In the late summer of 2001, I spent four months in the United States on a fellowship. Bang in the middle of that period, the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon took place and the horror and sheer audacity of 9/11 shook and stirred America and the world. I was then working for a news magazine and took a few weeks off from my fellowship to travel to New York and report on the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.
Following 9/11, there was a range of responses in America. There were those who wanted to strike back and strike quick and hard. There were the more thoughtful ones who predicted a longer battle against Islamism and the forces of religious radicalism in Central and West Asia: Jihad vs McWorld to quote the title of a prescient 1990s book. There were still others who said the solution lay not in overstretching the military and going to war in a far-off country, a new Vietnam as it were, but in an upgraded Fortress America approach — and in using technology to rid America of its addiction to crude oil imports.
A certain group of analysts looked upon the coming war as not just an inevitability but an opportunity. They spoke of the “war economy” driving up jobs, particularly in the defence and military industries, and helping America in its search for a post-Y2K driver of the economy. There were those to the right who said they had been warning America to wake up to a more realistic domestic security doctrine, arguing that kerbside check-in and practically strolling to the plane were symptomatic of overconfidence that was bound to be punctured sooner or later. There were those on the left who worried the terror attacks would be used to build a harder surveillance system and hurt civil liberties.
As would be apparent and expected, the reactions covered a wide variety. They were provoked by the instinctive preferences and worries of those reacting. This was hardly a revelation in an America that, like other democracies and perhaps more than most democracies, sees a vibrant contestation of ideas and views.
My Eureka moment came about a week after 9/11. On the basis of what I was reading in the newspapers and online and watching on television, and following conversations with friends, professional acquaintances and people I sought out for interviews, it hit me that it was possible to represent the gamut of American opinion — covering everything from the advocacy of war to the possible benefits to the economy, from civil liberty concerns to even the immigration issue and questions of the “browning of America”, and how far this was feasible — entirely by seeking Indian diaspora voices.
The Indian community in America — American citizens of Indian origin as well as Indian passport holders living in the country — was large enough to be an accurate microcosm of the range of American diversity. In my experience, this ability — this sophistication almost, if that be the correct word — was unmatched by any other national migrant group, apart from those who had descended from British or German settlers in the New World in previous centuries. Certainly, it was unmatched by relatively recent migrant groups from Asia and the developing world.
Indians had carried the democratic traditions of their homeland and the argumentative ethos of their home society to America. It helped, of course, that many Indians in America were well-educated and professionally or academically qualified, part of the export of intellectual capital that was, and continues to be India’s bewildering contribution to world trade.
That memory from 2001 struck me this past week as people in India began denouncing Bobby Jindal. Mr Jindal is the governor of Louisiana, one of two US governors of Indian origin. He has just announced he will run for the presidency, the first candidate of Indian descent to do so. Mr Jindal is seen as some sort of a whiz kid in the Republican ranks but is also controversial. He was born in the US shortly after his parents, Punjabi Hindus, arrived in their adopted country. As he grew up, he became a Christian, moved further and further away from his Indian roots (if he ever bothered with them in the first place) and now appeals to the right-wing base of the Republican Party.
He does not self-identify as an Indian, a desi or an “ethnic”. He rejects the notion of a hyphenated status — of being an Indian-American or an Irish-American or a Chinese-American — but prefers to see himself as conforming to what he believes in the mainstream culture of his country. He describes himself as just “American”, without prefixes and supporting adjectives. In sum, he subscribes to the idea of America being a melting pot rather than a salad bowl. Additionally, he has socially conservative ideas on gay rights and abortion that at least this writer is not comfortable with.
In the past few days, Mr Jindal has become something of a hate figure in circles in India. He is seen as the wrong type of desi — the Uncle Tom, the chap who has turned his back on the motherland, the fellow who refuses to say “Namaste” and watch Shah Rukh Khan films, the type who you cannot invite to a conference in Delhi or Mumbai and expect to hear gushing praise of India’s “potential” and how the diaspora can be a “bridge between the world’s oldest and largest democracies”. In addition, the left dislikes him because he is socially to the extreme right and is, of course, a Republican and almost any Republican is worthy of loathing anyway.
Mr Jindal is a convenient and all-purpose straw man — the PIO or the member of the Indian diaspora we would want to hate because he refuses to acknowledge his kinship with us, refuses to make the familiar polite noises, refuses to conform to the NRI-PIO mythology and stereotype that Indian popular culture and media hype have created. Never mind that he is an American politician appealing to an American constituency, and his notion of America and his position on the American creed is no different from so many other Americans of his philosophical persuasion.
If Mr Jindal had been white, many of his critics in India would have called him a “conviction politician”. Since he is of Indian and Punjabi stock but doesn’t believe these genetic sources have shaped his worldview in any meaningful way, he becomes a traitor. Does this make sense?
The author is senior fellow, Observer Research Foundation. He can be reached at malikashok@gmail.com
