Hate crime acquittals in Sikh beating

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Five of Rajinder Singh Khalsa’s attackers were just acquitted on hate crime charges (thanks, Dave). Two were convicted of assault, but the hate crime acquittals sure look like a miscarriage of justice:

A Queens judge rendered mostly not guilty verdicts Monday in the trial of five men accused of attacking a Sikh man in Richmond Hill. All were acquitted of the hate crime charge. Two defendants were found guilty of second degree assault while three others were found guilty only of aggravated harassment…

Queens Supreme Court Justice Seymour Rotker, who conducted the non-jury trial, suggested he didn’t believe at least one of the witnesses and appeared skeptical at the evidence as he rendered the verdict… Rotker said there was “conflicting testimony as to who did what and how” during the July 11, 2004 beating… Police said Khalsa was attacked by the men who were at a christening at a catering hall next to an Indian restaurant. [Link]

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The foreign policy advisor

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The United States has a big thorn its side. His name is Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. The man seems to be on a crusade to limit America’s sphere of influence in South America and thwart U.S. foreign policy (a.k.a. oil policy) as best he can. Some have even called for his assassination. Global Policy.org has one perspective:

Chavez has always been outspoken in condemning what he calls “U.S. imperialism,” mocking President Bush as “Mr. Danger” and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as “Mr. War.” But Venezuelan officials insist that his recent threats to sever ties with Washington — thereby suspending the export of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day — are more than the rhetoric of a populist rallying domestic support. “When the president talks, it is not a joke,” said Mary Pili Hernandez, a senior Foreign Ministry official. “The only country Venezuela has bad relations with is the United States; with all other countries we have good or very good relations. But with just one word, the U.S. could resolve all of the problems. That word is ‘respect.’ ”

Chavez asserts that the 21st-century equivalent of the Cold War is the developed world’s thirst for oil — and its attempts to manipulate weaker governments to secure it. Oil-rich Venezuela sells 60 to 65 percent of its crude oil to the United States, making it the fourth-largest oil supplier to the U.S. market. This year, near-record-high oil prices have helped Chavez finance a variety of social programs that he vows will make the country more independent of U.S. influence.

Observers say the oil revenue also has emboldened Chavez’s foreign policy strategy. He has recently inked oil agreements with Argentina, Brazil and his Caribbean neighbors and has launched efforts to strengthen ties with China through oil accords. Rafael Quiroz, an oil industry analyst in Caracas, said the Chavez government believes that the conflict between developing countries endowed with such natural resources and nations with high demands will only intensify in coming years. Chavez would like to precipitate that conflict, Quiroz said. “I think he’s correct to try to speed up that kind of confrontation, because the developing world — where 85 percent of world reserves are — will stand in a better place after that,” Quiroz said. “Every day it is more apparent that oil is fundamental for Venezuela in its international relations, and it is the main ingredient Chavez uses to form strategic alliances.”

SM tipster Sluggo informs us that one of Chavez’s top foreign policy advisors is a Sri Lankan-Canadian human rights activist named Sharmini Peries, who was a journalist with Frontline India before working with Chavez. After interviewing him she joined his cause.

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Boulevard of broken dreams

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CityWalk, an outdoor mall in Hollywood, figures prominently in two terrible date flicks I saw this weekend, Shopgirl and Deewane Huye Paagal. Perhaps I can spare you the pain.

· · · · ·

In the Anand Tucker-directed Shopgirl, the extremely funny Jason Schwartzman takes Claire Danes out on a date to CityWalk just to sit and watch its theater marquee from the outside because he doesn’t have the cheddar to take them both. ‘Well, we could split it,’ she says cautiously. To repeat an old joke, she offers her honor, he honors her offer, and all night long it’s ‘honor’ and ‘offer.’ Tucker, whose father is desi, serves up this mini-haha:

‘Lisa?’
‘Ray.’
‘Lisa Ray, it’s nice to meet you.’

I’m not sure whether Tucker’s Bolly-aware enough to sneak in a desi shout-out, but producer Ashok Amritraj certainly is. Sadly, the rest of this bildungsroman about a lonely salesgirl is so slow-moving and trite that the little double entendre was my highlight. Steve Martin sleepwalks through the movie. The Martin I loved from Roxanne in junior high still makes movies for 12-year-olds — saccharine, kiddie and devoid of edge. His novella-based voiceovers are from the Bulwer-Lytton school of writing. Danes’ character spends much of the movie next to glove mannequins, disembodied hands pointing at the sky. Hands beseeching heaven are exactly what came to mind when I realized how long this movie ran.

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Who has better madrasas? Pakistan or India?

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Relax. That was a rhetorical question. After the July 7th bombings in London, the Pakistani government was “persuaded” to adopt a policy that denies entry to all foreign students who wish to enroll in its madrasas. That decision however, does not include expeling current foreign students (including western students). For those people that don’t know, many of Pakistan’s madrasas are where future terrorists learn Islamofacism 101. They are analogous to the stagnant ponds that result in a swarm of deadly mosquitos flying forth. However, many of Pakistan’s clerics don’t like this new policy. Why? Free-market principles result in those foreign students that are denied entry to Pakistan, heading across the border for schooling in India. Mid-day.com reports:

This seems to be a classic case of neighbour’s envy. Muslim clerics in Pakistan are miffed over its government’s recent decision which denies entry to foreign students coming to Pakistan’s seminaries, better known as madrasas, for training. What has particularly irked the clerics is that these students are now looking across the border and enrolling themselves in Indian madrasas for their religious training.

“Denying entry to foreign students in our seminaries and allowing them to get admissions in Indian seminaries will certainly improve India’s overall image in the Muslim world at the cost of Pakistan’s reputation,” says Hanif Jalandhari, head of the Wafaq-ul-Madaris al-Arabia, largest among the five Wafaq boards that have sole control of over 9,000 seminaries across Pakistan.

That quote would be funny if that cleric wasn’t serious. Is he actually suggesting that Pakistan’s madrasas have a good reputation? I honestly have no idea how India’s madrasas compare, but they MUST compare favorably. Some foreign students currently enrolled in the madrasas believe that the Pakistani government will relax its rules once international attention on the London bombings fades. Some of these students are simply extending their Visas, betting on a reversal. Continue reading →

The Rise of Taj

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A franchise is born. The circle is now complete. And he who was once the pupil has now become the master –

Yes, it’s actually happening: the sequel to Van Wilder: Party Liaison is coming together.

The focus of Van Wilder II: The Rise Of Taj is (unsuprisingly) Kal Penn’s character from the first movie. He’ll head to Oxford University to continue his studies and end up showing us stuffy Brits how to party.

Ryan Reynolds is not expected to appear in this follow-up, to be directed by Boat Trip’s Mort Nathan.

The Hollywood Reporter answers the question so many of us are no doubt asking – why?

Bauer Martinez Distribution has acquired North American distribution rights to “Van Wilder II: The Rise of Taj.” The film, being produced by Tapestry Films, is shooting in Romania. “Wilder II” is the sequel to 2002’s “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder,” which made $21 million at the boxoffice but went on to become a cult hit on DVD.

Where once the box office determined our hero’s fate, ’tis now Blockbuster, Netflix, and direct DVD sales.

Keep an eye on IMDB for details as they emerge. Kal Penn will also have a prominent role in next year’s Superman Returns.

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There’s no monopoly on cliched orientalism

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The previously blogged Desi-opoly is finally available in the UK, just in time for the holidays. With this board game, the desi diaspora has just joined the ranks of Nascar, Garfield, the Powerpuff Girls, Star Wars (both old and new), as well as towns like Swansea and Wigan as official monopoly themes.

The Desi Monopoly website toots its own horn louder than the Bollywood Brass Band:

It is very exciting news that the South Asian community is Passing GO. It is widely acknowledged that the South Asian community have played a significant role in contributing to the recent success and culture of the UK and the new Monopoly UK Desi Edition celebrates this. [Link]

But the game hardly celebrates the contributions of BritAsians to the UK. It’s basically the same game with a bit of mirch-masala mixed in:

the properties are a mix of Indian icons (famous train stations, the Taj) and Asian neigbourhoods in Britain. [Link]

… along with a ton of hackneyed desi cliches for good measure. The images in the strip on the right are just some of the pictures used on the box. They include a brocaded sari, a woman meditating, a woman doing classical dance, a tiger, a rickshaw wallah and yes … the Taj Mahal. This from the same country that brought us “Goodness Gracious Me“, “The Kumars At No 42” and the “Funjabis?”

Who needs white people when we exoticize ourselves so thoroughly, for so little. At least the monopoly guy wasn’t morphed into the Air India man …

Related posts: I want to be the three-wheeled scooter, M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo

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How to write an India story

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Pop quiz: what is this NYT story about?

Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction, thinks otherwise. She is angry, say the colorfully garbed women massing in the holy tree’s dappled shade…

… idol-makers… came from their villages to work their craft for Calcutta’s festival for the 10-armed goddess, Durga, the invincible killer of demons. Statues of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, lay cast off under the highway overpass, waiting to be resurrected. [Link]

If you said ‘a mundane highway appropriations bill,’ you’re psychic. New India hands, dust off that pith helmet and shake off those jodhpurs. Here’s the official NYT checklist on what must go into an India story (and what did, in fact, go into this one):

Taj Mahal
Sacred cows
Camels
Holy trees
Benares
Ganga
Hindu theology
Bullock carts
Rickshaw-wallas
Awkward polytheism metaphor
Religious nuts from small towns
British colonialism
Kali (bonus points!)

Mmm, I love the smell of incense in the morning. This story has that touch of Orientalism which wins Pulitzers. What, no bride-burning, snake charmers or Thuggees? If Amy Waldman keeps it up, she could pen something for the South Asian fiction shelves. Maybe it’ll even have mehndi hands and a sari border. Calling Lady Mountbatten — she’s truly gone native.

Here in NYC, we just passed a referendum to build a new Second Avenue subway. The Calcutta Telegraph’s coverage would be terribly incomplete unless it included the following:

The Mall of the Americas
Dogs which are (gasp!) allowed into houses
Buffaloes
Pat Robertson
The Virgin Mary toast
Christian theology
Farm tractors
Windshield men
Awkward Crusades metaphor
Religious nuts from small towns
British colonialism
Waco (bonus points!)

Otherwise, your readers might not grasp the story. And we can’t have any cultural misunderstanding here. It might make Jesus angry.

Related posts: M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo

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Conversion Factors

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One of my most terribly Americanized tendencies is to find out what’s going on in India mostly from non-Indian sources. For example, while editing an article about prison rape, I ran across a couple of press releases by a Southern Baptist organization that was trumpeting its success in Christianizing higher caste Hindus. Presumably their particular delight in making inroads in this sector of Indian society is not due to caste snobbery as such, but to missionizing’s generally having its best luck among marginalized groups rather than the mainstream. This is true not only for Christianity in India, but also of Islam in the United States, which found many more converts among African Americans, particularly those who were imprisoned, than among affluent whites.

My reaction to this news was complex. On one hand, I’m very opposed to the laws in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat that briefly attempted to ban mythical “forced conversions” and required people to register any change in religion with the government. If people wish to peacefully convince others of a particular belief, even one with which I don’t agree, they should be free to do so without fear of punishment or deportation.

On the other hand, I find conversion activity vaguely displeasing because it inherently pre-supposes the superiority of one religious faith over another. For whatever reason, I don’t mind thinking liberalism preferable to conservatism, capitalism to communism, but a similar judgment on religions tends to raise my hackles. Moreover, one could claim that the Indian government appears to treat all conversion activity as objectionable, even when it doesn’t involve Hindus. Ennis’s mention of Indian Jews two months ago neglected to note that the Indian government objected to having the previously-Christianized, long-ago descendants of Jews officially converted to Judaism on Indian soil. Continue reading →

Reading the fine print in textbooks

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I had previously blogged about how Indian community leaders in the Virginia suburbs had petitioned to update the textbooks that high school students use. These textbooks are often riddled with gross inaccuracies about India and Hinduism. Parents and community leaders in California have been pursuing a similar goal there, but the results have been mixed and now a significant group has voiced opposition to some changes. This begs a closer look at possible hidden agendas. New American Media reports:

Don’t stand so, Don’t stand so close to me…

Some Hindu and Sikh activists in the U.S. who have been trying in recent months to persuade the California Board of Education to adopt curriculum revisions in textbooks for elementary and middle school students say they are unhappy over the direction their efforts seem to have taken while on the home stretch.

A clutch of academics and historians, who have just recently joined the debate, seems to have neutralized the gains the activists believe they had made. The academics weighed in with their views Nov. 8, which collectively dismiss many of the curriculum changes suggested over the past year by individual Hindus, as well as such organizations as the Vedic Foundation and the Hindu Education Society.

For example, one of the statements Hindu activists want deleted from a social science book is that Aryans were a “part of a larger group of people historians refer to as the Indo-Europeans.”

The activists assert Aryans were not a race, but a term for persons of noble intellect. The academics have urged that this statement not be removed.

In that same book, Hindu activists want the statement, “Men had many more rights than women,” replaced with, “Men had different duties (dharma) as well as rights than women. Many women were among the sages to whom the Vedas were revealed.”

The response from the academics? “Do not change original text.”

It seems that many of the academics and historians that have voiced opposition to certain changes are suspicious of the motives of some of the Hindu activists. This group of academics includes Romila Thapar.

Writing on behalf of the academics, Michael Witzel, a Sanskrit professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., asserted that the groups proposing the changes have a hidden agenda.

“The proposed revisions are not of a scholarly but of a religious-political nature, and are primarily promoted by Hindutva supporters and non-specialist academics writing about issues far outside their area of expertise,” Witzel wrote to CBE president Ruth Green in the letter.

Among the 45 or so signatories to his letter are Stanley Wolpert, professor of history at UCLA, and Romila Thapar, India’s well-known historian.

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