SAJAforum

MAGAZINES: 160+ South Asian Covers From 1921 to the Present

SOUTH ASIA-RELATED COVERS OF U.S. MAGAZINES, 1921-2011 (in reverse order)

You can control each image by clicking on the forward, pause and back buttons. If you can't see the covers below (or want to see the slideshow in full size), click here.

If you can't see the covers above (or want to see the slideshow in full size), click here.

Post your comments below or e-mail us at saja[at]columbia.edu - help us make this list better!

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The cover on the right, "India: Liberty & Death" is what ran on the cover of Time on Oct. 27, 1947.  And it's a part of a major SAJA research project that you can participate in. Starting in Oct. 2006, we have been building right here the largest database of major U.S. magazines featuring South Asia and South Asians - see the slideshow above.

Below is a collage/slideshow of the covers we found - 75+ 85+ 100+ 125+ 130+ 140 150 161 as of now. This not a comprehensive list and we need your help to make it better. If you know of a cover image we missed, please let us know in the comments section. Better yet, include the URL or file of the image. Or e-mail us at saja[at]columbia.edu - subject line = "South Asian covers" (attach the cover image if you have it). We will keep adding to this slideshow as you help us find more covers.

A quick analysis and trivia (add your own below).

• The images on the cover seem to fall into these major categories: photos/illustration/cartoons of newsmakers; and photo illustrations/cartoons featuring some typical subcontinental elements, including elephants (lots of elephants!), turbans, snake charmers, sari borders, multi-armed gods/goddesses, etc, etc.
• Since SAJA is most interested in tracking the American press, we are only including the U.S. editions of Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, etc. The Asian editions of these mags regularly feature South Asian themes. We have also included the U.S. edition of The Economist, which is a separate edition created for American audiences.
• Time is the only publication which has full archives of its covers online and easily accessible. It's search function, too, is very good. Once you find a cover you are interested in, you can read the table of contents and read the stories themselves. You can also buy the cover images, ready for framing or already framed.
  If you have access to Newsweek and other mags' covers, please help fill in the gaps.
• Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was popular with the editors of Time. He made the cover  six times, his daughter, Indira Gandhi  and the most famous Indian of them all, Mahatma Gandhi  (no relation, of course), only three times each (see results for a search of "Gandhi").
• Gandhi's first appearance, in March 1930, is in a drawing so unusual that you may not  recognize him.
• In the run-up to Partition, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and Sardar Patel, a major Congress leader of India, both made the cover once each.
• Nehru's repeated appearances show you how the world has changed. I can't easily imagine a near-term scenario when a leader from anywhere in South Asia makes multiple appearances on the covers of the U.S. editions of Time or Newsweek. I would love to be proven wrong, of course.
• While three other British Viceroys made the cover of Time (Irwin, Linlithgow, Wavell), Lord Louis Mountbatten never made the cover as Viceroy (he did make the cover, in June 1942, for his leadership during World Word II).
• The nuclear test of May 1998 by India and Pakistan did not get full cover treatment in the U.S. As you can see from this Time cover, Frank Sinatra's death moved the test to a secondary story and  a cover mention; same thing for that week's Newsweek.
• In the last few years, the covers have focused on India's economy, violence in Pakistan and, increasingly, South Asian celebrities in the U.S.
• We couldn't find Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on a major U.S. magazine cover - though he must have made it at least one - let us know if you know if you find one.
• Naeem Mohaiemen says in the comments: "Bangladesh's independence war in 1971 was mostly covered as the 'India-Pakistan war' in US media, and most of the focus was on last 20 days when India intervened on behalf of Bangladesh."

Please take a look and post your comments, analysis, etc, below.

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Ayub Nuri on Fixers and War

The New York Time Magazine (July 29, 2007) carried a powerful essay by Ayub Nuri, an Iraqi journalist and "fixer" who explains what it is like to work in support of Western journalists. Read the powerful essay and see the fascinating video that accompanies it.

Nuri graduated from Columbia University's Journalism School last year and I have gotten to know him well. He's a soft spoken, serious young man, who has seen aspects of the war and the media industry that most of us never will.

EARLIER ON SAJAforum.org:

• See all entries in the SAJAforum Iraq category
  

PAKISTAN: A British Woman's Impact on Remotest Pakistan

Jonathan Foreman, a British-New Yorker who has been in and out of South Asia for more than 15 years, has a big piece in the Telegraph Magazine on July 28, 2007. It's a piece called "Titan of Kalash" and is about an eccentric 69-year-old Englishwoman known as "Bibi Doe." The subhead reads: "The last enclave of pagan tribespeople in remotest Pakistan might already have fallen to the combined ravages of modernity and militant Islam were it not for a redoubtable, eccentric Englishwoman." From the article:

It is hard to believe that anyone could make the journey from Peshawar to Chitral so often - but last October alone Bibi Doe did it 12 times. She regularly puts up with dangers and physical discomforts that would fell a woman half her age. In 1990, for instance, she almost drowned when her Land Cruiser was hit by a flash flood while crossing a river. (She never now wears a seatbelt.)

For Bibi Doe, death threats are a fact of life. She has battled corrupt officials, the frontier timber mafia, Kalash distillers of lethal moonshine liquor, bigoted mullahs, pimps, jihadist militants, insensitive tourists, unscrupulous entrepreneurs, giant aid agencies, foreign academics and do-gooders she considers exploitative. 'If you ever read that I've died in accident,' she said as we loaded up her Land Cruiser before leaving for Birir, 'you'd better come back and investigate what really happened.'

Bibi Doe is named after her favourite Kalash dog - an orphaned pup she adopted in 1986 after its mother was taken by a wolf. The children of the valleys heard her shouting, 'Bibi Doe! Bibi Doe!' as she tramped up and down the trails with a backpack full of medicines. It became their name for her, and then everyone's name for her. When she raised money for the repair of a 1927 suspension bridge across the Chitral river, on which the commerce of the valleys depends, she ensured that a plaque on the bridge read, 'Repaired 2006 by Bibi Doe'.

The caption for the photo above, by Mark Read, reads: "Maureen Lines, aka Bibi Doe, with her Kalash 'sister' Sainusar, left, and one of the men who help run her medical dispensary"

Read the full piece here and post your comments below.

OBIT: Dilip Ganguly, Veteran AP Journalist, Dies

Dilip Ganguly, a veteran AP newsman best-known for extensive coverage during the 1991 Iraq War, died Sunday, July 29, 2007, in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) India.  He had taken charge of the Kolkata bureau in India in April, after covering Sri Lanka for a decade. From the AP obit:

Dilip Ganguly, whose 21-year career at The Associated Press saw him report from Baghdad during the Gulf War, on the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and on stories across South Asia, died on Sunday. He was 57.

Ganguly, in a coma since suffering a brain hemorrhage on July 14, died in Calcutta,
the eastern Indian city where he was based as a correspondent for the news service, said his son, Shonal Ganguly.

"Dilip loved being a journalist. His career had taken him around the world and he had shown repeatedly through his hard work and his earnestness just how good a journalist he could be," Shonal Ganguly said.

Among the high-profile assignments Ganguly undertook - and the one he was most proud of - was covering Baghdad at the start of the Gulf War in 1991.

Click on photo, from 1994, for hi-rez version

[ See some of his reportage below.]

Arul Louis, an editor with the New York Daily News, and former colleague, shared his thoughts on Ganguly with SAJAforum:

Dilip Ganguly was the quintessential journalist-adventurer: Always looking to get into
places where everyone else was trying to get out of.

From our days at the United News of India in the 1970s, Dilip dada was forever fighting for the toughest and most dangrous assignments: A riot in Old Delhi or an upheaval in Bangladesh. And dreaming of being a roving reporter hitting all the hot spots.

And he had an eye for the unusual -- and for looking at the usual from an unusual angle. (He once proposed a feature to the Illustrated Weekly on paan spitting habits; Kushwant Singh, the then-editor, sent back a two-word telegram: "Spit out.")

BUSINESS: LAT on Big Retailers Target India

Henry Chu, LAT staff writer in India, has a major piece about big retailers targeting India.

Los Angeles Times
July 28, 2007

Big retailers target India
Hypermarkets are rising as middle-class incomes grow and consumerism flourishes in a country long dominated by mom-and-pop stores. By Henry Chu - henry.chu[at]latimes.com

MUMBAI, INDIA — "Spoiled for choice" is not usually a phrase associated with shopping in this country. But for two hours — a lot longer than they'd intended — Sunil and Alka Paralkar puttered through the aisles squeezing fresh fruit, inspecting packaged foods and checking out shelves of knickknacks at a gleaming "hypermarket" here.
<snip>
The Paralkars are among the millions of middle-class Indians whose growing purchasing power has domestic and global companies slavering. As Gandhi's homeland increasingly tosses aside the simplicity he espoused in favor of an eager consumerism, retailers are trying to position themselves to catch the wave.

The result is the rise of a way of shopping that may seem second nature in the West but represents a major shift in India: supermarkets and hypermarkets, with groceries, appliances, toys and numerous other goods under one roof.
<snip>
Overall, supermarkets, hypermarkets and discount stores account only for a tiny fraction of the retail market in India, but their sales still came to about $1.5 billion in 2006. And although India's supermarket sales lag far behind those in Asia's other developing giant, China, analysts see enormous potential in the subcontinent. New shopping formats are forecast to grow 34% a year by the start of the next decade. Because of legal restrictions on foreign retailers, the expanding hypermarket chains so far are Indian, although some foreign companies, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., have started partnerships with Indian firms.

Reax? Post your comments online.

HUMOR: Jay Leno on Pratibha Patil, India's New President

Jay Leno, host of "The Tonight Show on NBC," had a joke about India's election of Pratibha Patil as president during his monologue on July 24, 2007.

"India, on Saturday, elected their very first female president. And today, President Bush called India -- not to congratulate her, he had some questions about his computer."

Reax? Post your comments below.

EARLIER ON SAJAforum.org:

• CARTOON: Mother Goose & Grimm on Outsourcing & Gandhi
• INDIA: Pratibha Patel Becomes First Woman President of India

DESI SPOTTING: Sanjay & Arun Muralidhar in Money Magazine

You can't see it in this tiny version, but the July cover of Money magazine features Sanjay Muralidhar (he's the tall one in the middle). He is featured in in a cover celebrating "Getting Rich in America: Make Your Fortune in a Changing World."

His brother Arun gets his photo inside the issue (below), as part of the writer-up on their company, Mcube Investment Technologies (A dozen entrepreneurs, a dozen success stories: proof that you don't need a lot of money to make a go of it, but you do have to be smart about how you invest your energy. By Josh Hyatt, Money Magazine)

Start smart
Arun and Sanjay Muralidhar, 41 and 44
Plano, Texas
Lesson: That great idea you had for your boss? Maybe it's the business you're looking for.

The Muralidhar brothers had hardly been coasting in their careers. After earning an M.B.A. at the Wharton School, Sanjay worked in corporate finance, eventually becoming vice president of finance at iVillage. Arun, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from MIT, has served as head of research at the World Bank and as head of currency research at J.P. Morgan. But they saw a business of their own as the way to achieve wealth. "I came to the U.S. with $15 in my pocket," says Arun. "I watched what successful people do."

Read the rest of their story here. The rest of that Money issue on "Getting Rich in America" is filled with tips on how to become an entrepreneur. Of course, some of you might prefer to read "How to Marry a Billionaire." Post your comments below.

THREE QUESTIONS: Amar Bakshi of WP's "How the World Sees America"

PostGlobal, "a conversation on global issues with David Ignatius [of The Washington Post] and Fareed Zakaria [of Newsweek],"  is a joint effort of the Post and Newsweek and consists of commentary from the two of them, and assorted posting and commentary from other staffers and folks around the world.

Amar Bakshi, seen in the banner above, is a 23-year-old(!) who helped run the site from Washington and now has a new offshoot project. "How the World Sees America: Amar C. Bakshi Talks to America's Lovers and Haters Around the World." Armed with cameras and a laptop and never-ending curiosity, Bakshi is writing about his adventures, blog style - first in the U.K., then India. Just yesterday, he got word that his visa to Pakistan has come through.

I was supposed to fly home yesterday to Washington DC to recoup for a few weeks before pushing off to Syria or Indonesia. But just five hours before my flight, I got an unexpected call from the Pakistani Embassy. My press visa has come through. Four months after applying for it, I’m now allowed to spend one week in Pakistan. Not a lifetime, but better than nothing.

Life in this business does seem to turn on the tiniest intervals of time. So I’ve canceled my flight home, and in its place booked a flight to Lahore for next week.

Here's what Zakaria has to say about the project: "Everybody talks about using the web in new ways. Amar Bakshi is doing it. His video-journal of the world's perceptions about America is fascinating and groundbreaking. It's well worthing watching or reading or whatever it is we do when we're looking at a computer screen these days."

As you can see from the photo on the right, all the travels have had a real impact on the clean-cut young man above.

SAJAforum asked him three questions about his project - the answers are below. You will also find highlight posts and the original press release below. Post your comments, please.

Here are just a few highlights of his trip so far.

India:

• Inside a Malegaon Madrassa: Peacefully Awaiting America's Fall
  
• Inside a Chennai Call Center: "Spread the Wealth"
• Dadi Ma Loses Her Family to America
  
• Indian American Fourth of July

DIASPORA: Sri Lankan Teen To Be Beheaded in Saudi Arabia (Guest Post)

SAJA member and NY-based author-to-be Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan (her first novel, "Love Marriage," is coming April 2008 from Random House), has sent us this disturbing guest post. She asks: "Why is there not more coverage?" Post your comments below.

UPDATE: ABCnews.com producer Diana Hughes has done a follow-up story on Aug. 1, 2007.

UPDATE: NYT's lead story today reports on a possible $20 billion aid deal by the Bush administration for Saudi Arabia. Any chance this particular human right issue could come into play during the talks?

UPDATE: AFP reports Sri Lankan minister ends trip to save death row teen

RIYADH: A Sri Lankan minister on Saturday wrapped up a mission to Saudi Arabia aimed at securing clemency for a teenage maid condemned to death, saying he was confident the visit would "bear fruit." Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Bhaila arrived in Saudi Arabia on July 20 with the parents of 19-year-old Rizana Nafeek, who was convicted of strangling her employer's baby in 2005.

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Below please find a roundup of coverage about this atrocious situation. The woman in question, RIZANA NAFEEK, is a 19-year-old who was sent to Saudi Arabia two years ago with forged identity papers that misstated her age. She was supposed to work as a housemaid, but she was given the additional responsibility of taking care of a baby--a task for which she had no training.

The baby died while under her care, and without legal counsel (or, by some accounts, an interpreter), she signed a confession admitting guilt; the baby's parents, who could formally forgive Nafeek and thereby commute her sentence, have declined to do so. Nafeek's family, devastated by the 2004 tsunami, sent her abroad to earn money. Thousands of Sri Lankans work overseas to earn money for their families back home; remittances are a major part of the Sri Lankan economy. At this point, both Sri Lankan officials and Nafeek's parents are working to get a reprieve for the teenager.

As usual, the Associated Press does an outstanding job of not only writing about the particular case, but also painting the bigger picture. I'm deeply disappointed that I haven't seen more coverage of this situation in American papers. As some of the stories note, the number of beheadings in Saudi Arabia is increasing. A quote from the fourth link--an AP story:

Five months ago, Sri Lankan officials were not even informed before four Sri Lankan men working in the Arab kingdom were beheaded and strung up in a public square for armed robbery.

From the same story:

About 1.5 million Sri Lankans work abroad, nearly 400,000 of them in Saudi Arabia alone. Together, they earn US$2.5 billion, putting them in a virtual tie with the garment industry as the island nation's largest source of foreign currency.

More details via these links. (I have included two British newspapers, two AP stories and an op-ed in an American newspaper. There is quite a bit of coverage overseas.)

WHY IS THERE NOT MORE COVERAGE???

1. Saudis prepare to behead teenage maid
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/16/wsaudi116.xml

2. Fight to save teenage maid from beheading
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2141360.ece

3. Parents to plea for clemency for Sri Lankan housemaid on Saudi death row
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/15/asia/AS-GEN-Sri-Lanka-Housemaid.php

4. Sri Lanka fights threatened beheading of teen maid in Saudi Arabia over death of infant
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/25/asia/AS-GEN-Sri-Lanka-Execution.php

5.  Basu: Tried without a lawyer, teen about to be beheaded
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070713/OPINION01/707130350/-1/SPORTS04

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Here is Amnesty International's page on the case - you can send an appeal to the Saudi authorities directly from there. Keep track of the latest news stories about Rizana Nafeek here. Ganesananthan asks: "Why is there not more coverage?" Post your comments below.

US-INDIA AFFAIRS: U.S. & India Complete Nuclear Deal

The governments of India and the U.S. have announced that they have completed negotiations on the controversial nuclear pact. UPDATE: See the full text of the agreement (22 pages; thanks to Raju Narisetti, editor of LiveMint.com for sharing this) - download nuke.pdf

From a Reuters piece this morning with an unusual double dateline:

U.S., India announce completion of nuclear deal                                                         
By Carol Giacomo and Y.P. Rajesh                              
Fri Jul 27,  9:51 AM ET

WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The United States and India said on Friday they have completed negotiations on a nuclear cooperation deal that would offer enormous benefits for both sides.

But neither country gave details of the long-delayed, controversial accord and acknowledged critical steps must be taken before it can be implemented.

The pact, approved by India's cabinet on Wednesday, would allow India access to U.S. nuclear fuel and equipment for the first time in 30 years, even though New Delhi refused to join non-proliferation pacts and tested nuclear weapons.

In a press briefing, U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns (who has made eight trips to India over the past two years for this) said, "In my view this is perhaps the single most important initative that India and the United States have agreed to  in the 60 years of our relationship." See video of his 50-minute briefing below, along with the Q&A session. See full text of the session here.

Among the questions from the press:

As you said in the past, there's been a lot of divisiveness, and part of that was because the two sides interpreted the same provision and agreement differently. So is everything in this agreement so crystal clear that there is no ambiguity about it and that the Indian Government would endorse everything that you've said today as to how we should interpret it?

UPDATE: We received this very short and to-the-point note from the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington think tank that does a lot of South Asia work:

At the very least, the Bush administration should not make it easier for New Delhi to resume nuclear testing and to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons.

It appears that the 123 Agreement fails to meet these minimal standards as well as the clear requirements established in the Hyde Act.

Michael Krepon
Co-Founder
The Henry L. Stimson Center
More on the Stimson Center’s South Asia Project can be found at www.stimson.org/southasia

This morning, SAJAforum received a press release from the U.S. State Department. It's reproduced below.
As we get more announcements - perhaps from the Indian government as well as from folks who'd been opposed to the deal, we will post them here. Do check back. And post your comments below.