At a street fair in Queens, the multifaceted South Asian community came together for a celebration of art and music, but also to talk about pressing issues in their community like foreclosures and domestic violence.
By Aswini Anburajan, Feet in Two Worlds reporter
It was easier with Gandhi. Now that’s a movie a country and its people can love, wrap their arms around, and shout praise to. Love, peace, and Satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) — they roll off the tongue with an easy lilt that represents the best of what India has to offer.
Not the case with Slumdog Millionaire. There’s the ambiguity. What does it mean? There’s the connotation. The only other compound word that begins with “slum” and easily comes to mind is slumlord. It doesn’t quite inspire you to go out and change the world.
A scene from Slumdog Millionaire
On the surface it appears that India is celebrating the success of Slumdog Millionaire, the unlikely independent, low-budget film that swept the Oscars. Thousands crowded the airport in Mumbai to greet the cast upon their return from the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles. The evening news in the U.S. beamed back images of the film’s youngest stars riding the shoulders of the crowd, their small hands clutching golden statuettes to shouts of “Jai Ho,” the title of A.R. Rahman’s Oscar-winning song from the movie.
But the post-Oscar celebrations and the Western embrace of Slumdog Millionaire mask a heated debate over the movie among Indians around the world.
Listserves for Indian American groups, such as the South Asian Women’s Collective in New York and South Asian Sisters in San Francisco, are brimming with comments about the film and links to blogs written by amateur and professional writers who either praise or condemn the film’s depictions of corruption and poverty. The South Asian Journalist Association (SAJA) has held four webcasts to date to discuss the implications of the movie and the heated controversy it has generated. Rediff.com, the largest Indian news website, has an entire page dedicated to international coverage of Slumdog.
The arguments range from the right to tell the story – India seen at its worst through British eyes doesn’t help the film’s cause – to charges that the film’s producers and British director Danny Boyle exploited the young children in the movie, plucked them from the slums, paid them little and failed to provide additional compensation when the film shot to global prominence. (more…)
As if the global economic outlook wasn’t bleak enough already, India now has its own financial scandal to add to the bad news.
Ramalingan Raju, Satyam founder and chairman (Reuters)
What’s known as the Satyam scandal — after information technology outsourcing firm Satyam Computer Services — became big news on Jan. 7, when chairman Ramalingam Raju resigned, admitting the company had inflated its profits over several years and falsified accounts and assets.
The company’s shares plummeted 80 percent and sent markets “on a tailspin,” wrote Reuters’ Sumeet Chatterjee, who called the case “India’s biggest corporate scandal in memory.” The Satyam case has become India’s own equivalent of the revelations about Bernard Madoff’s alleged swindle in the U.S.
WHAT: From India’s IBN news network: Terrorists equipped with heavy machine guns, including AK-47s and grenades, strike at the city’s most high-profile targets: the Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) rail terminus; the landmark Taj Hotel at the Gateway, and the luxury Oberoi Trident at Nariman Point. Attacks started at Cafe Leopold, a place popular with foreigners. There were other shootouts at Cama hospital and near the Metro cinema.
From India Times: Terrorists struck in at least ten places. They took hostages at the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, and Nariman House.
WHEN: The attacks started around 9.30 pm Wednesday in Mumbai, Wednesday shortly after noon New York time. Twenty-four hours later, as of Thursday evening in Mumbai, (11 am in New York) fighting continued, and explosions were reported at the Oberoi and Taj Hotel.
WHO: An unknown group, the Deccan Mujahideen, has claimed responsibility. India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country.”
CASUALTIES: As of Thursday 11 am New York time, authorities were reporting 125 dead and 327 injured.
SCALE: From the International Herald Tribune: “Even by the standards of terrorism in India, which has suffered a rising number of attacks this year, the assaults were particularly brazen in scale, coordination and execution. The attackers moved against their targets after arriving at the Nariman Point district on boats.”
IMPACT: IBN says: “26/11/2008 will go down as one of the darkest days in the history of Mumbai and India. Life in the country’s financial capital remains paralysed as terrorists hold the city under siege. In a heinous terror attack that the country has seen in recent times, Mumbai came under an unprecedented night attack.”
LINKS: From The Associated Press: “Westerners in India’s financial center were targeted in the spectacular attack comprised of multiple, simultaneous assaults — a signature of past al-Qaida actions including the Sept. 11 attacks. But the Indian attack was carried out by gunmen and not the suicide bombers frequently employed by al-Qaida and its affiliates.”
From The Guardian: Linking the attacks to al-Qaida “was an immediate, simplistic — and probably misleading — response to the attacks on big hotels, seen as western targets, in Mumbai. Certainly, the terrorists appeared to be Muslim extremists. Although they must have assumed they were going to be killed even though they took hostages, the attackers were not suicide bombers, overt martyrs of the kind we have witnessed elsewhere — in London, Iraq, and now in Afghanistan — since the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.”
A FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT: From India Uncut blog:
…we headed to All Stir Fry, the restaurant in the Gordon House Hotel in a lane down from there. They told us we’d have to wait 20 minutes. We stepped out again, and as we did so, we heard gunshots, and saw people running towards us from the left side.
One of the hotel employees rushed out and told us to get back in. “There must have been an encounter,” he said. “Get back in, you’ll be safe inside.”
We followed him in. We waited in the lounge-bar upstairs for a while. The big screen there was showing cricket. India won. Then someone changed the channel.
That’s when we realised that this was much more than a random police encounter, or a couple of gunshots. We heard that terrorists with AK-47s had opened fire outside Leopold’s, the pub down the road. We heard there was firing elsewhere in the city as well, including in the Taj. We watched transfixed, and as the apparent scale of the incidents grew, we realised we couldn’t go home. We asked if they had a room vacant; they did, so we settled in, switched on the TV, and watched in horror.
The South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), a New York based organization, is coordinating coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks on the Web.
The SAJA web site contains numerous links to blogs, webcasts, twitter feeds, and web sites that are following the unfolding story in the Indian city. Among the stories being covered are the economic, political and security implications of the attack.
SAJA says they will offer updated webcasts about the situation in Mumbai on their site at 10 AM and 10 PM EST on Thursday, November 27.
SAJA is also helping news organizations cover the story by connecting news organizations to eye witnesses, and connecting editors to journalists in the area.
Two of President-elect Obama’s early picks for his transition team and White House staff have stirred sharp debate among immigrant and ethnic groups in the US and overseas. One was the designation of Chicago Congressman Rahm Emanuel as the incoming White House chief of staff. The other, the selection of Indian American economist Sonal Shah, head of Global Development Initiatives at Google.org and a former Treasury Department and National Security Council official, to Obama’s transition team.
The choice of Emanuel caused some initial discomfort among two groups: pro-immigration advocates and pro-Palestinian groups. Demonstrating the fine line the president-elect has to walk in choosing a cabinet, Emanuel’s designation was greeted with optimism by Polish Americans, who make up a significant proportion of the population in Emanuel’s congressional district in Chicago.
If the presidential primaries are any indication, voter turnout on November 4 will be very heavy. Some electoral analysts believe this will be especially true in key ethnic communities, including among Latinos, who appear set to turn out in record numbers. At a recent Feet in Two Worlds town hall forum on “Deconstructing the Immigrant Vote,” political organizers and ethnic media journalists agreed that anger is among the most important factors motivating immigrant voters this year.
Journalist Pilar Marrero speaks at the forum on Deconstructing the Immigrant Vote at the New School. Josh Hoyt, Executive Director, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and journalist Aswini Anburajan were also on the panel.
“When an electorate gets angry they go out and vote,” said Feet in Two Worlds journalist Aswini Anburajan. “And it’s starting to mobilize people.”
According to Arturo Vargas, Executive Director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), anti-immigrant laws and rhetoric have been “the driving force” pushing a growing number of Latino immigrants to become naturalized citizens. “It’s out of anger, it’s out of fear, and it’s out of the sense that if they become a citizen and vote it’s an act of self defense,” he said.
Arturo Vargas, Executive Director of NALEO responds to a story by Pilar Marrero on Latino ‘s who are becoming citizens so they can vote in this year’s election.
Speaking to an audience at The New School, where the forum was held, Vargas said Congress’ failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform is also motivating Latino voters. “We saw it in 2006 when millions of people took to the streets of America demanding … immigration reform.” Vargas noted that many of the protesters in ’06 were teenagers who have since reached voting age. “We have now a new generation of Latino youth who have reached the age of 18 in a very politicized environment where their consciousness has been raised,” Vargas said. “They told us two years ago, ‘Today we march, tomorrow we vote.’ Well, tomorrow has arrived.”
It’s not just Hispanics who may vote out of anger. Asian American outrage over a racially charged remark by U.S. Senator George Allen of Virginia played a key role in his razor-thin loss to Democrat Jim Webb in 2006. Webb’s victory gave the Democrats control of the Senate for the first time since 1994. (more…)
In recognition that the real deal-making at the party conventions happens not in the spotlight of primetime but in the backrooms off the convention hall, a morning breakfast yesterday between Indian and Jewish Americans underscored the role both groups hope to play in helping finalize the U.S-India civil nuclear power deal in the coming months.
Arranged by the American Jewish Committee, the breakfast on “Advancing Indian-Jewish relations” focused heavily on the importance of passing the civil nuclear deal not just for the betterment of India’s future, but also for Israel’s.
Allowing India to have a nuclear program would ensure that, “Israel doesn’t stand alone with a bunch of bad guys without having a good guy in the mix,” said Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY). “Israel gets cover,” Ackerman said, acknowledging the widespread belief that Israel has a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
While the U.S.-India nuclear agreement is ostensibly meant to ease the import of material needed for generating power, India’s nuclear weapons program has caused the international community to lump the country in with Iran and North Korea for violating or sidestepping international non-proliferation agreements. But Ackerman and representatives from the Indian and Israeli consulate generals said the international community should make an exception for the world’s largest democracy.
Jewish support for the Indian nuclear energy deal has been critical in helping to get it passed by Congress, according to Indian fundraisers and political staffers at the breakfast.
Swadesh Chatterjee, a longtime Indian American fundraiser at the breakfast who has lobbied hard for the nuclear deal, said that the Indian community lacked the legislative clout to lobby for the deal and that support from the Jewish community and Israel supporters had been “critical.”
Ackerman pledged that Jewish politicians and the community as a whole would continue to push for the passage of the civil nuclear deal.
The tough talk on foreign policy was cushioned by stressing perceived cultural similarities between the two groups. Participants repeatedly referred to the notion that Indians and Jews in the United States form a natural alliance and share an emphasis on family, a strong work ethic and a commitment to education.
“We recognize we have two mothers,” Ackerman said of the allegiance that both groups felt for their respective homelands.
Ackerman said that it appeared unlikely the civil nuclear deal will pass before Congress adjourns on September 26th despite Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice’s statement that it is a policy priority. The deal has to be ratified by the 45-nation nuclear supplier group before it comes back to Congress for a final vote. Ackerman warned that they couldn’t allow the bill to get, “amended to death,” in Congress. He also said that despite the support that both presidential candidates have expressed for the deal, neither candidate would be likely to sign it without re-visiting the agreement.
Continuing a trend by ethnic communities to increase voter participation in this election cycle, the Indian American Leadership Initiative has launched a Facebook application to get Desis (South Asians) to vote.
The EveryDesiVote Application on Facebook allows users to scan their friends to see who has a confirmed voter registration. Users are asked to invite friends who are not registered or who don’t have a confirmed to registration to use the tool to check their status or use an online national voter registration application built by Rock the Vote.
The program is one of several initiatives by IALI, a progressive PAC, to increase Indian American participation in this election as well as a sign of how important Facebook and other networking tools have become to political organizing.
The note to IALI members informs them that Indian Americans are one of the, “worst performing ethnicities to register to vote in the U.S.” Nationwide there are about 1.5 million Indian Americans who are U.S. citizens. About half that number are registered to vote, and actual voter participation among that group is low, per a spokesman for the group.
IALI’s goal is to put Indian Americans on the map as a voting bloc that matters, and they are looking for high turnout among the community in states like Virginia and Ohio where they could have a measurable electoral impact.
Last week in northern Virginia, Indian American progressive activists sponsored a South Asians for Obama event where the Indian American actor, Kal Penn spoke. Penn pointed to the “macaca’ incident of 2006 as an example of how the community could be the key to an electoral victory. In August 2006, then -Senator George Allen (R-VA) called a young Indian-American opposition researcher a “macaca” at a public event. The slur was caught on YouTube and galvanized the community in support of Allen’s challenger, Democrat Jim Webb.
“Thirty thousand Indian Americans live in Northern Virginia,” Penn told the crowd of young South Asians and reminded them that Webb beat Allen, the incumbent, by around six thousand votes.
The use of Facebook and Kal Penn as a campaign surrogate for the Obama campaign shows that much of the group’s efforts so far have been focused on second generation Indian Americans. However, the group is reported to also be conducting focus groups with older Indian Americans on their political views, in order to more effectively reach out to them.
In the media frenzy over the Latino vote and the candidates’ recent speeches before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and National Council of La Raza, scant attention has been paid to Barack Obama’s increasing levels of outreach to other ethnic groups, notably Asian-Americans.
In June, Obama’s Indonesian-American sister Maya Soetoro-Ng appeared at a fundraiser targeting Asian voters in California, where she described Obama’s youth in Indonesia and Hawaii (a state where 56% of the population is Asian-American) in an effort to highlight his close ties to their community. Earlier, Soetoro-Ng’s Chinese-Canadian husband Konrad Ng told the New York-based Chinese newspaper World Journal that Obama was deeply influenced by Asian cultural values as a result of his upbringing. This appeal to Asian-Americans will likely increase as Soetoro-Ng continues to campaign more aggressively in the fall and as the campaign makes a more deliberate effort to engage ethnic media to reach voters.
The renewed emphasis on Asian Americans is part of Obama’s evolution in branding from a “post-racial” candidate at the start of the election cycle- remember his “swift and unequivocal” dismissal of race in November 2006—to that of a multiracial candidate who embraces his multicultural identity. Soetero-Ng acknowledged in an Associated Press interview that during the primary season,“the idea was to downplay to some degree race and ethnicity.” But the national maelstrom created by Rev. Wright’s comments and the burgeoning importance of Latino voters lessens the possibility of the campaign doing so now. (more…)
