First, a quick background. For those of you who aren’t already familiar with the subjects of this post, Anand Jon is the 30-something Indian-born fashion designer who is currently awaiting trial in the U.S. on multiple counts of rape, including the rape of minors. Most of these alleged rapes took place through “casting couch” situations and involved young models. You can get a quick re-cap on the specifics here and here and here.

As far as Narendra Modi, most people don’t need a recap of his sordid history. He is the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat, and many both there and abroad feel he was complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims (see our archives or here and here). Others however, including many American Gujaratis (especially hotel owners) admire him for his economic policies and his “tough stance” against Muslims. They support him vociferously from the U.S.

So what is the admitedly loose connection between these two individuals that motivated me to write this post? Both of these men, in there own way, have become symbols of Indian Nationalism and are being used as vehicles to enflame Nationalistic sentiments (with varying success) both in India and the U.S.

I started to think about this at a party over the weekend when my friend Ankur asked me if I had seen an interview in the print edition of India Abroad, a weekly NRI newspaper owned by Rediff.com. He said the interview was of Sanjana Jon defending her brother. I have not seen the India Abroad issue of which he speaks, but I am quite familiar with the campaign to use the media to recast Jon as a martyr of some sort.

Jacob Joseph (an ex-SM commenter), the lead blogger over at The Great Indian Mutiny blog captures the essence of this campaign quite well in a recent “interview” he conducted with Sanjana Jon. [Disclaimer: Sepia Mutiny readers should be made aware that The Great Indian Mutiny was named after this blog. They even call themselves…mutineers. Except their Mutiny is purer. Indian only (no People of Indian Origin fakers who give a bad name to Indians everywhere)]. Here is the “interview” (and I use the term loosely) of Anand Jon’s sister as posted on Joseph’s blog:

Following my earlier post on Anand Jon, someone named GWB left a link to a Dallas Observer article about him. Although GWB claimed it gives you ‘both sides’ of the story, I found it too one sided. I decided to get in touch with Sanjana Jon, his sister, to get some questions answered.

Here is the chat transcript:

Mutiny: Sanajana, let me start by asking you how your mother is doing? It must be pretty tough for a mother to have her son in prison and acussed of these crimes.
Sanjana Jon: I dont want to describe how she feels but not just as a mother and sister but as people who worked with him and lived with him-knowing that none of this ever happened it is traumatizing and kills us seeing this injustice. [Link]

Quick. I’m not a journalist but don’t you learn (on the first day of Journalism school) to make fun of someone who begins an interview with “…let me start by asking you how your mother is doing?” I don’t blame Sanjana for saying whatever she has to in order to help keep bro out of jail, but come on! Continue reading →