GOV. BOBBY JINDAL SPARKS HEATED DEBATE ON IDENTITY

“Bobby” Piyush Jindal, a fundamentalist Christian convert, has now become the extremist of the Republican Party and is planning to run for the 2016 Presidential nomination.

What the Nobel laureate V. S. NAIPAUL said about religious converts applies to Bobby Jindal: “To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’.” * * * "Every man getting out of the Hindu pale is not only a man less, but an enemy the more."

--SWAMI VIVEKANANDA from:Ashok Chowgule date:Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 1:27 PM subject:Gov. Bobby Jindal sparks heated debate on identity

GOV. BOBBY JINDAL SPARKS HEATED DEBATE ON IDENTITY Letter to the Editor, Khabar Magazine, March 2015 http://www.khabar.com/magazine/readers-write/letters-from-readers_1 In the editorial ("STOP BEING INDIAN-AMERICAN!" ), your statement “But then, for Jindal to suggest that one must also go on to disown their native roots, heritage, and culture is a slap on the face for both Indian and American sensibilities” is right on the money. “Bobby” Piyush Jindal, a fundamentalist Christian convert, has now become the extremist of the Republican Party and is planning to run for the 2016 Presidential nomination. What the Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul said about religious converts applies to Bobby Jindal: “To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history.

You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’.”

Bobby Jindal is associated with and taking cue from Bryan Fischer and David Lane of the hate group American Family Association (AFA). These people and AFA were the

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primary sponsors of Jindal’s event “Response” in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on January 30, 2015.

On his radio program, Bryan Fischer recommended that the United States adopt an immigration policy based upon the Bible, meaning that all immigrants must convert to Christianity and completely leave behind their native practices, beliefs, culture, and language. David Lane is a Christian-nation absolutist who believes America was founded by and for Christians and demands that politicians make the Bible a primary textbook in public schools. The American Family Association’s chief spokesperson believes the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections do not apply to nonChristians.

At the rally in Baton Rouge, Jindal declared “Our God wins.” In the February 27, 2009 interview with Morley Safer on the CBS News 60 Minutes program, both Bobby and his wife, Supriya, protested against Safer calling them Indian-Americans. Bobby was so insistent that he is American now and not Indian-American that Safer voiced over in the interview that “this oyster- and crawfish-eating Louisianan tends to downplay his ethnic background.”

Shashi Tharoor, the Congress MP, recently wrote that “at his Indian-American fundraising events, Bobby is careful to downplay his extreme positions and play up his heritage, a heritage that plays little part in his appeal to the Louisiana electorate. IndianAmericans, by and large, accept this as the price of political success in white America.

But Bobby has never supported a single Indian issue; he refused to join the India Caucus when he was a Congressman at Capitol Hill, and is conspicuously absent from any event with a visiting Indian leader. It is as if he wants to forget he is Indian, and would like voters to forget it, too.”

Bobby Jindal was invited to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Madison Square Garden event in New York last September. He sent his regrets and did not attend. Even South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley, who is very careful not to expose her Indian heritage, attended this event and followed it up with a visit to India with a South Carolina business delegation. Bobby Jindal missed a great chance to establish business relations between India and the State of Louisiana.

The comments and behavior of Jindal reflect his state of mind and his inferiority complex. I believe Bobby Jindal is a poor role model for Indian-Americans to follow.

They should stay away from him and not support any of his political endeavors.

Gautam Shah Simpsonville, South Carolina http://www.khabar.com/magazine/readers-write/letters-from-readers_1

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Editorial:

STOP BEING INDIAN-AMERICAN!

By Parthiv N. Parekh February 2015 http://www.khabar.com/magazine/editorial/stop-being-indian-american We should not be publishing this magazine. You should not be reading it. Close down all the Indian grocery stores and restaurants in the United States. Stop watching those mushy, melodramatic Bollywood movies on American soil. Disband all those cultural

institutions with those endless acronyms … IACA, TAMA, NATA, BAGA, GAMA, … .

Absurd? But that is precisely what Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal recently suggested. In a prepared statement obtained by POLITICO, which (at the time of this writing) was scheduled to be delivered at the conservative Henry Jackson Society in London, Jindal states, “I do not believe in hyphenated Americans.” The statement further quotes him as saying, “My dad and mom told my brother and me that we came to America to be Americans—not Indian-Americans.” And, “If we wanted to be Indians, we would have stayed in India.”

Goodness gracious!

The fact that Jindal tries his level best to amputate his Indian identity in service of his naked political ambition is old news to those who have followed him. And yet, the above comments are asinine even by his standards.

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It is one thing to say immigrants must do more to assimilate. I am right there with Jindal up to this extent of the thought. Many Indians come to America only to cocoon themselves in their native environment. Geographically they may have moved here, but practically and psychically they exist in a self-created mini-India. That’ a loss for both, the immigrants and the host country.

But then for Jindal to suggest that one must also go on to disown their native roots, heritage, and culture is a slap on the face for both Indian and American sensibilities.

What exactly is Jindal asking us to do or not do when he advocates dropping the “Indian” part of our hyphenated lives? Is there, according to him, a certain code by which one is considered a “true,” unhyphenated American? What disqualifies me from being that fabled American? Is it my skin color? My religion? What behaviors and practices are approved to be certified as a true American? Does affiliation with a Hindu temple or with a Mosque disqualify me? Can I attend a Festival of India? Or one of those loud Indian weddings? Jindal offers, “I am not suggesting for one second that people should be shy or embarrassed about their ethnic heritage." Make up your mind, sir. You are saying don’t be shy of your heritage, but you are also saying wipe it out entirely—don’t be hyphenated.

“But I am explicitly saying that it is completely reasonable for nations to discriminate between allowing people into their country who want to embrace their culture, or allowing people into their country who want to destroy their culture, or establish a separate culture within,” offers Jindal further into the same prepared statement.

So which American culture does he want everyone to embrace? Do African Americans subscribe to the same “American” culture as Jewish Americans? Who gets to define who is an American? Which culture produces the “ideal” American? Isn’t a Charlie Manson or a Timothy McVeigh far less American than an M. Night Shyamalan or a Kalpana Chawla?

Jindal may argue, if the original European settlers could melt into the American melting pot, why can’t newer immigrants? But history tells us there wasn’t exactly a beeline to the melting pot. Initially, there were enclaves of English, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, and other settlers. There were attempts to preserve their native cultures. And it is conceivable that they would have succeeded if the technology of the times allowed 24/7 engagement with the cultures they left behind, as is the case today.

The Governor’s disgraceful comments are equally offensive to American sensibilities. If he can hear himself over his blind need to pander to the far right, he might see how much he sounds like the Taliban when he says people should fall in step with a singular culture of the land. The very notion that countries should band around such a monolithic culture seems like a concept that belongs to the Middle Ages.. How quintessentially un-American is such a notion! Isn’t the very crux of being American that you are free to practice whichever cuisine, culture, and religion that you wish—so far as it is ethical and moral? Granted, good citizenship also 4

requires assimilation so that one has a stake in and contribution to the commons. But as stressed earlier, there is a vast difference between encouraging assimilation and asking immigrants to wipe out their customs and heritage. It’s not as if I will somehow not be able to enjoy and appreciate a good episode of House of Cards on television if I am doing it over chai and samosa instead of coke and popcorn. Or that being Hindu will prevent me from pledging allegiance to the country I chose to live in not only for the rest of my life in but that, in all likelihood, will be the motherland of my descendants.

Obviously, celebrating one’s heritage is not at odds with assimilation. Identity, ultimately, can’t be reduced to a mathematical equation as Jindal suggests. Being 100 percent American does not mean you have to be zero percent Indian, or the other way round. As Anjali Enjeti writes in an article in Khabar (“Mixing Colors,” June 2014), about her multicultural identity, “[Culture]… is a choice, an aspiration, a deep-seeded appreciation of all of the distinct parts that make a person whole. And culture doesn’t expire. It is not conscious of ethnic percentages. At the end of the day, I am fully Austrian, Puerto Rican, and Indian, no matter how much or how little I express those cultures in my day-to-day life. The countries of my ancestors, no matter where I live, will always reside in the home of my soul.”

If Jindal does not believe in hyphenated Americans, is he now going to campaign against Cinco de Mayo celebrations? Saint Patrick Day Parades? Kwanzaa?

Passover?! Ultimately, this is not just about righteousness, but also about deciding which is a more desirable society: one that is bland, insular, parochial, and monolithic (such as North Korea, for example), or one that is dynamic, diverse, colorful and inviting (such as…well, the United States of America!)?

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