Yikes.

[Saheli quickly shoves skeletons back into closet]

Keep up the good work, Deepali.:-)

It’s so awesome to see that you guys here at Sepia Mutiny are writing about Desis For Texas! It’s completely awesome to intern here. Dheeraj is an awesome boss. He spends so much time teaching everyone how to do what they’re supposed to do, and then completely backs off and lets us do it. And he never gets mad if we mess up! My job is to track DFT writeups across the blogosphere, so here I am!

Anyway, I just wanted to expand on a couple of things.

Dheeraj is meeting with someone from Jay Aiyar’s campaign tonight. We’ve known about him for quite a while, but we just haven’t gotten a chance to get together and talk til now. We’ve totally wanted to make Jay a big deal.

We are also going to endorse and oppose legislation, too, in addition to our four objectives.

We need a lot of help, y’all. Pull out your checkbooks and your visa cards!!

Thanks for the writeup! You’ll probably get an official follow-up letter from us later. This was just an excited first response.

Deepali

Fiji’s first ethnic Indian prime minister -Mahendra Chaudhry

Son of indentured plantation workers – Cheddi Berret Jagan, President of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana aka father of the Guyanese Nation.

We have many such examples of the old indentured Diaspora engaging in top level politics.

However in the USA, the post 1965 immigrants seem to have a harder time entering politics.Reasons warrant another discussion so I’ll stop.

Anyhow it is good to see efforts being made to encourge political awareness among South Asians.

The White house is in your homeland, so take the front seat.

See, here’s the thing. There’s no reason a Democratic representative wouldn’t be just as good for NASA in terms of pure porkability. Okay, he or she might lack in seniority at first. But seriously, whichever Democrat can take down Tom DeLay essentially takes down the Republican Congress. If not this term, than the next term. And then this person is a veritable Devata. A Maharaj or Maharani among the Representives. So NASA porkers need not worry on that front. Besides which, honestly, as long as Bush is in charge, I don’t think anyone needs to worry about Houston’s funding. The man is from Texas. By the time Bush leaves, this Devata of a DeLay Defeater will be able to come of age and represent with influence.

And on a principles front they have a much bigger long term concern. The future of NASA, and especially human exploration of Mars, is increasingly tied with astrobiology. That’s right, astrobiology. What’s the basis of astrobiology, folks? EVOLUTION. Who hates evolution? TOM DELAY. He HATES evolution, and has done all kinds of grandstanding to try and stop schoools from teaching it. That alone should be enough to get the heavily science-dependant desi economy a bit riled up, IMHO.

Which gets to your larger point. I’m actually deeply concerned about our relationship with Pakistan, but not just or even mostly out of a parochial loyalty to India. (I can’t claim to have none, but it’s a small concern.) I’m concerned about that relationship b/c of how it plays out in the wider world stage. Desi-Americans don’t have to bring their hometown disputes to the table to be politically involved in a desh-centric way. They can bring their expertise and awareness.

But more than that, I think that Desi-Americans do have a very American agenda that’s not remotely Desi-centric, but principled and simply patriotic. What has made us so successful as a group? Hands down, education. We’re generally descended from a highly filtered set of immigrants, and we’re proof that a good education can get you far. So we should be fighting to spread that privilage around, and spread it at a high level. What else has made us so successful? That we generally came here after the Civil Rights movement. Despite the majority of us having a deeply unAbrahamic religion, and even the Abrahamic among us being from very different sects of Islam and Christianity than Americans were used to, we’ve generally had pretty extraordinairy freedom of religion and culture. But it helped that we mostly stuck to the coasts and urban centers. So we should fight to spread those rights around the country. (Yet another reason I’m not that down with DeLay.) Finally, just one more example, what’s one thing that America has that the Desh will never have again? HUGE SWATHES OF WILDERNESS. Face it, those days are gone for India and Pakistan. They don’t need to be gone for the United States. When other Indian-Americans say, jokingly, “Well, I always have the option of going back to India,” I can’t help but think. . no, I don’t really have the option of taking Half-Dome back to India. I’d like to make sure it stays at least okay. They’re just examples. I’ll shut up now.

Also, a fellow by the name of Tom Abraham won an election to the Sugar Land City council by a very small margin. He is a Malayalee.

I also used to live in Tom Delay’s district, and although I disagree with some of his policies, he is a very competent and astute politician. And let me just say that were he still my representative, it would take one hell of a desi politician for me to switch my vote against Delay.