Vikram’s Talking Points

The support for doing away with the anti-homosexuality law was surprisingly strong, and other findings of the poll appear to indicate that once-widespread prejudices against gays and lesbians are slowly disappearing.

About 150 of India’s most influential figures - from the novelist Vikram Seth to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen - have joined their voices in a protest letter demanding the repeal of “cruel and discriminatory” legislation banning gay sex.

India’s anti-gay law faces challenge - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune

The government wants to encourage inter caste marriages The Indian government has suggested financial incentives of $1,100 should be offered to people who marry members of the lowest Hindu castes. Many states in India already pay some money to those who marry Hindus from the two lowest castes. But the amount differs from state to state - in Gujarat a couple gets the full $1,100 (50,000 rupees) - whereas in West Bengal state the amount is $45. The government says it now wants the sum to be the same throughout India.

BBC NEWS | South Asia | India in low caste marriage plan

I am all for encouraging inter-caste marriages, but with such a large sum of money (yes, for many in India it is enticingly large, don’t argue with me on this) the government must be watchful of fraud.

Just think of how US citizens enter into sham green card marriages for a suitable fee. Its usually white gal plus less than disarmingly handsome third world guy, who together go through agni pariksha at an INS office, proving their "love" through silly intimacy tests.  If the scheme works out, lady gets paid. Here I am more worried about caddish men taking advantage of unwitting "low caste" women, charming them with ladoos and flimsy scams, leaving them when the govenment check arrives. Admittedly, I don’t know the procedural safeguards in place here.

Also, what if everybody started lining up for this? Where are they getting the money from?

But then, for a couple legitimately committed to each other, facing casteism requires an adamantine will, especially if you are settled outside the cities or if your family is fixated on the purity of its stock. It’s not just a question of one petulantly casteist aunty or two throwing their dupattas back and doing a 180 when you walk into the room. The whole tribe could turn on you, and your friends, and maybe even your co-workers. Inter-village wars are fought over things like this. 

This way the couple stands a chance of actually making it in the world.

Good on you, Indian Government. Now, if this goes through, please do monitor the program carefully, and provide data demonstrating its efficacy over time.

Based on our projections, Asian Indians already number more than 2.5 million, and have now — for the first time — slightly eclipsed the Filipino American population to become the second largest Asian group in the United States. It is expected that they will equal or outnumber Chinese Americans in 2025.

What this also means is that as 2010 approaches, with Asian Indians representing 1.5 percent of the U.S. population, and considering there are 7,424 state legislators nationwide, the Indian American community should have at least 100 State legislators of Indian origin as opposed to the four who currently hold office.

INDOlink - Diaspora - Desi Americans To Cross 4.5 Million in 2010

Making projections based on five-year trends is - ahem - speculative, though it certainly does "feel" like there are many more desis around, at least in New Jersey. Interestingly, Indian illegal immigration is rising simultaneously, which typically happens when there is a surge in legal immigration. Regarding legislators - the newly arrived can’t even become citizens for five years, so Assisi’s predicted burgeoning of elected officials is woefully premature.

(Aside: Given that esteemed Senators casually taunt us with racial slurs like macaca, I am not persuaded that we’ve arrived in the way some of our brand boosters proclaim.)

The New York Times and others announced a few years ago that many high-achieving Indians were returning to India. The lifestyle in India, the assurances that accrue from being among one’s own, and managerial salaries that, when adjusted for cost of living, may be the highest in the world, lured many people back to the obstreperous Bangalore traffic. Some even predicted that the reverse brain-drain would precipitate a drop in the Indian-American population.

Obviously, this scenario hasn’t panned out. While the Indian economy is growing at 9 percent a year, the per capita GDP is still around $3100, in comparison to $41000 for the United States; so there will continue to be people who can simply do better here (better in terms of $, not in any metaphysical sense).

And who are these illegals? I suspect many are fellas who’ve overstayed their expired H1-B visas; or Gujurati Patels who slip in on tourist visas, don a baseball cap and head for the fryer at their cousin’s Dunkin Donuts, where everyone is so blindingly brown no one notices mundane things like immigrant status; and poor old mummies and daddies who wile away their waning years watching the damsels on Zee TV.

They’ll come, and come some more. And then they’ll get back on top… never mind.

Echoing Section 377 of India’s anachronistic penal code, which criminalizes homosexual activity, the Supreme Court of India proclaimed last year that homosexual relationships are "unnatural," and that Indian society is "not yet ready" to accept homosexuals on their own terms.

Now, a group in India is once again arguing in India’s courts that legalizing homosexuality will encourage the closeted homosexual community to seek treatment for HIV infection. Estimates indicate that 8 percent of India’s homosexuals are HIV positive (as compared to 1 percent of the general population), so I think they make a strong case for reducing the overall rate of HIV infection and AIDS.

I suspect that the great majority of middle-class Indians are not particularly averse to homosexuality, provided that gay couples carry on discreetly. A similar outlook can be found in the small towns of southern United States, where gay "roomates" are allowed to live together without excessive scutiny. The comedian Russell Peters often quips that a good family background would be important to Indian parents of same-sex partners. 

Ruth Vanita has argued for a modern Hinduism comfortable with homosexuality. She notes:

• Hindu philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti said that homosexuality, like heterosexuality, has been a fact for thousands of years, and that it becomes a problem only because humans focus too much on sex.
• When asked about homosexuality, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of the international Art of Living movement, said, “Every individual has both male and female in them. Sometimes one dominates, sometimes other; it is all fluid.”
• Mathematician Shakuntala Devi, in her 1977 book The World of Homosexuals, interviewed Srinivasa Raghavachariar, head priest of the Srirangam temple. Raghavachariar said that same-sex partners must have been cross-sex partners in a former life. The sex may change, he said, but the soul retains its attachments; hence love impels them toward one another.
• When, in 2002, Hindu scholar Ruth Vanita interviewed a Shaiva priest who had performed the marriage ceremony for two women, the priest said that having studied Hindu scriptures, he had concluded, “Marriage is a union of spirits. And the spirit is not male or female.”
• As Amara Dasa, founder of Gay and Lesbian Vaishnava  Association, noted in Tritiya-Prakriti: People of the Third Sex, several Gaudiya Vaishnava  authorities emphasize that since everyone passes through various forms, genders and species in a series of lives, people should not judge each other by the material body but should view everyone equally on a spiritual plane and be compassionate, as God is. [Link]

"Cities are the engines of growth since it is an urbanized population which has the productive capacity to create economic wealth and thus lead to development. India’s largely rural population has to be urbanized and since the existing cities are basically incapable of absorbing the population, new cities have to be developed."

Atanu Dey, in an excellent blog entry about Mukesh Ambani, which discusses, among other things, his vision to build two new metros outside of Delhi and Mumbai as part of a comprehensive makover plan for India. 

Besides increasing productivity, cities also emancipate rural migrants from village caste hierarchies. In anonymity we stand a chance of being judged by our worth and not by an arbitrary birth order. Religion becomes charismatic and egalitarian, transmitted by television and open-air celebrations rather than by wandering gurus and seasonal fairs. And no one is denied entry to temples.

Ambedkar exhorted the Dalits to head to the cities, because, he felt, the village was a superstitious milieu where time and progess did not matter. 

India’s metros have burgeoned into chaotic enormities. Mumbai is projected to have 30 million people in the next quarter century, half the population of Great Britain. Most of the second-tier cities are mofussil towns with superannuated infrastructure and provincial vibes. It’s time to usher in the new.