising her cooking, attacking her for being bossy.” (link)

Hey, you don’t like someone? Call them names, use their race, ethnic origin, or anything that makes them different and mock that as well. Have your mom call them names, and have your boyfriend call them names too. That solves everything. It turns out Jade’s boyfriend Jack Tweed— who is also currently in the house, and was alleged to have called Shetty a “paki” when Jade’s mother was evicted last week; Channel 4, the channel on which Big Brother airs, has confirmed that Tweed didn’t call Shetty a Paki, but instead the clearly more civilized, “cunt.” Last night Shetty was in tears and is quoted as saying: “I’m the only one they are mean to, I don’t know why. Nobody is mean to anyone else except me.” (link)

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