SHOULD WE BE PROUD OF BOBBY JINDAL, OR IS HE A CHAMELEON
Subject: [Shakti] Re: Should we be proud of Bobby Jindal?
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> | Shakti-L : News, Views, and Discussion |
> | {issues that affect Hindus Worldwide} |
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> only the hindus house niggers and uncle toms would be proud of this coolie
> who has spit on the sacrifices of his ancestors and accepted the beliefs
> of his former slave masters
> Yashwini1@aol.com wrote: +-----------------------------------------+
> | Shakti-L : News, Views, and Discussion |
> | {issues that affect Hindus Worldwide} |
> +-----------------------------------------+
> Should we be proud of Bobby Jindal?
>
> _http://indiasecular.wordpress.com_ (http://indiasecular.wordpress.com/)
> Courtesy: Times of India
> 28 Oct 2007
>
>
> The election of Bobby Jindal as governor of the US state of Louisiana has
> been greeted exultantly by Indians and Indian-Americans around the world.
> Thereā?T
> s no question that this is an extraordinary accomplishment: a young
> Indian-American, just 36 years old, not merely winning an election but
> doing so on
> the first ballot by receiving more votes than his 11 rivals combined, and
> that
> too in a state not noticeably friendly to minorities. Bobby Jindal will
> now
> be the first Indian-American governor in US history, and the youngest
> currently serving chief executive of an American state. These are
> distinctions of
> which he can legitimately be proud, and it is not surprising that Indians
> too
> feel a vicarious sense of shared pride in his remarkable ascent.
>
> But is our pride misplaced? Who is Bobby Jindal and what does he really
> stand for?
>
> There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of Indian migrants in America:
> though
> no sociologist, iā?Tll call them the atavists and the assimilationists.
> The
> atavists hold on to their original identities as much as possible,
> especially
> outside the workplace; in speech, dress, food habits, cultural
> preferences,
> they are still much more Indian than American.
>
> The assimilationists, on the other hand, seek assiduously to merge into
> the
> American mainstream; they acquire a new accent along with their visa, and
> adopt the ways, clothes, diet and recreational preferences of the
> Americans they
> see around them. (Of course, there are the in-betweens, but weā?Tll leave
> them
> aside for now.) Class has something to do with which of the two major
> categories an Indian immigrant falls into; so does age, since the newer
> generation
> of Indians, especially those born in America, inevitably tend to gravitate
> to
> the latter category.
>
> Bobby Jindal is an assimilationistā?Ts dream. Born to relatively affluent
> professionals in Louisiana, he rejected his Indian name (Piyush) as a very
> young
> child, insisting that he be called Bobby, after a (white) character on the
> popular TV show ā?~The Brady Bunchā?T. His desire to fit in to the
> majority-white
> society he saw around him soon manifested itself in another act of
> rejection:
> Bobby spurned the Hindusim into which he was born and, as a teenager,
> converted to Roman Catholicism, the faith of most white Louisianans.
>
> There is, of course, nothing wrong with any of this, and it is a measure
> of
> his precocity that his parents did not balk at his wishes despite his
> extreme
> youth. The boy was clearly gifted, and he soon had a Rhodes scholarship to
> prove it. But he was also ambivalent about his identity: he wanted to be
> seen
> as a Louisianan, but his mirror told him he was also an Indian. The two of
> us
> won something called an ā?~Excelsior Awardā?T once from the Network of
> Indian
> Professionals in the US, and his acceptance speech on the occasion was
> striking ā?" obligatory references to the Indian values of his parents,
> but a speech
> so American in tone and intonation that he mangled the Indian name of his
> own
> brother. There was no doubt which half of the hyphen this Indian-American
> leaned towards.
>
> But there are many ways to be American, and itā?Ts interesting which one
> Bobby
> chose. Many Indians born in America have tended to sympathise with other
> people of colour, identifying their lot with other immigrants, the poor,
> the
> underclass. Vinita Gupta, in Oklahoma, another largely white state, won
> her
> reputation as a crusading lawyer by taking up the case of illegal
> immigrants
> exploited by a factory owner (her story will shortly be depicted by
> Hollywood,
> with Halle Berry playing the Indian heroine). Bhairavi Desai leads a taxi
> driversā?T union; Preeta Bansal, who grew up as the only non-white child
> in her
> school in Nebraska, became New Yorkā?Ts Solicitor General and now serves
> on the
> Commission for Religious Freedom. None of this for Bobby.
>
> Louisianaā?Ts most famous city, New Orleans, was a majority black town, at
> least until Hurricane Katrina destroyed so many black lives and homes, but
> there
> is no record of Bobby identifying himself with the needs or issues of his
> stateā?Ts black people. Instead, he sought, in a state with fewer than
> 10,000
> Indians, not to draw attention to his race by supporting racial causes.
> Indeed,
> he went well beyond trying to be non-racial (in a state that harboured
> notorious racists like the Ku Klux Klansman David Duke); he cultivated the
> most
> conservative elements of white Louisiana society.
>
> With his widely-advertised piety (he asked his Indian wife, Supriya, to
> convert as well, and the two are regular churchgoers), Bobby Jindal
> adopted
> positions on hot-button issues that place him on the most conservative
> fringe of
> the Republican Party.
>
> Most Indian-Americans are in favour of gun control, support a womanā?Ts
> right
> to choose abortion, advocate immigrantsā?T rights, and oppose school
> prayer
> (for fear that it would marginalise non-Christians). On every one of these
> issues, Bobby Jindal is on the opposite side. Heā?Ts not just
> conservative; on these
> questions, he is well to the right of his own party.
>
> That hasnā?Tt stopped him, however, from seeking the support of
> Indian-Americans. Bobby Jindal has raised a small fortune from them, and
> when he last ran
> (unsuccessfully) for governor in 2004, an army of Indian-American
> volunteers
> from outside the state turned up to campaign for him. Many seemed unaware
> of
> his political views; it was enough for them that he was Indian.
>
> At his Indian-American fundraising events, Bobby is careful to downplay
> his e
> xtreme positions and play up his heritage, a heritage that plays little
> part
> in his appeal to the Louisiana electorate. Indian-Americans, by and large,
> accept this as the price of political success in white America: itā?Ts
> just good
> to have ā?osomeone like usā?¯ in such high office, whatever views he
> professes
> to get himself there.
>
> So Indians beam proudly at another Indian-American success story to go
> along
> with Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, Hargobind Khorana and Subramaniam
> Chandrasekhar, Kal Penn and Jhumpa Lahiri. But none of these Indian
> Americans
> expressed attitudes and beliefs so much at variance with the prevailing
> values of their community. Let us be proud that a brown-skinned man with
> an
> Indian name has achieved what Bobby Jindal has. But let us not make the
> mistake of
> thinking that we should be proud of what he stands for.
> URL:
> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Should_we_be_proud_of_Bobby_Jindal/articleshow/2495846.cms
>
>