Vinay Lal, “The Other Indians”

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A few months ago, in the middle of the Sonal Shah controversy, I wrote a blog post criticizing Vijay Prashad’s The Karma of Brown Folk as a somewhat inadequate historical account of the Indian-American community. The example I focused on was the “Yankee Hindutva” chapter, which I thought was unbalanced and prone to cast aspersions rather than actually illuminate the topic at hand. But other chapters in Prashad’s book have similar problems: Prashad’s book is more a critique of the “desi” community in the U.S. than it is an introduction to it: we are too bourgeois (the “model minority” myth), too racist (i.e., against African-Americans), and too religious.

We now have a more comprehensive introductory book on the history of the South Asian American community, Vinay Lal’s The Other Indians: A Political and Cultural History of South Asians in America (see an earlier post on Vinay Lal by Abhi here). Lal’s book covers some of the same topics as Prashad’s Karma but is much more heavily factual and closely researched -– it’s a work of history rather than a political polemic –- and it’s rich with useful and well-sourced statistics. If I were to ask students to read something about the history of South Asians in the U.S., say, in conjunction with a segment of a course relating to Indian immigrant fiction, I would probably assign this book.

In lieu of a comprehensive review, below are a few highlights and interesting tidbits from The Other Indians that I picked up on: Elihu Yale, early Immigration/Legal issues, Religion, and the old terminology question. Continue reading →

How the Sri Lankan Civil War was Won

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I’ll admit to not following the recently concluded Sri Lankan civil war very closely but other SM bloggers have been. Still, I found this interview with noted Atlantic Monthly correspondent Robert Kaplan quite enlightening about many aspects of the conflict. Kaplan is noted for his relatively unorthodox approach to understanding conflict and in discussing Sri Lanka, he comes out swinging –

MJT: So you just got back from Sri Lanka. What did you see there? What did you learn?

Kaplan: The biggest takeaway fact about the Sri Lankan war that’s over now is that the Chinese won. And the Chinese won because over the last few years, because of the human rights violations by the Sri Lankan government, the U.S. and other Western countries have cut all military aid. We cut them off just as they were starting to win. The Chinese filled the gaps and kept them flush with weapons and, more importantly, with ammunition, with fire-fighting radar, all kinds of equipment. The assault rifles that Sri Lankan soldiers carry at road blocks throughout Colombo are T-56 Chinese knockoffs of AK-47s. They look like AK-47s, but they’re not.

What are the Chinese getting out of this?

Continue reading →

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Progress!

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Finally, the law has changed. Congrats to at the activists in India that made it happen! Our hats off to you.

In a landmark ruling Thursday that could usher in an era of greater freedom for gay men and lesbians in India, New Delhi’s highest court decriminalized homosexuality.

“Discrimination is antithesis of equality,” the judges of the Delhi High Court wrote in a 105-page decision that is the first in India to directly guarantee rights for gay people. “It is the recognition of equality which will foster dignity of every individual,” the decision said.

Homosexuality has been illegal in India since 1861, when British rulers codified a law prohibiting “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” [Link]

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A Little on Gauhar Jaan; and Remix vs. Original?

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I was doing some research this morning on an unrelated topic, when I randomly came across the name Gauhar Jaan, one of the great recording artists in India from the first years of the 20th century. Gauhar Jaan is thought to have sung on the very first recording of a song ever made in India, in 1902. Here is what she sang:

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It’s a kind of Hindustani classical song called a “khayal,” sung, I gather, in Raag Jogiya. At the end of it she says, famously, “My name is Gauhar Jan!”

Who was Gauhar Jaan? Her background, from what I’ve been able to find on the internet, seems remarkable:

Gauhar Jaan was born as Angelina Yeoward in 1873 in Patna, to William Robert Yeoward, an Armenian Jew working as an engineer in dry ice factory at Azamgarh, near Banaras, who married a Jewish Armenian lady, Allen Victoria Hemming around 1870. Victoria was born and brought up in India, and trained in music and dance.

Within a few years in 1879, the marriage ended, causing hardships to both mother and daughter, who later migrated to Banaras in 1881, with a Muslim nobleman, ‘Khursheed’, who appreciated Victoria’s music more than her husband.

Later, Victoria, converted to Islam and changed Angelina’s name to ‘Gauhar Jaan’ and hers to ‘Malka Jaan’. (link)

Through her mother, who depended on the patronage of wealthy Muslim noblemen (I’m presuming she may have been a Tawaif), Gauhar Jaan got training from the best classical music masters in Calcutta at the time. By 1896, she was a star performer in Calcutta, which is how she was able to charge Rs. 3000 in 1902 to have her voice on the first audio recording of an Indian song ever made. Later, Gauhar Jaan became a star all over India. She performed in Madras in 1910, and even performed for King George V when he visited India. She died of natural causes as the palace musician of the Maharajah of Mysore in 1930. (There is a fuller bio of Gauhar Jaan here, at the Tribune. Also, see this profile of Gauhar Jaan.)

Another song Gauhar Jaan was famous for was “Ras ke bhare tore nain,” which I think many readers will find familiar for reasons that will become apparent below. Continue reading →

Sea of Poppies: A Review

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Sea-of-Poppies-BOOKS__.jpg Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies is a remarkable novel, complex and challenging enough to test even the most experienced reader and historian, but relatable and powerful enough to touch someone who solely appreciates a great story. Dickensian in its scope and power, the story follows riveting characters from all origins as they navigate the complex contours of 1830’s opium-ridden India, a land where the weight of history lies heavily, yet identities are transformed overnight.

Warning: Some plot details are included! If you are going to read the book (which you should), read the rest of the review afterwards Continue reading →

“Is this real? Perhaps”: The Best DVD Blurb Ever

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The other day, my wife and her parents picked up a film called “Hum Phirr Mileinge” (sic) from our local Indian store, apparently without reading the blurb on the back.

Just to be clear, I have not altered the following in any way. I just ran it through the scanner, compressed it a little so as not to crash the site, and posted it for you:

hum phirr mileinge compressed small.jpg

If you’re having trouble reading it, never fear; the text is plagiarized verbatim from a Oneindia.in web review. And here is a short excerpt in case you’re too lazy to click:

To put it bluntly, Hum Phirr Mileinge is archaic and outdated. You actually pinch yourself while watching this one. Is this real? Perhaps, director Manish Goel is completely clueless about the kind of cinema being made these days. The direction is unbelievably weak and so is the writing. Frankly, nothing works in this film, except for a couple of tuneful songs [Sandesh Shandilya], which, sadly, show up even if there’s no situation.

Remember, they are trying to sell DVDs with this blurb!

My question for you is this: how do you think this happened? A DVD printing/label company operator phoning it in, or intentional subversion? Continue reading →

RIP Michael Jackson

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Tonight, some of us in the bunker are feeling a bit shell shocked by the news of Michael Jackson’s death. Rajni in particular is taking it quite hard. She was a huge fan and had spent years learning to moonwalk which is actually pretty hard for a monkey.

There was a lot of love for Michael Jackson across South Asia, leading to things like this (Kollywood Tollywood) restaging of one of MJ’s greatest music videos:

And we’ve shared this Bhanga/Breakdancing mashup version of Thriller (set to Tigerstyle’s Nachna Onda Nei) before:

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“Intellectually Black and Socially South Asian”: Michael Muhammad Knight

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Michael Muhammad Knight, who had a pretty rough childhood in upstate New York, converted to Islam as a teenager. He came from an Irish Catholic background, but partly under the influence of Malcolm X and black nationalist Islam, and partly simply as a result of his own idiosyncratic spiritual leanings, he took the Shahadah at age 16, and changed his name to Mikail Muhammad. He traveled to Pakistan to study Islam at the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, under the guidance of Muslim intellectuals he first knew in the U.S. With a convert’s enthusiasm and zeal, he was as a teenager on a course to militancy –- perhaps not so different from John Walker Lindh (he acknowledges some similarities to Lindh at one point in his memoir, Blue-Eyed Devil). But Knight soon became disillusioned with that life and the rigidity of the teachings he was being exposed to, specifically as it seemed to inculcate a negativity in himself he didn’t like.

When Knight returned to the U.S. after a year in Pakistan, he continued to identify as a Muslim, but with a dimension of non-conformist punk rock theatricality. Starting in the early 2000s, Knight became a fixture at Muslim American conferences like ISNA, where he posed himself as a dissenting, outsider kind of figure, next to the well-groomed second-generation Muslim-Americans from Middle Eastern and South Asian backgrounds.

Also, starting around 2003, Knight started circulating a photocopied version of a novel he had written about an imagined community of Muslim punks in Buffalo, New York, called “The Taqwacores” (“Taqwa” can be translated as “God-Consciousness” or “piety” in Arabic). Eventually the book would be formally printed, most recently by an established independent publishing house called Soft Skull Press. Since 2004 Knight has become a bit of a publishing machine, putting out several other books. A documentary has been made about the Islamic punk movement his book helped inspire, and a feature-length film version of “The Taqwacores” is in post-production.

What’s interesting about Knight’s story for our purposes is the role South Asian Americans play in his books, especially Bangladeshis and Pakistani Americans. At one point early in “Blue-Eyed Devil” (and I can’t find the exact passage for some reason), he describes his engagement with Islam in America as “intellectually black and socially South Asian,” and the phrase has stuck with me. Continue reading →

Private Schools in the Desh

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On a more positive note…. City Journal has a review of a fantastic new book chronicling the untold education successes in the 3rd world – “The Beautiful Tree“.

University of Newcastle professor James Tooley journeyed to Hyderabad, India in early 2000 at the behest of the World Bank, to study private schools there. Or, more specifically, to study familiar private schools–that is, those that served the children of middle-class and wealthy families.

But while on a sightseeing excursion to the city’s teeming slums, Tooley observed something peculiar: private schools were just as prevalent in these struggling areas as in the nicer neighborhoods. Everywhere he spotted hand-painted signs advertising locally run educational enterprises. “Why,” he wondered, “had no one I’d worked with in India told me about them?”

The reason no one had “told him about them” was because these private schools were non-chartered, private enterprises operating under the government’s radar — aka “unrecognized institutions.” Instead of the sometimes hundreds of dollars charged by yuppy private schools, these unrecognized institutions often charged as little as $1-$2 per child per month.

I suppose before we get into any other details about these schools, question #1 is – “so how good are they?” And it turns out they are astonishly good –

Continue reading →