The New York Times reports that the placement of Mohammad Salman Hamdani’s name on the National September 11 Memorial obscures his bravery that day. Lauded by the mayor, police commissioner and other government officials, including Rep. Keith Ellison, as a hero for trying to save lives at the World Trade Center on 9/11 before he died, 23-year-old Hamdani had been an EMT and a police cadet.

His remains were discovered in wreckage of the north tower but his name is not in the first responder list or the list of north tower victims. The memorial’s web site locates his name on a South Pool panel (the particular panel also includes the name of Sneha Anne Philip whose story appeared on SM–“Closure for Dr. Sneha Philip, 9/11 Victim”–after her name was removed and restored to an official list of victims). The Times describes the placement this way:

…his name appears on the memorial’s last panel for World Trade Center victims, next to a blank space along the south tower perimeter, with the names of others who did not fit into the rubrics the memorial created to give placements meaning. That section is for those who had only a loose connection, or none, to the World Trade Center.

Hamdani’s mother feels strongly about the placement of her son’s name, and that it’s not on the official first responder list.

“They do not want anyone with a Muslim name to be acknowledged at ground zero with such high honors,” his mother, Talat Hamdani, 60, said last week at her home in Lake Grove on Long Island, her voice filled with pain. “They don’t want someone with the name Mohammad to be up there.”

NYPD did not include Hamdani on its list of fallen because as a cadet he was still a student and considered the equivalent of a paid college intern, according to its spokesperson. Mrs. Hamdani seems unsure of pressing the issue. The article ends with her thoughts on the name placement.

“You are equal no matter where you are buried, whether your name is there or not,” Mrs. Hamdani recalled saying as she stood before his name and the memorial’s pouring waterfalls on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. “By your actions the world remembers you.”

The two principal narrative arcs around which the exhibition is organized bring to life the complex and fascinating worlds of India’s great kings. They help us to understand the real people behind the objects that were made for them. The first goes behind the scenes to analyze the roles and qualities of kingship in India. The second traces the ways the institution of kingship shifted against a rapidly changing political and historical backdrop from the early eighteenth century through the 1930s, a period that saw a change in the maharajas’ status from independent rulers to “native princes” under British colonial rule.–Decoding Images of Maharajas

The exhibit is free this Sunday, October 23, when the museum will also offer a family fun day. In the process of rebranding the Asian Art museum has taken on a new logo, an upside down A (a symbol with a meaning of “for all” in mathematics) in a move to be more inclusive.

This behind-the-scenes video of a maharaja’s silver and enamel carriage being brought in through two large windows and uncrated inside the museum is from its multimedia page which has interviews with princes and their descendants, and some of the art conservators who prepared items for the exhibit.

Related: A profile of the Asian Art Museum’s assistant curator of South Asian art Qamar Adamjee in Desi Women, Offbeat Paths

Today is National Coming Out Day and when I used to live in L.A., I’d join the annual parade of South Asians walking down Pioneer Blvd. chanting, “We ‘re here! We’re queer! We’re on Pioneer!” As you can imagine, the South Asian community is not quite so accepting of ‘The Gays” in the community. I supported as an ally because I wanted to be a supporting Desi face even when their family members couldn’t be.

But sometimes, coming out to your family may not be right for everyone. I came across a touching story from Nancy Haque titled Coming Out About Not Being Out from the Western States Center. It addresses the complexities of understanding your parents enough to know when and what to share with them. Despite the fact that mainstream LGBTQIA community may encourage coming out, it may not be the best thing for every family, particularly immigrant Desi parents.

I’m not out to my parents – the gold standard of being out. I haven’t done it and don’t actually plan on doing it. The truth is I have a very complicated relationship with my parents. I’m not particularly close to them and haven’t been since early childhood. I’m the youngest of four and was raised by my sister and two brothers as much as I was by my parents. I came out to my siblings 14 years ago and have always been supported by them. I love and respect my parents, but beyond my sexuality, they don’t understand the work I do, don’t know my hopes and dreams, don’t know the majority of my friends, and have never visited the home I purchased three years ago.

Yet my relationship to them is important. It’s important for me to be able to go home. I know in my heart my parents can never accept me having a female partner. It’s beyond their life experience to understand it. It’s not because they’re bad people, it’s just the way it is. I don’t feel like I’m living a lie because I’m not. Yet by not telling my parents, I’m taking a very unpopular stance in the general queer community…. I know that I’m not alone, that we all find our own ways to navigate our lives. I know that being queer and being raised Muslim is who I am, and it’s a complicated way to be. That’s why it was important to me to share my story… [westernstatescenter]

You can read the rest of her essay here. I could empathize with her essay – there were many things that my parents didn’t know about me or my personal life even to this day. But even though Western society dictated I should tell my parents every aspect of my life, in some ways it was just easier to play to their Desi narrative whenever I was home. It was dysfunctionally functioning for hyphenated surviving. And like for Nancy, it was just fine.

You can watch Nancy share her story (along with other LGBT APIA stories) in the video above from the Our Families campaign. Please take a listen. Power to the people struggling through this important day.

Everyone has a story about 9/11, including desis. South Asian American Leaders for Tomorrow (SAALT) has been working to make desi voices a part of the national tenth anniversary commemoration and conversation about 9/11. SAALT’s campaign called An America for All of Us was mentioned in the SM post “It’s Been Ten Years”.

A recent interview with Mou Khan, a SAALT program and communications associate, gives more information about the kinds of stories SAALT is seeking to share and highlight. To listen to or read the full interview, visit Center for American Progress.

E: …what are the unique experiences of the South Asian community and their stories in the post-9/11 America?

M: South Asians, like all Americans, experienced 9/11 primarily as the violent, tragic attack that it was. Our story since then is also in the distinct and different ways that our community—along with other communities like Muslims, Sikh, Arab Americans—has been targeted by a post-9/11 backlash.

In the week immediately following September 11, 2001, our organization documented 645 reported incidents targeting South Asians and Middle Easterners. There were also large scale roundups of Muslim Americans. In 2002 we saw the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System which began the mandatory registration and questioning of certain male nationals from a number of Muslim-majority countries including Bangladesh and Pakistan. While no national security threats were identified, more than 13,000 of these 84,000 men who registered were placed in deportation proceedings for minor immigration violations.

Another hallmark of the post-9/11 South Asian story has been school bullying and profiling at airports. Gurwinder Singh spoke at a briefing during a National South Asian Summit in April about his experiences of bullying at the hands of his classmates, ranging from verbal taunts to serious violent attacks on his person.

One particular moving story is that of Talat Hamdani who also spoke at the briefing in April. Her son, Salam, was an EMT in training, who—like so many courageous first responders—died while saving others in downtown Manhattan. As the dust settled, some questioned whether he was actually involved in the attack. These personal attacks on her son’s character hurt the family beyond measure and led her to become a vocal advocate for not just honoring the memory of her son and the other victims of the attack but to defend the core American values that stand against smearing someone based on their religion or ethnicity.

A small part of Gurwinder Singh’s story is contained in the Congressional Record because it inspired legislation to help students being bullied. Yesterday, the New York Times posted a video of Talat Hamdani telling her story, and in the years after 2001 she has been outspoken about her experience.

Mou Khan also elaborated on the concept of post-9/11 backlash, its different elements and legacies.

E: You talk about the broader post 9/11 experience. What are these commonalities? As you document these stories, are there some that do not fit the larger narratives and that are surprising to you?

M: There are many different elements to post-9/11 backlash. Part of the challenge is to explain what we mean by that term to people who are not as familiar with it. To really draw together the different phenomena that we are describing—school bullying, harassment in the work place, hate crimes, government policies—to see the disparate elements as part of this whole concept of post-9/11 backlash.

Also, post-9/11 backlash has really shifted in a lot of ways. It’s now about different things like protests against building mosques or anti-Sharia laws. We are seeing younger and younger people perpetrating—and being the victims of—bullying who are further and further away from the 9/11 moment. It is incumbent upon us to build a lens and a worldview that makes sense of all of this. That can show how these changes are part of the same essential backlash and how we need to understand these new developments and develop news tools and partnerships to combat it.

I love me some primary sources/historical material, so imagine my delight when I discovered the South Asian American Digital Archive, which I first heard about from a friend of Vivek’s. You can get lost on this site for many hours, looking at everything from the Gadar Party to old SM favorite Dilip Singh Saund (and by the way, I would like a dollar for every time he has been mentioned on SM).

It turned out that Vivek’s pal, SAADA President Samip Mallick, was working on SAADA with, among other people, a friend of a friend of mine, Manan Desai. The two of them agreed to do an interview about it for Sepia. This interview was conducted via the standard Interwebs.VVG: Thanks so much for doing this chat. As you know, I think this is a really cool project–I’m the kind of person who can fall into the wormhole of the Internet pretty quickly, especially when it comes to Fun Historical Facts (or… Less Fun Historical Facts From Which We Might Learn). This site has such great potential… can you tell us a little bit about how you got started?

Samip Mallick (SM): Sugi, thanks so much for inviting us! Our organization, the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) was started in 2008 based on what we saw as a very critical need in our community. There were at that time… and continue to be to this day… no other archives that are working to systematically document and preserve the history of the South Asian American community. And, as a result, we feared that this important history was in danger of being lost. Our mission is not just to document and preserve the history of our community, but also to ensure that these histories are more widely known to everyone, especially within our own community. It seems like we’re always coming across really fascinating stories that we just had no clue about. And we feel like having a greater understanding of the history of our community will give us a better sense of not just who we were, but of who we are today and who we aspire to be.

Manan Desai (MD): I agree, and I think accessibility is one of the central ideas behind our project. There’s something really gratifying about providing access to historical materials directly to the public without a great deal of mediation. Our goal is to allow the reader to confront and understand the material for her or himself.

VVG: What are your personal favorites in this collection? I got a kick out of seeing a younger version of SM’s own Taz, working for SAAVY. I also love seeing the history connected to the University of Michigan, of course, since I teach there (and you’re both connected to the university too)… “The India Society of Detroit” info was pretty awesome. What were the biggest surprises for you as you started gathering material?

MD: “The India Society of Detroit” material was really interesting and totally surprising. Having grown up outside of Detroit, I didn’t expect to see such an early presence of South Asians in the city all the way back in 1911, let alone read about it in a Calcutta-based publication like the Modern Review. We’re trying to follow that trail even further.

Building our Gadar Party collection has been really exciting, too. The Gadar Party was a radical, anti-imperialist organization based on the West Coast, which spread out internationally throughout Europe and Asia. Its membership was made up of South Asians–mainly Sikhs–agitating against British rule in India. They published a newspaper Gadar, as well as pamphlets like the ones we’ve digitized and published online. So, I hope that our collection will be valuable for raising awareness about the history of the early 20th century South Asian diaspora. [VVG: the picture at right is from the Gadar Party collection.]

SM: One of the collections that we’re processing right now is one that I’m particularly excited about because it’s a fascinating history that I just didn’t know anything about. The Watumulls are one of the first South Asian families to settle in Hawaii. Jhamandas Watumull moved to Hawaii in 1913 and opened a retail store in downtown Honolulu that would eventually be named the “East India Store.” The store flourished, selling raw silk goods and “aloha shirts” on the island, turning into a major department store, before eventually opening additional branch stores in Waikiki and in downtown Honolulu. The Watumull family also has made a huge and lasting impact on Hawaii through their philanthropic work, supporting the arts, education and other causes. We’ve been working with Mrs. Indru Watumull to document and preserve their family history and these materials are now being published online in our archive.

What was wonderful about working about the SAAVY materials is that Taz had been very diligent and forward-thinking and had carefully maintained a variety of SAAVY’s organizational materials even after her work with the organization had ended. In addition to digitally preserving and providing access to historical materials, we would also like to work closely with the community to create a greater understanding of the importance of archiving as well as what it takes to ensure that materials, both digital and non-digital, are preserved for the long term.

VVG: You guys recently sent me a note saying you’d gotten a great grant. Tell us a little about the support you’ve gotten in the past and the kind of support you’re looking for, especially from the likes of our SM readers. If someone has material they want to digitize and submit, is there a process for doing that? What makes the cut? Or are you just digitizing everything you find so far?

SM: Yes! In fact it was our first grant, which we’ve received from a local philanthropic organization in Chicago called the Asian Giving Circle (AGC). AGC members each commit to donating a minimum of $250 a year for at least two years, and the funds are then allocated in a grant competition to support organizations working within the Asian American community in Chicago. What was really wonderful for us with this grant was the opportunity to meet many of the members of the Asian Giving Circle who had given money out of their own pocket to support our mission of preserving history. The work that we do is a labor of love for all of us involved. We’re an entirely volunteer-run organization. But, of course, like other non-profit organizations, we rely on the generous financial support from those who value the work we’re doing.

We certainly are interested in working with anyone who has materials that they think should be included in the archive. And not just those who have materials themselves, but also those who’ve maybe heard a story about South Asian American history or have an idea for a collection that they think is worth documenting. The best way to get in touch with us is by email, at info@saadigitalarchive.org We’re very eager to be in contact with anyone who wants to work collaboratively with us to document and preserve South Asian American history. [VVG: emphasis mine!]

MD: Some of our more interesting collections have come from people just tipping us off about a story that we then follow. We’ve recently started a collection on the Bellingham Riot in the state of Washington, in which a white mob attacked and ousted hundreds of South Asian settlers in 1907. This archival work is being done collaboratively with Professor Paul Englesberg, who lives in Washington, has been recovering and documenting a lot of this history himself and was eager to share his findings. If anyone has an idea of something to pursue, let us know!

VVG: Relatedly, any spaces in your collections that you’d particularly like to fill? Any challenges with any particular communities or types of material?

MD: There are still a lot of gaps to fill. For one, there’s a real, ethical obligation for our generation to document the struggles of South Asian communities, and particularly Muslim and Sikh communities in the aftermath of 9/11. We’ve actually recently begun working with SAALT (South Asian Americans Leading Together) to do just that.

It’d be also incredible if we could do larger collections on some key South Asian enclaves in the U.S.–Jackson Heights, Edison, Hamtramck, Devon Avenue. We are also mindful that South Asian American can easily become an euphemism for Indian American, and we’d like to avoid that by recognizing the diversity in our community and being engaged with the community at the broadest possible level.

VVG: I really appreciate your conceiving and executing this as a South Asian American project. What led to it being framed that way, rather than around any one specific community, ethnicity or nationality?

MD:One of the aims of SAADA was to investigate the history of South Asians in the United States in terms that are more specific and grounded than dominant narratives that have rendered the community into one homogeneous group. The category “South Asian American” isn’t perfect, but our aim in using it is simply to be as inclusive as possible.

That said, I think the process of collecting and discovering materials about how South Asian communities have framed their identity through different categories — ethnic, national, caste, religious, regional, etc.–can really tell us a lot about how identity is negotiated and re-invented in the United States. Not to mention, how the state and the media have produced their own categories for South Asians–you can really see this in our collections of materials about early immigration. [VVG: The pictures below are from the early immigration collection.]

VVG: Where would you like this project to be in ten years?

SM: First and foremost, as an archive we enter into a bond of trust with the community we serve to ensure that the digital materials in our possession are well taken care of and preserved. As those who’ve dealt with anything digital are very well aware, technology and software are changing at a breakneck speed. That will be plainly evident, for example, if you try to open a Pagemaker file or access a Geocities website. As a digital archive one of our primary concerns is to ensure that even if software changes or the way people visit our archive changes, the digital materials we care for will still be accessible to the public.

Our other major goal is to work closely with the South Asian American community to ensure not just that we do a better job of documenting, preserving and providing access to our history, but to work together to ensure that our stories are told and retold for future generations.

Pride of Nations is a turn-based historical strategy game set in the colonial era of the 19th century, where the player takes control of a country and guides it through industrialization, military conquest, and colonization. This upcoming release from AGEOD follows such successful historical strategy games as Birth of America, American Civil War, Napoleon’s Campaigns, and Wars in America [linkocricy].

What? What’s that I hear you say, friend? You feel slightly more ill now than you’d otherwise feel on a Monday morning because there’s about a 0.0001% chance that Pride of Nations in any way addresses the awful things these countries did to colonies and their people? Well rest assured!

Fight against a strong AI through a number of new game mechanisms

Yes! Strong AI will represent your ancestors and their struggle for freedom!

Being brown, you might also be required to play the role of terrorist in a training drill, taking a mock bomb up to a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport security checkpoint. And, oops, your boss might forget to tell airport police that the drill is happening, prompting an armed response.

According to information released Monday by MSP airport police, the May 12 security test included a device in a shaving kit made to look like a bomb. It was a cylinder with wires connected to a wrist watch. The device was brought to a passenger security checkpoint, according to airport Police Sgt. Mark Ledbetter, one of the responding officers.

“Upon arriving [at the checkpoint],” Ledbetter wrote in his report, “TSA [Transportation Security Adminstration] screeners were out with a male who appeared to be Middle Eastern in descent or Indian/Pakistani.” (StarTribune)CAIR complained to the Department of Homeland Security that using a person who looks to be Middle Eastern or Indian/Pakistani this way to test security screening procedures reinforces negative ethnic stereotypes, and that this is part of a pattern of stereotyping and inaccurate information used by trainers to the nation’s security personnel that should be investigated. A TSA spokesman stated the agency conducts “thousands of training tests each year, and the individuals carrying out the testing are [of] various ethnicities, ages and appearances, just like the traveling public.”

The TSA seems to be suggesting that selecting you for this training test was a random choice. Being randomly selected happens and doesn’t always feel so random, for example, when you’re going through airport security. Sometimes it’s quick and relatively painless. Other times it’s like having a scarlet T on your forehead. Always you hope you don’t get picked. Sorry you got picked, TSA guy.

CAIR argues that you’ve been used to reinforce a hostile, discriminatory lesson about who is a threat to our national security. It wouldn’t be the first time the government used one of its own citizens enlisted in service to protect our nation, to show what the enemy looks like.

During basic training in Quantico, Va., Don Mitsuo was ordered by his drill instructor to wear the clothes of a Viet Cong soldier (Whelchel includes photos of Sam Yorunga dressed up as the enemy for the U.S. Army). Mitsuo was then made to stand before his fellow marines while his drill instructor shouted, “This is what your enemy looks like. I want you to kill it before it kills you.” (Japan Times)

Miyoshi, who fought in Vietnam, describes an incident that happened in his Marine officer training. One day a drill instructor ordered Miyoshi to get up on the podium and stand at attention in front of his fellow trainees. Pointing in his direction, the instructor told the class, “This is what the enemy looks like. Kill it before it kills you.” (Asian America through the lens, by Jun Xing)

(Image by goldberg.)

If you’re on the west coast, more so in California, then you might have grown up in a home that got India Currents in the mail, a monthly magazine with an Indian-American point of view. Or maybe you’ve picked up a free copy at a desi grocery store or restaurants. And of course today its award-winning content is published online too. This month IC celebrates a quarter-century of continuous publication.

Mercury News profiled the publisher and co-founder of the magazine, Vandana Kumar.

Vandana Kumar was an arranged-marriage bride, lost her husband to cancer, has a gay cousin, knows techies who came to Silicon Valley on H-1B visas, is friends with Chinese “tiger moms,” and struggled through the college application process for her twin sons.

Since 1987, she and a team of writers have delved into all of those stories — and more — in the pages of India Currents, the oldest and largest Indian-American magazine on the West Coast, which is celebrating its 25th year of publication this month. (Mercury News)

The article mentions that IC’s mission of providing information about cultural events was “inspired by Kumar’s brother-in-law, Arvind Kumar.” I didn’t realize he was a co-founder too until I read another article in IC itself, Sandip Roy-Chowdhury’s piece about the magazine’s origins. Roy-Chowdhury shares the story of IC’s founding by Vandana Kumar, Arvind Kumar and Ashok Jethanandani, a story that seems to start with Trikone, a publication for LGBT South Asians.> … as a gay man, Kumar was anxious to find other people like him. At that time there was no Internet, no gay groups in India, no easy way for gay and lesbian South Asians to find each other. Kumar decided to set up a support group. It was called Trikone, the Sanskrit word for triangle, commemorating the pink triangle the Nazis used to mark homosexuals. Kumar was working at Hewlett Packard. He photocopied the first issue of Trikone magazine, a handful of pages stapled together, on HP’s copiers after work. He jokes HP has no idea about its pivotal role in the growth of the South Asian lesbian and gay movement.

Kumar met Jethanandani through Trikone. “When I met Ashok in late 1985 I knew nothing about Indian fine arts–dance, music etc.,” Kumar says.

Jethanandani was very interested in the arts. He was studying bharatanatyam at a time when few Indian men, especially engineers, studied dance. Jethanandani took Kumar to many programs at the 18-month-long Festival of India going on at that time. As the festival ended, Kumar remembers feeling a sense of loss and emptiness. “We talked now and then about how nice it would be if there was a local publication that highlighted the many Indian events that were taking place in the Bay Area,” says Kumar. “It would be as if the festival never ended.”

Kumar was already cutting his teeth on publishing, editing and designing with the Trikone newsletter. When he decided to take the summer off to get ready for grad school, he realized he was not going to be able to run India Currents on his own. So he asked Vandana Kumar, his cousin’s wife, to help and she agreed. She has played the most constant role in publishing the magazine.

For more on the challenges and excitement of the early years of publishing India Currents, read the rest of Roy-Chowdhury’s article.

“Well, that’s not too surprising…” someone mentioned. “It sounds like the Osho Ashram in India where you need to get STD tests before entering.” That’s when our conversation took an interesting turn. The Osho Ashram they were talking about is located in Pune, India. Established in 1974, it was the place where Osho made his eventual return in the 1980s and his final resting spot when he passed away in 1990. But before Osho was known as Osho the “sex guru” of India, he was known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh the “Rolls-Royce guru” of Oregon.

That’s right, I said it. Oregon. In the early 1980s Rajneesh and his 2,000 followers set up camp in the ranch lands of Eastern Oregon at a place they named Rancho Rajneesh. The story that ensues has all the twists and turns of a Hollywood big screen hit. This past weekend, The Oregonian wrote up a fascinating five part expose of the Rajneeshees rise and fall, 25 years later. They have colorfully eerie photos from the days of the city’s hey days and have a great collection of documents archiving this bizarre story. I’ve always known that there has been a rich history of traveling gurus coming to America, but this was hardly what I had in mind.

Thousands dressed in red, worked without pay and idolized a wispy-haired man who sat silent before them. They had taken over a worn-out cattle ranch to build a religious utopia. They formed a city, and took over another. They bought one Rolls-Royce after another for the guru — 93 in all.

Along the way, they made plenty of enemies, often deliberately. Rajneeshee leaders were less than gracious in demanding government and community favors. Usually tolerant Oregonians pushed back, sometimes in threatening ways. Both sides stewed, often publicly, before matters escalated far beyond verbal taunts and nasty press releases. [theoregonian]

The story started when Osho/Rajneesh escaped India after a crackdown on his smuggling and tax fraud. His chief of staff was the 31 yr old Ma Ananda Sheela. > Initially soft-spoken and engaging, Sheela charmed Oregon ranchers and politicians. Early on, she hosted a dance in Madras where cowboys partied until dawn. She curried favor, buying 50 head of cattle from a Wasco County commissioner, even though the commune was vegetarian….Anxious to move ahead, she closed the property deal without understanding Oregon law — a pivotal mistake. She didn’t know the state severely limited how many people and buildings could be jammed onto ranch land. [theoregonian]

Thus begins Sheela and her attempts at lying, bribing, and brow beating politicians, townspeople and environmental groups to get what she wants. Then there were the 93 Rolls Royces that were gifted to the guru by Hollywood.

A group of wealthy California donors also proved challenging to control once they moved to the Oregon ranch in 1984. The most notable were Francoise Ruddy, whose former husband produced “The Godfather,” and John Wally, a physician who made a fortune in emergency room medicine…They had no zeal for the lifestyle of seven-day workweeks, shared meals or rudimentary sleeping quarters. Instead, the Californians set up a home for themselves apart from the usual housing. They brought in expensive furnishings, artwork and even their own car, a Jaguar. They obliged the [guru] with diamond-studded watches and Rolls-Royces. [theoregonian]

The situation escalates. Eventually, Sheela creates a gang of sorts to strike out at the commune’s enemies. With the support of an on-site doctor, they conducted secret experiments with viruses and bacterias to create poisons.

In summer 1984, Puja field-tested her work, handing unlabeled vials to those on the secret teams….The operatives knew, or suspected, the brown liquid was salmonella, which produces severe diarrhea and other symptoms. Over months, they were dispatched to spread the poison in The Dalles. They initially hoped to sicken public officials standing in their way, but then pursued a grander scheme to attack innocent citizens.

About that time, Hulse and two other Wasco County commissioners arrived at the ranch for a tour. As the commissioners waited in the hot August sun, Puja approached, offering each a glass of water.

…Hulse remained in the hospital four days, with doctors telling him he would have died without treatment. As he recovered at home later, Hulse concluded the Rajneeshees poisoned him. [theoregonian]

They denied, of course. In an effort to change the law they decide to have one of their own elected into county office.

To elect her, the Rajneeshees hit upon two schemes. One was to depress the turnout by traditional Wasco County residents by making them sick. The second was to pack the rolls with new voters loyal to the Rajneeshees.

Using Sheela’s American Express card, Rajneeshees had chartered buses in cities coast to coast, filling them with homeless people, mostly men…. As the homeless rolled onto the ranch, they were obliged to register to vote. They were expected to vote the party ticket, as it were, when it came time to pick the new county commissioners. [theoregonian]

There was arson of the county planner’s office.

There was the contamination of unattended drinking water with an overdose level of Haldol, at a hearing in the State Library in Salem.

And finally, attempted murder.

Their top target was Charles Turner, the U.S. attorney for Oregon. His prosecutors were investigating immigration fraud at the commune….One of the assassins traveled the country with another sannyasin, buying pistols that couldn’t be traced. Others set up a safe house in Portland, which became the base for scouting Turner’s home. On one occasion, two assassins sat in a McDonald’s in Downtown Portland across from Turner’s office, sipping coffee and monitoring his movements. They considered gunning him down in a parking garage but couldn’t figure an easy way to escape. [theoregonian]

It self-combusted. Sheela quit the ranch in 1985 and fled to Europe. And the guru?

The guru made a cross-country dash on a chartered jet to escape, but was caught in North Carolina as he was about to leave the country. He was hauled back to Portland in handcuffs, booked into jail like a common criminal. He ordered his lawyers to cut him a quick deal, and he was soon deported as a convicted felon, guilty of immigration crimes.

Courthouses were busy with civil matters as well. Rajneeshee corporations went bankrupt, poisoning victims sued and the state pressed the case against the city of Rajneeshpuram. [theoregonian]

I’m not sure about you, but I was totally sucked into the five part series. It blew my mind that this could have happened in Oregon of all places. And so recently, in the 1980s. Rajneesh spent the mid 80s bouncing around from country to country as he kept being refused entry and finally re-settling in Pune with a name change to Osho. He died in 1990.

You can read the full story and dig through the archives directly at The Oregonian. All photos used in this blog come from that site.

The Washington Post’s Reliable Source column singled out this section of Sheen’s “heartfelt, yet grandiose oratory”:

“A dream that helps lift up this nation and all its people to a place where the heart is without fear and the head is held high and knowledge is free, where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls where words come out from the depths of truth and tireless driving stretches its arms towards perfection where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way to dreary desert sands of dead habit.”

Sound familiar? As the Reliable Source pointed out in a follow-up column, Sheen forgot to note that he was quoting from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali.

It looks like the mistake was inadvertent. Sheen quoted the same Tagore excerpt during a 2008 speech at Notre Dame and promptly devoted the next paragraph to explaining who Tagore was.

Sheen first became familiar with the poem while filming the movie Gandhi in 1981.