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It’s quite funny really. Those elastic bands to India connecting diasporic Indians to the homeland may have stretched almost to snapping point. Desi-Americans, particularly the younger lot, increasingly consider themselves American”: they use the plural pronoun “we” to distinguish themselves as Americans, from “you”, as those of us from India are referred to.
Yet, each time a man or woman of “Indian origin” makes the headlines, or as is often the case, writes them in the international press, they puff up like preening peacocks, pleased with themselves and flaunting their desi genes. To be fair to the NRIs, we in India are quick to claim the DI’s (diasporic Indians) as one of our own only when they have laurels heaped on them. Never mind the fact that we didn’t care two hoots for them while they were Indian, and struggling.
But I digress. What I want to write about is the metamorphosing nature of the DIs, particularly the Indian-Americans. Not only are they popping up more frequently in the media — they now stand out more boldly in the multi-coloured strands that comprise the tapestry of the American population — but it’s getting more difficult to tell if they are “desis”.
Earlier this week a few of us (DIs and DDs — desi-desis) had gathered in the sprawling mansion of one of the “we”-sayers in a tony Washington DC suburb to watch the televised presidential debate between Barrack Obama and John McCain. But the most passion-fuelled conversation that night (the debate was a bore) was the genetic make-up of the mysterious Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old, freshly anointed “$700 billion man”.
Just named the head of the US Treasury’s new ‘office of financial stability’, Kashkari (he was appointed assistant secretary of the Treasury for international affairs earlier this year) will have to run the massive bailout/rescue programme created by the emergency legislation passed last Friday. It will fund the largest government bailout in history.
Meanwhile, back at the dinner party. “Where was this bald man with piercing dark eyes from,” asked one of the guests? Frankly, when I first saw his photograph I thought he was Jewish or an Arab from the Levant: his name and appearance is ambiguous. “He must be a Parsi,” said one of the guests who may have been Parsi. “No”, countered another who was decidedly Kashmiri: “he has to be Kashmiri, look at the nose.” “Could he be a Gujarati?”, ventured, hesitantly, yet another guest, who was possibly from Gujarat.
The reclamation game continued even after the presidential debate was over. All one knew was that this DI grew up in Stow, Ohio and was previously with Goldman Sachs. In addition to the fact that this MBA from Wharton trained as an engineer and worked for NASA space missions before opting for a finance career.
In an intriguingly titled article The Indian Diaspora: The worldwide rise of Bollystan, published in this month’s Esquire, Parag Khanna — yet another DI — has waxed eloquently about the assimilative abilities of the diasporic desi. (Khanna is a director of the Global Governance Initiative and senior research fellow in the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation, and author of the controversial The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order).
I can’t quite put my finger on what Bollystan means — perhaps it is a state of mind and the Bolly bit of the word gave Mr Khanna licence to include a photograph of Ashwariya Rai, along those of Indian Americans like filmstar Kal Penn.
In his article Khanna writes:
“…wherever they are, Indians blend into the mainstream: In Washington lobbying circles, Indians are sometimes referred to — not least boastfully by themselves — as the “new Jews”. Today the three million Indian Americans (in the US) have a higher median income than Jews. What Jews and Indians have in common is that their diasporas are force multipliers, inflating their national image and strategic footprint worldwide.”
No wonder American DIs are strutting about.
Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com