Shiv Sena/Thackeray (The Pat Buchanan of India)

Some things will never change. The fundamental hatred that resides within some people will never go away and they will continue to do whatever they can to destroy whoever they deem their enemy. In the 60's, the enemy was "South Indians" who "emigrated" from their "native lands like Kerala and Madras" and moved to Bombay to "take away jobs from locals" = so thugs wandered the streets of Bombay and beat up anyone they deemed were from the South. Today apparently they are going after people from Uttar Pradesh. Tomorrow it could be the Gujaratis, the Marwaris, the business people - after all, businessmen make money off poor people and so must be evil. And they can target another group and keep on going till they exterminate everyone who does not conform to the Shiv Sena ideals. Bal Thackeray that Grandfather of a Hindu Racist has professed admiration for Hitler himself. Ah, yes, I can see Hitler welcoming a dark skinned Thackeray for espousing purity of clans and castes and all that.

Here is an article from the New Republic.

"THE PAT BUCHANAN OF INDIA.

Snub-continent

by Isaac Chotiner
Post date: 05.18.07
Issue date: 05.21.07

Mumbai, India

ast year, a 25-year-old Mumbai native named Savita went out with her boyfriend to celebrate Valentine's Day. (The names of characters in this piece have been changed to protect their identities.) The couple chose an expensive Middle Eastern restaurant in Mumbai where, a few minutes into the meal, a group of men burst in and began to verbally harass them. "Why are you celebrating this American holiday?" they demanded before leaving. After Savita and her date finished their meal, they found the same group waiting for them outside. The men beat Savita's companion badly. "He bled all over and had to be taken to the doctor," Savita recalls. "His nose was broken."

Savita told me her story as we sat in a quiet Thai restaurant near the ocean. As its variety of cuisines demonstrates, this cosmopolitan port city of 13 million is a diverse mélange of cultures, home to both Bollywood and the Bombay Stock Exchange. It's not the kind of place where one expects to find a violent hoard of Valentine's Day haters. But not only does such a group exist--it is the city's ruling political party. The men who attacked Savita's friend were members of Shiv Sena, a group of Marathi Hindus (Hindus from the Indian state of Maharashtra, which includes Mumbai) who, in elections this past February, re-secured their complete control of Mumbai's municipal government. Shiv Sena, which means "Army of Shiva" (the founder of the Maratha Empire), incites violence and unrest over what it deems improper cultural or religious events--from Valentine's Day to Richard Gere's recent public smooch of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. More ominously, it preaches contempt for foreigners, Muslims, and non-Marathi Hindus.

As Shiv Sena demonstrates, India is going through a debate over immigration and national identity very similar to our own. But, instead of hanging out by the border peering through binoculars, India's Minutemen are actually running one of the country's major states--the Indian equivalent of California. In Mumbai, Shiv Sena has even promised to end migration into the city. How did a party bent on exploiting every ethnic and religious fault line manage to gain control of the most cosmopolitan city in the world's largest multi-ethnic democracy? And what does this tell us about the United States?

n a hot morning in March, a 28-year-old bellman named Firoz, whom I had met through a mutual friend, brought me to Shiv Sena's nondescript, multi-storied headquarters to hear a speech on Marathi values. As a foreigner, I was seated separately from Firoz in the women's section, which is closer to the stage; the party may not be too fond of American culture, but it treats foreign journalists with fawning courtesy. Meenakshi, the young woman sitting next to me, took my pen and notepad and translated from the Marathi: "He is telling all of us, young Marathis, to fight for our rights. We must not let anyone take away what is ours." "Long speech," I scribbled as the speaker droned on. In front of my words, she wrote "a very" and grinned.

Afterward, I mentioned to Meenakshi that she did not strike me as someone who would follow Shiv Sena. "Everyone in my neighborhood does," she said. "It would not make any sense for me to oppose them."

Much of Shiv Sena's success lies in the displacement of the Marathi community in central Mumbai. In the 1950s, immigrants from all over India began to pour into the city for jobs, and many native Marathis began to feel marginalized and shut out of the workforce. Into this void stepped Bal Thackeray--"the Tiger," as his supporters call him--a former political cartoonist bent on reasserting the rights of Marathis. In 1966, he founded Shiv Sena; and, by 1984, he had allied it with the BJP, the major right-wing Hindu nationalist force in India. Over the next two decades, international companies moved in and real estate prices skyrocketed, forcing Marathis into the suburbs. "After the economy began to heat up, the Marathi got dispersed and dislocated," says Kumar Ketkar, the editor of the Marathi paper Loksata ("People Power"). Thackeray capitalized on this--vocally championing the rights of native Hindus. By the mid-'90s, the "Sons of the Soil," as Shiv Sena is called, had completely taken over Mumbai's government. (Thackeray had the city, formerly the anglicized "Bombay," renamed in an "anti-imperialist" gesture in 1995.)

Thackeray's rise has not been without controversy: He is widely assumed to have been behind the 1992 Hindu-Muslim riots, in which approximately 1,200 Muslims were killed, and a variety of other attacks on non-Hindus. As for Thackeray's affection for the Führer, he told an Asian newspaper, "I am a great admirer of Hitler, and I am not ashamed to say so! ... Actually, we have too much sham-democracy in this country. What India really needs is a dictator who will rule benevolently, but with an iron hand."

Shiv Sena is currently led by Uddhav Thackeray, Bal's son. (Bal's nephew Raj has started his own political party that is, by some accounts, even more extreme. He recently told a crowd of Marathis to "serve a tight slap" to job-seekers from the eastern state of Bihar, a phrase that was repeated to me by several Shiv Sena bosses.) When the rally concluded, an aide took Firoz and me up a few floors to meet with Uddhav, who had decided to skip the event. At least 30 men were sitting patiently in the large waiting room outside his office. To the sound of chanting and the assembled crowd rising, Uddhav finally entered the room. He was dressed casually in jeans and a pink polo shirt and seemed unfazed by all the excitement. "You have come all the way from America because America now knows about Shiv Sena," he said. He then turned his attention to the Bangladeshi immigrants streaming into Mumbai. "The jobs must go to Marathi people," he said. "You have the same problem in America. But you do not have Shiv Sena in America. Shiv Sena will do what is needed to protect Marathis."

Contrary to Uddhav's words, however, America is unlikely to have a Shiv Sena anytime soon. While the party has managed to gain strength as Marathis in Mumbai have experienced displacement, its success is also a consequence of what Delhi-born scholar Sunil Khilnani calls India's "internally homogenous communities, each insulated from the others." In addition, the legacy of the caste system has inured Indians to a society where one group governs solely in its own interests. In contrast, in the United States, the amorphous national identity of being American works to supersede ethnic and religious allegiances.

The danger Shiv Sena poses to democracy in India became even clearer to me after Firoz and I left the rally. "It is too bad that you did not take a picture with Uddhav and I," Firoz said as we walked past the cricket fields near the University of Mumbai. He had told his friends and neighbors about the time he had been spending with Shiv Sena, and he wanted a picture to prove it. "Are they Marathi Hindus like you?" I asked. He laughed. "I am not Marathi, nor am I Hindu," he replied. "My family is Muslim." I was incredulous. Surely he knew Shiv Sena's opinion of his faith. "It is much harder now to tell certain people you are Muslim," he explained. "Some of my friends know that I am Muslim. Others do not. I tell people that I support Shiv Sena. So does my family. It is much easier for us this way."

Isaac Chotiner is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic. "

Why I cannot run for Office

One man, one vote - great idea and a true hallmark of democracy - yet also an achilles heel that politicians use to advance their own agenda and grab power.

In any economy, there are going to be poor people and rich people (yes, it existed even during the glorious days of the Russian Revolution and exists in Cuba today and in Venezuela and in all socialist paradises). The number of poor people (or ones that have far less money than the rich people) is usually greater than the number of rich people (often by a significant margin) - and thus it is easy to initiate and encourage class envy by politicians (who by the way are rich themselves and seek to make themselves richer by playing the class envy card).

Thus, no matter what happens in the economy - the politicians can always say "Look, the rich are getting richer" (and if the poor were getting richer, they do not have to say it) - and when someone says "Well, the poor are getting less poor" the politician will say "Well, the upper 1% got a tax cut of almost $500,000 while the lower 1% got a measly $500 - and that's a HUGE difference" (Ofcourse the politician will not say anything about percentages - that is even if the poor got a 5% cut and the rich got a 1% cut, the absolute numbers are such that the differences are HUGE and it makes the rich look bad - and ofcourse the politicians will not reveal how they have fared either and what portion of their income they have donated to charity either" (So, the aim is always to use class envy to gather votes).

The Wall Street Journal had an editorial recently The Poor get Richer
(May 23, 2007; Page A16) very interesting indeed

"It's been a rough week for John Edwards, and now comes more bad news for his "two Americas" campaign theme. A new study by the Congressional Budget Office says the poor have been getting less poor. On average, CBO found that low-wage households with children had incomes after inflation that were more than one-third higher in 2005 than in 1991.

The CBO results don't fit the prevailing media stereotype of the U.S. economy as a richer take all affair -- which may explain why you haven't read about them. Among all families with children, the poorest fifth had the fastest overall earnings growth over the 15 years measured. (See the nearby chart.) The poorest even had higher earnings growth than the richest 20%. The earnings of these poor households are about 80% higher today than in the early 1990s.

What happened? CBO says the main causes of this low-income earnings surge have been a combination of welfare reform, expansion of the earned income tax credit and wage gains from a tight labor market, especially in the late stages of the 1990s expansion. Though cash welfare fell as a share of overall income (which includes government benefits), earnings from work climbed sharply as the 1996 welfare reform pushed at least one family breadwinner into the job market.

Earnings growth tapered off as the economy slowed in the early part of this decade, but earnings for low-income families have still nearly doubled in the years since welfare reform became law. Some two million welfare mothers have left the dole for jobs since the mid-1990s. Far from being a disaster for the poor, as most on the left claimed when it was debated, welfare reform has proven to be a boon.

The report also rebuts the claim, fashionable in some precincts on CNN, that the middle class is losing ground. The median family with children saw an 18% rise in earnings from the early 1990s through 2005. That's $8,500 more purchasing power after inflation. The wealthiest fifth made a 55% gain in earnings, but the key point is that every class saw significant gains in income.

There's a lot of income mobility in America, so comparing poor families today with the poor families of 10 years ago can be misleading because they're not the same families. Every year hundreds of thousands of new immigrants and the young enter the workforce at "poor" income levels. But the CBO study found that, with the exception of chronically poor families who have no breadwinner, low-income job holders are climbing the income ladder.

When CBO examined surveys of the same poor families over a two year period, 2001-2003, it found that "the average income for those households increased by nearly 45%." That's especially impressive considering that those were two of the weakest years for economic growth across the 15 years of the larger study.

One argument was whether welfare reform would help or hurt households headed by women. Well, CBO finds that female-headed poor households saw their incomes double from 1991 to 2005, and the percentage of that income coming from a paycheck rose to more than a half from one-third. The percentage coming from traditional cash welfare fell to 7% from 42%. Poor households get more money from the earned income tax credit, but the advantage of that income-supplement program is that recipients have to work to get the benefit.

The poor took an earnings dip when the economy went into recession at the end of the Clinton era, but data from other government reports indicate that incomes are again starting to rise faster than inflation as labor markets tighten and the current economic expansion rolls forward.

It's probably asking way too much for this dose of economic reality to slow down the class envy lobby in Washington. But it's worth a try"

But none of this matters to politicians whose only goal is to say whatever, do whatever to get elected and given the realities of number of poor/rich folk, they can play the class envy card forever. See? I cannot run for office, I would have to be a zombie, idiot, hypocrite who cannot read to run for office - and I am not, as far as I can see, so far anyway. If I ever run for office, run this blog by me and knock me on my head and ask me "ARE YOU MAD??"

Sam Harris is Right

If I have learned anything in my life, it is that people are fundamentally the same everywhere, no matter what they like to believe. Death remains mysterious to
all and so there has been a great deal of effort at concocting stories so people will feel better.

Growing up, I used to hear about Hinduism and how we Brahmins are the learned group and all that, while ignoring the decades of cruelty we have inflicted on what the "upper class" consider the "lower class" because of who their parents were. In their own small world, each group goes on living with their secure knowledge that somehow they are superior and the world is wrong.

Sam Harris has written a book titled "Letter to a Chrisian Nation" - it is an eye opener. His earlier book was titled "The End of Faith". He lambasts Christians, Jews, Muslims for their blind belief in ancient texts and what they seem willing to
ignore and for their cherry picking parts of the Bible or the Koran for words that they somehow like or are willing to accept.

The Christians have perhaps the simplest of philosophies - do whatever you want for however long you want as long you accept Christ and you will go to heaven. The killers of 9/11 who flew airplanes into buildings and kill thousands of innocent civilians believed that they were martyrs and will go to heaven since they were killing infidels. Hindus believe that once you are born into some family, it means something had happened to you in some previous life and so you are doomed unless you do this, that, whatever and however you are told - and you may achieve nirvana or whatever. Rubbish. The fear of what happens after we die is so strong that we humans are conditioned to believe anything someone years ago has said. There is absolutely no difference in what Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, add-anything-here believe - though each group would want everyone else to
believe that they know the answer and they are the world's holiest, best people. Absolute Rubbish.

The Muslims go on a rampage because a Dutch Cartoonist lampoons the Prophet Muhammad. This came after the flying into buildings and the killing of thousands of innocent people to teach the United States a lesson - or something. The Hindus are on a rampage in India now, upset at the depiction of Goddess India without her clothes on by a Muslim painter. A Judge in India issued an arrest warrant for Richard Gere for kissing an Indian Actress. The Catholics and the Protestants waged a war against each other for hundreds of years. The Jews and the Muslims
continue to slaughter each other in the middle east for what each consider their holy land - killing in the name of everything that is holy, is supposedly fine with each
group, I guess I am too naive to understand that.

I see billboards in Huntsville, AL that rail against violations of sabbath or some such and how we will all go to hell unless we do what (I am guessing) they tell
us to do, I can understand where their thirst for blood comes from, the old testament.

The world will indeed end not from a nuclear weapon but from the paroxysms of rage caused by intolerant people who are convinced that they, and they alone know the way to the truth.

Religion, is indeed the true weapon of mass destruction.

About Immigrant Ambivalence

The USA remains the most interesting experiment in human history. A nation born of immigrants (yes, violently for sure) and built by immigrants. The nature of immigration may have changed during the 200 plus years of existence of the US of A, but the fundamentals have not. We remain a country of opportunity where anyone (without a specific family lineage) can do anything they want (and there are plenty of examples).

I recognize there are exceptions and I am sure anyone, anywhere can come up with an example that states "Person A from Country B was discriminated by a White Person A or a Black Person B" or anything like that. Yes, we have our warts and problems - but I maintain that we remain a country of opportunity for anyone who has the skills and the determination to succeed. Other countries may offer something that resembles what we have, but no one comes close, NO ONE.

Yet, many immigrants are ambivalent. They are happy to make money and live a comfortable living (more than what many would have been able to do elsewhere or in their own countries) - yet they are intensely uncomfortable with the very aspects of this country that make their success and progress possible. To take a minor issue, several years ago, when I was in graduate school, I had a friend from Greece who wanted to have our Government legislate how many types of flavors of soft drinks there may be - he thought it wasteful that we had so many, and so he was OK with the Government decide how many and what and where. (I suppose there may be others like him also - willing to let the government decide as long as it does not impact them and their lives)

There is an element of hypocrisy ofcourse, but many simply cannot deal with this society that is fundamentally open and transparent and accepting of different peoples and their looks and their culture and everything. People scream about hollywood and rock music and loose morals and public displays of affection and vulgarity and all that - yet, they remain citizens of this country. They are torn - between what they would like the country to be and what it is - forgetting that what THEY want may not be what their neigbor wants and thus not recognizing the brilliance of the system that allows individuals to be who they are while allowing anyone to be successful and anything they want.

There is no country on earth right now that tolerates religious diversity as the USA does. Yes, I know very well that there is overt and covert animosity towards Islam - yet we do not hear large scale pogroms against the Muslims. This is still a peaceful nation, unlike many around the world.

Many of my friends know me for how strongly I criticize many of what this country's leaders do - Republican OR Democrat (and yes including inane rulings by the Supreme Court, and I am not trained as an attorney) yet I am unambiguously a big fan of the US and what we stand for in the world - yes, inspite of stupidies in foreign policy by president after president after president.

The USA - An Immigrant Nation

The United States of America is a Human Magnet. People want to come here, even the ones that seem determined to kill us, come here and make their money and then try to do us harm. That, for another time and place.

Many years ago, I discovered The Wall Street Journal and was immediately impressed with their editorial page championing of immigration and how we as a nation have emerged as the strongest one on earth. It is not that we have a strong armed forces (we do) or that we are wealthy (we are) but because how we got here and what we are doing to remain strong and wealthy. The fundamentals are in our immigration policy, onr nature of being open to new ideas, people and a welcoming attitude to those that seek a better life.

I will try and provide links to some articles that I think of worth reading by everyone.

A story about immigrant soldiers.

Peggy Noonan on Immigrants

Immigrants and their Accents

I have been told that my accent has changed. It may have, but I really have no way of knowing. I speak the way I speak and always have, atleast what I am aware of. I have never, ever deliberately tried to imitate A or B or C or whatever ... even though it is possible that over the years, I have picked up some slang/styles/whatever from the places I have lived - from people I have heard.

Some say that I sound very Indian, there is that distinctive discernible Indian accent. Some seem intrigued by some combination of Indian/English/American usage of some words/expressions. I have simply no idea what they hear that I do not hear.

So, I wonder. Why do some immigrants seem to have changed their accents while some have not changed at all? Is it a function of the language environment at home? Their schooling?

What most people do is ofcourse after the initial impression about the accents, concentrate on the content of the message as opposed to wondering about how the message is being delivered, in what strange accent.

I have noticed that some people cannot get around the accent issue - they cannot go beyond the issue of accents and lose the message or the content.

Affirmative Action/Quota Systems

Just recently I started following the discussion/debates on changes to university admission systems in India and note with alarm that a significant percentage of "seats" in the IIT's and the IIM's will be reserved for what is called "OBC's" (Other backward classes). The oppressed have indeed turned the tables and are beginning to look like oppressors. When pushed to a corner, at times there appears to be an acknowledgement that these quotas will be "temporary" - till the inequities are resolved and the historically disadvantaged are given the opportunity like everyone else.

My response? Yea, right. If anyone believes that such "reservations" will be temporary, they are also gullible to believe that the Taj Mahal is for sale for a measly 1 million dollars (a discount if paid in cash).

Right now, the IIT's (maybe the IIM's) reserve a portion of the seats for "SC's" (Scheduled castes) - Have those reservations gone away? My guess is Nope, no way, never ever, it's permanent. Have there been any metrics defined for How anyone can figure out IF past discrimination has indeed been addressed? How does anyone know IF the SC's are indeed "disadvantaged" today or not? How will anyone figure out when (if at all) the "OBC's" can be removed from the "quotas"?? Nope, it will not happen.

Yes, it is quite true that for generations, the SC's and OBC's and (fill-in-the-blank) have been systematically disciminated against (like the African Americans in the US, descendants of slaves) and I am certain that the "evil" within the hearts of many/all - to evaluate a person by who their parents were and NOT what they have achieved, will continue - perhaps forever. So, yes, we MUST make sure that meritocracy rules, everywhere. We must define ways to determine if we have redressed the concerns of the truly disadvantaged and make sure that indiscriminate discrimination does not happen - but to allow the children of the children of the children to oppress the children of the children of the children of the oppressors makes no sense, it is in fact dangerous for the entire societal structure and for the well being of all. Where will it all stop? Are we prepared to destroy merit in the name of compensation?

What is truly tragic is that I see the exact, same things happening in the US - though the country (including a significant chunk of the historically disadvantaged) as a whole is waking up and asking "What are we doing to ourselves?" There is really no way to truly compensate for the horrors inflicted on millions of men, women and children who were systematically discriminated against and the entire system of government (local, state and national) conspired to keep them where "they belonged" - but even though things HAVE changed, significantly, there is political capital to be gained by playing the race card in the US (and the caste card in India).

Several years ago, I got a call from a reporter from a newspaper in Texas - asking me to comment on something he had heard at a Graduate Student recruiting conference for engineers and scientists. He told me that he had heard from some (several?) students that minority students were deliberately discriminated against for admission/financial aid to graduate schools in the US - with such positions going to foreign students. I said "Nonsense" and proceed to tell him as to how difficult to impossible it was to fill available positions with minority students - since a) many did not apply or b) they did not have the grades or GRE scores that were necessary but that many foreign students did and they came from excellent universities that many of us were aware of. I told him, in addition, often funds for minority students go unclaimed - there are simply not enough students who want to go to graduate school.

It is true, I told him that many mnority students do graduate from sciences/engineering (not enough, but many do) - but given that employers are also under the gun to hire more minorities, they snap them up ... luring them with higher and higher salaries and that is often too much temptation to resist. Universities play such games also - to fill some imaginary quota, they resort to raiding other campuses OR worse, make compromises that tend to create enormous resentment or illwill among other faculty members.

The cycle has to stop. The pendulum has to stop swinging like this. We cannot start discriminating to stop discrimination. It is indeed a sad state of affairs.