Did you miss my comment #343 ?.

I don’t think USINPAC prevents any of the REAL interests and issues of Indian Americans being propagated. Do you have anything specific in mind?.

What if Indian interests and the “general” American interests (leave alone the “progressive native born South Asian Americans”) match, for example, in the case of “terrorism” emanating out of Pakistan?.

1. Lobby groups like USINPAC are becoming fronts to serve Indian (as in, Republic of India) interests, including anti-Pakistan and Islamophobic positions. And Indian-Americans – those who are simply of Indian ancestry, not nationality – need to guard against this and propagate the REAL interests and issues of Americans in the US of Indian descent. I hope we can all agree with this. Indian interests are not the same as Indian-American interests.

2. Whether “Hindu elites” or “Hindutvadis” want to influence Indian (Republic of India Indian) policy or improve peoples’ lots is not relevant here. If they want to do this, they can form organizations that explicitly claim to do this, instead of hiding behind the banner of “serving Indian-American interests” which is what the USINPAC website claims.

But if these Hindu elites aren’t allowed to get involved in Indian foreign policy from afar (since they’d have to work on fixing the U.S.’s foreign policy first, being residents of the U.S.), they shouldn’t be allowed to try to work on India’s social ills either, right?

They can do what they want – though if I were an Indian citizen in India, I’d be damn pissed about foreign citizens hijacking national policy – as long as they’re honest about it. See 2.

I didn’t see this before I wrote #344.

You should really qualify “Hindu elite” to “Hindustani” (and even that term is improperly used, as it describes a language more than anything else) as even the original post had the sense to do. There are a lot of ‘Hindu elites’ who don’t care about anything but their 401k’s and H1-B’s (like my family). And I’ve already said that groups like USINPAC shouldn’t claim to represent all Indian-Americans, since they obviously don’t. But they obviously do represent a significant, influential portion of Indian-Americans. So I don’t think they are “posing a threat to the representation of Indian-Americans in the US” (whatever that means).

You came in saying that ‘Hindu elites’ shouldn’t throw stones, etc., until all of India’s (which you are equating to Hinduism) problems are fixed. But if these Hindu elites aren’t allowed to get involved in Indian foreign policy from afar (since they’d have to work on fixing the U.S.’s foreign policy first, being residents of the U.S.), they shouldn’t be allowed to try to work on India’s social ills either, right? And then so many of the Indian NGOs that help the poor (lower castes, tribals, etc.) in India would never get the funding they do from rich Hindu elite expatriates.

Ok, Assuming you are not a troll, this is what you said.

This is from someone born in a Hindu family, who found the caste system so disgusting and the prejudice against lower castes, tribals, basically anything or anyone that isn’t “Hindu” to be so overpoweringly disgusting, I don’t believe in organized religion anymore, and definitely have nothing but disgust for Indian organized religion and the Hindutvadis who fight and pillage to defend their privilege. At least, jihadis claim to be fighting for the rights of fellow Muslims, which to me is a nobler goal by far.

How did you conclude that “Hindutvadis” are “upper caste” who are fighting to defend their privilege and why they can’t be as noble as the “jihadis”?.

AFAIK, Naxalites are NOT members of USINPAC, ergo pose no threat to the representation of Indian-American interests in the US.

Umm. How about you read the whole post? We’re talking about Indian-American interests w.r.t. lobbying Congress about political issues in INDIA. The examples I brought up that you responded to previously were also about India.

Nala, we aren’t talking about India here, but about the US. The entire discussion – read the opening post if you may be so bothered – is about Indian-American interests, not Indian interests. That’s the whole point!

As for my Assam comments, sorry, I got a little carried away. You’re right, casteism isn’t the cause, linguistic regionalism is – another evil in Indian society.