But not without leaving a present for the gracious hosts and readers. There’s one blog that I never managed to mention in a post. I just never found the right hook. But it’s a great blog and it’s got a lot of South Asian talent on it. It’s called 3 Quarks Daily, and it’s edited by Pakistani-born Manhattanite Abbas Raza. Much of the time it’s just a filter blog, citing amazing articles with one line comments. Very geeky, very worldly, very artistic, and veddy veddy good.  For that alone it’s valuable. On Mondays, however, they post all original material. This last Monday, for example, Abbas’s sister Azra wrote up part I of a report on the War on Cancer. Azra and Sughra Raza figure in a moving tale of Desi American collaboration which is described here and here. 

On Halloween Abbas remembered a scary return to JFK from Pakistan three years ago. It doesn’t quite go where you think it’s going.

Hmm, that sounds like Abhi pulling in with the pick-up. And I think Manish has caught the trail of escaped perfume. I better run! Tata, hosts and readers, and thanks for all the spicy snacks!

I hate to be trite, but this picture is simply at odds with reality. France has been anything but multiculturalist, and in fact has been quite uniform in demanding that its Muslim minority conform, damnit, to the standards of French culture.(Link.)

Despite its shunning of hyphenated identity and insistence that all of its citizens are equally–and nothing but–French, France has a problem: whenever a minority group in country is involved in a conflict–one its members started, of which its members are victims, or a combination–the possibility of that group up and leaving is immediately brought up.(Link)

(It is, of course, as absurd to lump together all of France as to lump together all of India–the land that gives us LePen also gave us Zola.) Many observers  warn that it is a mistake to view these (so far relatively non-injurious) rioters as Islamic or Arab or Brown or Immigrant so much as poor  and unemployed. But I have to wonder if, by shunning the hyphen, France has forced the French children of immigrants to make an overly stressful choice. We affiliates of Sepia Industries might be considered connoisseurs of the hyphenated life-style. A hyphen is a useful prop, like a towel, that you can move about and rework as the situation demands. Sometimes you want it out, front and center, and sometimes it can stay in your purse. Immigration is hard, and tools can help. It was Hyphen Magazine’s blog which reminded me of the South Asian connection to the Parisian riots.

Hyphen Magazine styles itself Asian America Unabridged, and to steal a lovely phrase from Cicatrix, its pages are often soaked in Darjeeling and Orange Pekoe as well as Green tea. (Note echoes of Shah Rukh?) One of its bloggers, Neela, has shouted out to Sepia Mutiny before, and a few days ago she noted a recent Bay Area Sikh protest of the French policy of banning turbans in public schools.

Bay Area Sikhs said Thursday there is no evidence to suggest that French core values are threatened by anyone expressing their religious faith. Union City resident Sarabjit Cheema said she took the day off from her job at the California Department of Transportation, and brought her two youngest sons from Cesar Chavez Middle School to join the protest. If American schools were to adopt similar laws, Cheema said she’d pull her children out of school permanently and home-school them. “I took the day off work to support a cause that is very dear to me,” Cheema said. “All kids should enjoy the freedoms that my sons have.” (Link.)

After the rioting, some Indo-French are worried:

Shingara Singh Mann runs an internet cafe in Paris. He has been living in the suburbs with his family since 1978.Even though he holds a French passport, he says that he has had to struggle to get his due in the country.He is worried that the rioting will make his day to day life hard as people will get suspicious of all minority communities in general.(Link.)

Many commentators couldn’t help but compare this month’s Parisian riots with last month’s Birmingham riots. Cultural community defined around geographic ghetto just doesn’t seem to work so well.   The majority can’t wall off and forget a minority that’s integrated inside itself, and a minority can’t systematically attack a majority it’s surrounded by and lives with. To be clear, I’m not saying that America is peaches and cream–Neela’s other link was to a recent SF Chronicle profile of the California Sikh community, showing that sometimes the mixture is a bit too tart:

Didar Singh Bains, who came to the United States with $8 in his pocket in 1958 to join his father and grandfather who were working orchards, is now the biggest peach grower in the state and one of the richest people in Northern California. . . .Ram Singh and other members of the Fremont gurdwara tell a tale rich with irony about their experience giving blankets and food to victims of Hurricane Katrina staying in one of Baton Rouge’s largest shelters. “We asked if they knew who we are,” Ram Singh recalled with a sigh. “Almost everyone said, ‘You’re from the Middle East and are here for the oil.‘ (Link.)

Wow. Yet reading these articles–or hanging out at Sepia Mutiny–it’s obvious that for most of us, the notion of up and leaving is simply absurd, hyphenated or not. I’m as American as the next girl, and I’ll keep both my history and American future long and intact, thank you very much. Unabridged, like a young boy’s uncut hair. I’ve railed against the prevalence of the balancing act metaphor–everything in the immigrant’s life is not a dichotomy. The hyphen doesn’t need to be a fence to stand on precariously. It makes much more sense as a link in a chain, winding into the past, reaching out into the future. We don’t need to cut off our past to embrace our future. We can if we want to.   If anyone’s going to cut their hair off, they should do it by choice, not under pressure. Wouldn’t we really rather that they get over a little difference as children, than that they are isolated all their childhoods only to fight over much bigger differences as adults? If you force people to conform, they’re probably going to self-isolate more. A little bit of freedom is like the detergent that mixes up the oil and the water, and intolerance is like the salt that drives them apart.*

I don’t have the answers. I wish France and the French–all of them–good luck and godspeed in figuring out how to get along and get on with the real work of life.  I’m not talking about endorsing honor killings here, I’m talking about being allowed to keep what you don’t have to get rid of. Humanity’s differences and nuances are like the shimmer and shine of a ruby–their very ephemeral variance makes clear the hard vivid crystal that’s sparkling. Drink in everyone else, but it’s okay to just be yourself. Maybe I watched too much Sesame Street as a child, but this still seems better than any other model. 

*Brimful, I put that in for you. I apologize if I got mixed up!

Retiree Mukul Datta spent more than two decades as a teacher in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. He gives the district a failing grade.”To me, more and more, it is separate and unequal – divided by class and race,” he said.”Many of the board members are saying they do this for the children, but the first question that comes to my mind is ‘If you love the children, why are you talking their money from the classroom and spending it on retreats?’” he said. He says CMS wastes money that could be used to boost teacher pay, citing board member travel and high-priced retreats as areas that can be cut back.(Link.)

Up in Connecticut, Satish Chandra is seeking reelection to the Amity Board of Education, and here in California Ranjit “Ricky” Gill had been appointed as the student representative to the State Board of Education by Schwarzenegger. Scanning the Indian American Center for Political Awareness newslist, I see that in Santa Clara Ric Singh, Kuldip S. Mahal, Stuart Johnson, and Subash Bhatt have lost previous bids for school boards seats.

Board of Education debates may seem somewhat dry and unsexy compared to state legislatures or Congress. But running the public schools is an integral element of our democracy, and curriculum choices and priorities build the foundation for most voters’ opinions. I’ve always been a bit fascinated with the politics of Boards of Education ever since I read The Day They Came To Arrest The Book when I was in junior high.   Board members often vote to override teachers’ curriculum choices by banning books from district reading lists–like when Pakistani-American Dr. Mohammed Ali Chaudry voted to ban Midnight’s Children. They figure out how to assign students to magnet schools, dealing with all kinds of socieeconomic and racial issues. (See the oft-simmering controversy with Asian-American parents in San Francisco.) School Boards have a big say in how bilingual education is implemented, which has a huge impact on new immigrant children. And they sometimes try to stop students from learning about evolution.

These are all issues that a desi Americans might have a strong point of view on. Actually, I just wish more geeks would run for School Board positions. My physics department chair won an election to his local school board in 1999, which exposed me to a lot of the issues of science education that rarely get manged by experts. It also reminded me that you don’t need to be a professional politician or retired teacher to be on the school board.

Nevertheless Board of Education spots are often stepping stones to more general political entities. Iowa State Representative Swati Dandekar’s first elected position that I can find is on the Linn-Mar Community School District Board of Education.

*Hey, a little self-promotion never hurt, right?  

Every week, Priyank Desai carries his paycheck home to the Passaic apartment he shares with his family, sets it before a makeshift shrine and prays to his Hindu deity.

“No matter how much money I make by working hard, it will all belong to you.”

Only after praying will he cash the check, which usually amounts to no more than $80 for two days of temporary work. He gives half to his parents to help pay for phone cards to call their extended family left behind in India, and for rides to work. The rest he spends on movies or lunch. He also pays for transportation to classes at Passaic County Community College that he hopes will lead him to a career as a Spanish teacher.(Link)

Tom himself spent a month working as a low-wage laborer in Passaic county. As the Columbia Journalism Review blog puts it, “It’s an old story idea — as old as George Orwell’s “Down and Out in London and Paris,” first printed in 1933 — but it’s a good one, and Meagher pulls it off.”  It’s a particularly good idea because these stories are evergreen, and constantly need to be updated for our times. Nickled and Dimed came out over four years ago. Tom’s parameters:

I begin on Aug. 1, a Monday. I leave behind my checkbook, my ATM card, my credit card, my cell phone, my car keys, my fiancée and our apartment in Brooklyn. I’ve got $424 to get started, an amount based on a week’s wages at the Poverty Research Institute’s self-sufficiency level. (Link.)

The specifics change from state to state and generation to generation. Irish-Catholic Tom’s undercover project may seem unrelated to the Mutiny, but even this tempoary abandonment of the old for a shaky grasp on the new is a useful experiment for anyone trying to understand the troubles of a poor immigrant–Irish 150 years ago, Jews and Italians and Punjabi farmers 100 years ago, Senegalese and Peruvians and Indians and Bangladeshis today. Native-born Americans migrating from state to state. Some of the problems will always be the same. Getting a place to live. Finding a job. Trying to find community and sustenance at the library or a house of worship. Learning the new dialect, if not a whole new language–or two:

“I am really happy because I am helping my parents. They are really raising me up with love and affection. It’s my duty to help them out,” he said.  Desai was 16 when his entire family received a coveted work visa and emigrated from India. He spoke very little English, although he could read and write it. He was excited to arrive in America.

“I imagined I would make a lot of money and find a beautiful girl for me.”

As he began classes at Passaic High School, he saw many of his classmates beginning to work and yearned to join them. His parents were able to provide for him, but he was tired of sitting at home after school. He wanted to be able to make money for himself, and to be able to contribute to his family’s finances.

. . .Through school friends and his Latino co-workers at Brickforce, he has become nearly fluent in both Spanish and English. He plans to continue to work there until he finishes school in a year and a half.(Link.)

 Today Tom updated his work with a new story on the increase in poverty in New Jersey. 

After the set, I looked around the stage for the usual cooler full of water bottles, and was instead greeted by a vision of wine. The usual festival array of Tibetan flags and bells  mixed with bottles and glasses  everywhere, the regular sound of corks popping interlacing with the flute and mrdangam music. Despite booths of frying samosas, the smell of vintage was stronger. Since my family doesn’t drink, we decided to complete the evening with a visit to the video store, and got ourselves the documentary Mondovino. If you’re at all interested in trade, globalization, agriculture, mercantile tradition, France, Italy, Northern California, or, of course, wine, I highly recommend it, though it is a bit long. It’s a film squarely set in Europe and the Americas, featuring titans like the Mondavi family, the ancient Florentine clans Frescobaldi and Antonieri, and a charming elderly Bordeaux gentleman named Hubert de Montille who can’t stand “monolithic thinking.”

It prominently features a travelling consultant, “the flying winemaker,” who, along with Maryland critic Robert Parker, makes and breaks wines. Michel Rolland caught my attention with a throwaway line when he was pointing out the spread of his clientele on a map,

 ”Hungary, Italy, France, Argentinia, Chile, Mexico, The United States, and oh–I forgot one over here–India!”

India?! That’s right, India. The October 17 issue of India Today has a three page spread that, at first glance,  doesn’t bode well for desi oenophilic journalism–even I know that “Brewing the Indian Dream,” is a headline directed at the wrong beverage. But what growth the article reveals within!

One of the kindest things you can say about the Indian wine industry is that it has an awful lot of room for growth. There’s 10 mL per capita consumption of wine in India. Compare that to  8 liters in the United States, 25 liters per capita in the UK, and 60 liters in France. This is one of the few times where stating India’s absolute numbers doesn’t make things sound much bigger.

Most of the less than 775,000 cases of domestic Indian production is by the wackily named Champagne Indage/Chateau Indage. Based in Mahaarastra, the company is setting up wineries in Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnatak, and West Bengal, eventually hopening to double production capacity. The other big players are Sula Vineyards and Grover Vineyards, based in Maharastra and Karnataka respectively.

Despite the miniscule domestic market and the almost complete lack of a reputation, India does actually export wine.  “The three big players together export 1 lakh cases worth about RS 15 crore last year to Europe, the US and Asia.  Sula’s Sauvignon Blan sells in France at euro 13 a bottle.  Indage’s Marquise de Pompadour, a sparkling wine, sells as Omar Khayyam in the export markets, while its better-known brance Riviera goes as Chhabri.  These are sold in 44 countries, including the UK, Germany, France, Switzlerand, and the US. While Omar Khayyam is priced at about 14 pounds, Chhabri costs 5 pouds.”

This could mean good things for Indian farmers. Grover’s Kewadkar says that the incredibly popular table grapes only “give the farmer Rs 10 per kg, while the wine grape gives him Rs. 25-35 per kg.”   Sula enters into cultivation agreements with famers who work its lands, and India Today cites the farmer’s  investment of Rs 30,000, the price as Rs 30 per kg/ of wine grapes, and the yields as 4 -6 tonnes per acre. I think that’s about Rs. 110,000 per acre, but the magazines doesn’t make clear how much acrage each farmer gets to work.

It’s clearly a huge business, and if getting in on it can enrich rural Indian farmers, that’s got to be a good thing. But you don’t have to watch much of Mondovino to realize that the little guy often gets screwed in the wine industry. Much of the marketing bluster about a lifestyle that’s connected to the land promotes the artistic creativity and tastes of a few well-pressed suits, usually ignoring the care and attention and palates of the laborers who actually work the fields. Since India is still building its oenophilic traditions from the ground up, it would be great if it could work fair trade principles into the very foundation. That would be some unique branding.

Ahem. If any of you experience accessing the online version of India Today with a paid paper subscription, I’d be much obliged if you got in touch.

What does it mean to be an American Muslim? This revealing and engaging documentary follows Pakistani American Rock star Salman Ahmed of Junoon, as he explores stories from a community as diverse as the progressive “Allah made me Funny” comedy troupe, to a prominent family that founded the “Muslims for Bush” campaign. (Link)

On May 23rd, 1914, the Japanese shipping vessel Komagata Maru, chartered by Sikh businessman Gurdit Singh, arrived in Canada’s Vancouver Harbor. Aboard were 376 migrants of Indian origin, citizens of the British Empire who believed it their right to move and settle freely within its domain. Upon anchoring, however, the passengers were prevented from disembarking by local Canadian officials, whose decision reflected a growing nationwide resistance to non-white immigration. (Link.)

This documentary explores the little known ethos of neighborhood photo studios in Indian cities, discovering entire imaginary worlds in the smallest of spaces. Tiny, shabby studios that appear to be stuck in a time warp turn out to be places throbbing with energy. As full of surprises as the people who frequent these studios are the backdrops they enjoy posing against and the props they choose – affording fascinating glimpses into individual fantasies and popular tastes. (Link.)

<

p>And of course there will be some Bollywood—our man Shah Rukh in a really big turban:

Come celebrate BOLLYWOOD at the Castro!! Paheli is the latest Bollywood feature from India. With its star-studded cast, (irresistible Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee), fantasy sets, endearing musical scores, Paheli is a delightful folk tale, wherein a ghost falls in love with a bride. When her husband leaves immediately after the wedding ceremony for a business trip, the ghost enters her life. The twists and turns of this touching Bollywood family drama and love story will move you to laugh, cry, sing, dance. Perfect for Bollywood devotees and novices alike.

I think the crying will be because we won’t be able to take the turban home with us after the movie. I bet Shah Rukh could auction that thing off on Ebay to very good effect–maybe someone with connections can suggest he do it as a fundraiser?

Reviews of and articles about the festivals offerings: Sunset Boulevard, Meghe Dhaka Tara, It’s My Country Too, Amu, Paheli, Continuous Journey, Khamosh Pani, City of Photos, No More Tears Sister, Ganges: River to Heaven.

Sad Note:  while searching for reviews of these films I discovered that Junoon musician and U.N. Goodwill Ambassador Salman Ahmad has cut short his tour of the middle east to attend the funerals of his aunt and other relatives killed in the earthquake.

Please join the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) to help raise funds for earthquake victims in South Asia. 100% of proceeds will be donated to the Edhi Foundation and to community members giving direct aid at the grassroots level. Please bring in-kind donations of painkillers, blankets, and warm clothing*. Home-made food will be served.

For more information on in-kind donations: http://www.yourdil.org/projects/relief/

 Musical Guest: Falu – “Hidden Gem” hot pick in Pop Montreal Festival, September 2005; Performances by: Alka Bhargava, Edward Garcia, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Tahani Salah, Suneet Sethi, Saba Waheed, Kron Vollmer’ Visual Art for auction donated by: Jaishri Abichandani, Amanda Cartagena, Chitra Ganesh, Swati Khurana, Maxwell Fine Arts, Saeed Rahman, Chamindika Wanduragala

Directions to Asian American Writers’ Workshop
N, R, Q, W, F, B, D, V, 1, 2, 3, 9 to 34th Street; 4, 5, 6 trains to 33rd Street

<

p>*Please do take a look at the information on the in-kind donations as the request for clothing has been cancelled for now. As of this posting they still say they need: Tents (New is best); Blankets (Used or New); Sleeping bags (Used or New) &
UNOPENED Over-the-counter Painkillers and Stomach Medicines (Tylenol, Advil, Immodium, etc).

(Forward from Saurav.)

Yesterday DeLong wrote a post about Tamiflu

Cipla, an Indian producer of generic drugs, is preparing to become an alternative producer of oseltamivir phosphate, an antiviral drug better known by the brand name Tamiflu.Cipla plans to offer Tamiflu in the Indian market and in 49 less-developed countries where the company already sells AIDS treatments, Hamied says. The legality of the introduction in India, where pharmaceutical patents started to be recognized this year, is uncertain.

Hamied says he will withdraw Tamiflu from the Indian market if Roche’s patent is recognized.  (Link.)

A Roche spokesman, Terry Hurley, said that the company ”fully intends to remain the sole manufacturer of Tamiflu.” . .Making the drug involves 10 complex steps, he said, and the company believes that it’ll take another company ”two to three years, starting from scratch,” to produce it. Hamied dismissed that claim, saying that he initially thought it would be too hard but that his scientists had finished reverse-engineering the drug in his laboratories two weeks ago. He said he could have small commercial quantities available as early as January 2006. Asked if he thought Hamied was making an idle boast, Hurley declined to comment. Hamied said he would sell generic Tamiflu ”at a humanitarian price” in developing nations and not aim at the US or European market. ”God forbid the avian flu should strike India,” he said. ”There is no line of defense.” (Link.)

What does this have to do with mangosteens? I’m glad you asked!

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p>

 DeLong commenter DuckedApe pointed out an Independent article (original link, readable copy) about how Tamiflu has a key raw ingredient that is primarily available in large quantities from a species of Chinese star anise:

But the herb has a vital function as the source of shikimic acid from which the drug Tamiflu is made, the only defence the world currently has against the threatened flu pandemic. . . .Yesterday it emerged that a shortage of star anise is one of the key reasons why countries including Britain cannot obtain enough Tamiflu to protect their populations. The herb from which Tamiflu is made is grown in four provinces in China and “huge quantities” of its seeds are needed, according to the Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Roche. It is harvested by local farmers between March and May, purified and the shikimic acid extracted at the start of a 10-stage manufacturing process which takes a year. Only star anise grown in the four provinces of China is suitable for manufacture into Tamiflu and 90 per cent of the harvest is already used by Roche. (Link.)

Hamied is aware of the problem: .

But Cipla has neither produced the drug in large quantities nor is able to predict whether its price will be much lower than Roche’s “You must understand one thing: Our synthesis starts from shikimic acid, and it’s not native to India, so we must get it from outside,” Cipla Chairman and Managing Director Yusuf K. Hamied says. (Link.)

Once you have the shikimic acid, the process to make Tamiflu is extremely complex and even involves an explosive step similar to one in AZT manufacturing. It seems that what Cipla has reverse engineered is this post shikimic acid process. Roche has developed a “fermentation route” to manufacturing the shikimic acid, and it seems that Cipla has not yet reverse engineered that. It makes sense that harvesting the raw material might be cheaper than synthesizing or even growing it in vats of E. Coli.* So I got to wondering–what other plants even contain shikimic acid? (I’m, uh, taking Roche’s word for it that “only” the star anise which Roche happens to have a lock on could possibly be useful.) 

Eye-straining KosmicJourney.com listed it in the leaves of our familiar rice plant, but I’m a sucker for .gov databases and when I found Dr. Duke’s Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Database at ARS-GRIN.gov** I was thrilled to see what plants came up for Shikimik Acid. It seems that small amounts are available from prickly pears, the leaves of the mastic tree, and India’s own haritaki fruit. The motherlode of a possible 700,000 ppm, however, comes from the leaves of one Mammea americana:

Botanically, it is identified as Mammea americana L., of the family Guttiferae, and therefore related to the mangosteen, q.v. Among alternative names in English are mammee, mammee apple, St. Domingo apricot and South American apricot. . . .The ripe flesh is appetizingly fragrant and, in the best varieties, pleasantly subacid, resembling the apricot or red raspberry in flavor.. . The mamey is native to the West Indies and northern South America. . It has been nurtured as a specimen in English greenhouses since 1735. It grows well in Bermuda and is quite commonly cultivated in the Bahama Islands and the Greater and Lesser Antilles. (Link.)

 

In other words, it’s the mangosteen’s long lost Latin American cousin! Mangosteen was previously noted by Abhi as the South Asian Queen of Fruits, and fellow guest-blogger ADS had previously directed my attention to the Fighting Mangosteens! At some point we wondered idly if the tough looking fruit was drinking a glass of its own brethren. I hope it’s not a glass of its Carribean cousins. I am rather charmed by a vision of this tough desi fruit affectionately greeting its relation at the airport, albeit with an Italian accent: Mammea Americana!

Ahem, back to your regularly scheduled seriousness–the issue of patents, profits, and drug manufacturing has long been entangled with the subcontinent. About a year ago I blogged about the Institute for OneWorldHealth, a non-profit working to develop a drug to treat Black Fever Leishmaniasis, which kills 200,000 every year in India, Nepal, and parts of Africa. Quite a controversy has raged over the patenting of the traditional use of neem as a fungicide, especially given WTO pressure on other nations to conform to U.S. Patent law. Indeed, controversy is still simmering over the pharmaceutical implications of patenting the human genome. (Hat tip, Rhinocrisy.) The concentration of drug profitability in the developed world contrasts painfully with the concentration of tropical diseases in the developing world, and some have proposed that an Open Source model be used in drug development. Check it out, O Brilliant Mutineers.

I’d like to reiterate that the shikimik acid is only a starting ingredient, so that chewing tons of haritaki is unlikely to to be a good substitute for Tamiflu in case of Avian flu infection. Also, Razib’s blogmate ScottM says that Avian flu isn’t that worrisome.

*Could the hive mind help me figure out if this Roche method is the same as this Michigan State patent on biocatalytic synthesis of shikimic acid, United States Patent 661 3552?

**Chaucer, anybody?

At age 24, Rehman M. Khan (1874-1972), a young Pathan arrived in Suriname in 1898 on the steamship Avon.  . . .this young Khan knew the Qur’an as well as the Ramayana very well. He soon became popular in his plantation and among the surrounding Indians of the other plantations as a Ramayan specialist. He started propagating the Ramayana ideology and taught Hindi to the children of the Indian community. . . .there are many manuscripts available which he wrote in Suriname dealing with the Muslim problems in Suriname, the language issues and his own biography in four volumes. Coming from a middle class Pathan family, Khan was very educated. His knowledge of Urdu and Hindi helped his literary prose. He was also a poet and could compose poetry in standard Hindi “with a flavour of Braj”. . .He used his knowledge to educate the Hindu and Muslim community and to reconstruct the “Indian identity”. Khan kept in touch with India constantly and was also craving for news from his homeland. (Link.)

Khan wrote an autobiography, apparently in Hindi or a related dialect, that was previously only translated into Dutch. (According to one review in The Hindu,  he was even knighted by the Dutch Queen Juliana for his merits.) A translation into English has been popping up in reviews in The Hindu, IndoLINK, and The Tribune. The Autobiography of an Indian Indentured Laborer, by Munshi Rahman Khan, looks to be a fairly new release and seems available for purchase in dollars from Bagchee. 

*Of which we sadly missed the 40th anniversary.

More than 100 George Mason University students and faculty members gathered on campus yesterday for a teach-in, six days after an undergraduate was arrested in a confrontation with military recruiters there.

Tariq Khan, 27, said he was standing near the recruiters’ table in the multipurpose Johnson Center at lunchtime last Thursday, holding fliers and wearing signs, including one on his chest that read “Recruiters Lie, Don’t Be Deceived.” One of the recruiters, plus another man who said he was a Marine, began yelling at him, he said, adding that the Marine ripped off his sign. Khan said that after a campus police officer asked for identification, which he didn’t have with him, he was arrested, taken to the Fairfax County police department and charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.

Khan, a Pakistani American who grew up in Sterling and served four years in the U.S. Air Force, said the recruiters, and later the campus police, made disparaging comments to him about Middle Easterners.

Daniel Walsch, a university spokesman, said that Khan “was considered to be distributing literature,” which requires a permit, and that he was asked to leave the building.(Link)

The ACLU of Virginia wryly notes that the arrest occurred “at a public university named after the person who may be most responsible for the Bill of Rights.” Whether or not recruiters lie, George Mason U. is being patently untrue to its namesake’s ideals if it fails to urge the Fairfax D.A. to drop charges against Mr. Khan. (Link.)

The ACLU is defending Khan, who has a court date of Nov 14. (Link). Last week he gave a speech at the rally:

First of all I want to say that what happened to me last Thursday is not an isolated incident. . At at least three different colleges in the last week alone – the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Holyoke Community College in Massachusetts, and here at George Mason University – students engaged in non-violent counter-recruitment were met with police repression. . .And here at GMU I was harassed and assaulted by police and right-wing vigilante wannabe’s simply for standing in the JC with an 8×11 sign taped to my chest that said “Recruiters lie. Don’t be deceived.” Then I was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. While the police and vigilantes were brutalizing me, other right-wing students were cheering them on and shouting “Kick his ass!” . .Officer Reynolds, the goon who arrested me told me that he had to handcuff me because of 9/11. He said, “I didn’t know who you were, and what with 9/11 and all, there’s no telling what you’d do.” So because he didn’t know me, he had to assume that I’m a terrorist. Another officer at the GMU police station shouted at me, “You people are the most violent people in the world! You’re passive aggressive!” What does that mean? Who are “you people”? 

Besides the fundamental issue of preventing a student from engaging in free speech on a public campus, which I thought was settled over 40 years ago, there is the issue Khan brought up, a crystalized example of why we need first amendment rights to debate public policy and government actions in the first place–do recruiters lie?

It’s a question all Americans need to think about–if they do lie, they’re lying in our collective name. During graduation season earlier this year, Doonesbury jokingly and somewhat mildly broached the subject of recruitment earlier this year, only to be followed by a news report indicating that truth is worse than fiction: 

But two recruiters from Colorado have been suspended as the Army investigates accusations that they encouraged a teenager to lie and cheat so he could join up. Reporter Rick Sallinger of Denver TV station KCNC reports that 17-year-old high school journalist and honor student David McSwane is just the kind of guy the military would like.  . . .For one thing, he told his recruiter, he was a dropout and didn’t have a high school diploma.

No problem, McSwane says the recruiter explained. He suggested that McSwane create a fake diploma from a nonexistent school.

In May the army had to order a one-day halt in recruitment to review procedures, with 480 allegations of improper conduct to investigate. (Link) Swane recently followed up his adventure with a feature in Denver Westword. Besides this kind of basic dishonesty, which is essentially targeted at the military the recruiters serve, there is the issue of misrepresenting terms and natures of service to young recruits. AWOL resisters — or deserters — in Canada have repeatedly brought up the terms they say they thought they were getting:

Among the things Johnson was promised were a house to live in, a dental plan, medical coverage, more than $40,000 for college–and best of all, the recruiting officer told him, he wouldn’t even have to fight; if he liked, they would be happy to file the paperwork necessary to find him a nice desk job somewhere, no problem. Looking back at where he was in life and what the Army was promising him, Johnson still feels there was no way he could have refused. He was willing to do whatever they wanted, short of having to go to Iraq, and apparently, that wasn’t a problem. (Link)  Cliff Cornell, from Arkansas, was stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He joined the Army with the promise from a military recruiter that he would receive a $9,000 sign up bonus and job training. “Ninety per cent of what the recruiters tell you is a pack of lies,” said Cliff. Army recruitment techniques amount to entrapment, targeting young men from poor families, said Cornell. (Link.)

These are serious allegations, and scream to be examined thouroghly, if skeptically. It’s of particular concern to immigrant communities, which are now prime recruiting grounds. (See previous posts.)  A court martial started last week for a recruiter accused of facilitating illegal immigration to gain recruits. Perhaps veteran Tariq Khan instead deserves kudos for patriotically stirring up debate and discussion?