SAJAforum

EDUCATION: First High School Hindi Textbook in the US

Almost two decades ago, Arun Prakash accepted a job at Bellaire High School in Texas to teach the school's first Hindi language course. After using photocopies and binder throughout these years to teach his classes, Prakash has finally come up with a 480-page textbook, Namaste Jii, which is believed to be the first high school Hindi textbook in the United States.

From the Houston Chronicle:

It was 1989, and Prakash, a college-trained businessman, accepted $15 a day to lead the hourlong class. "It was more or less gas money," he recently recalled.

Prakash had no textbook and no worksheets, so the novice teacher invented his own lessons, writing them by hand until he got a computer equipped with a Hindi font.

Over the years, Prakash has stuffed countless photocopies into binders for his students. But this fall, for the first time, they will get a hardcover textbook — one Prakash wrote and had published in India this summer.<snip>

"Need made me do it," Prakash said.

Bellaire is one of only two public schools in Texas with Hindi classes, according to state education records. But as India becomes a bigger economic power, interest in its native tongue is growing. Texas, with the fourth-largest Hindi-speaking population in the United States, is poised to become a leader in Hindi instruction.

According to ABC13, the textbook covers the first two years of high school Hindi and is the equivalent of one year of college-level Hindi.

Mr. Prakash said that Namaste Jii took almost eight years to develop using the curriculum that he wrote for his classes at Bellaire and at the University of Houston. Dr. Herman Van Olphen, director of the Hindi Urdu flagship program at the University of Texas at Austin, served as advisor on the book.

Click here to visit Bellaire High's Hindi Department.

What did you think? Post your thoughts below.

REQUEST: Sources for story about "reverse immigration"

A request from Sandip Roy, an award-winning journalist and SAJA member. Please e-mail him if you know of specific people who can help. If you know of resources, blogs, etc, you want to share, post them in the comments, too, please (do not post individual contacts in the comments section).

I am doing a reporting story on "reverse immigration" following Indians who are returning to/have returned to India after substantial time in the US. Or perhaps they grew up in the US but are now pursuing careers in India. This will be a print/online/radio project for several outlets including New America Media, San Francisco Chronicle, and public radio, and I am looking for some leads for people to interview in Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata (though might travel to other cities as well).

I am looking for a diverse array of people, from careers, age groups, raised in US vs immigrants, to be able to capture different aspects of issues faced in moving to India. Any leads for people to talk to would be appreciated.

I am especially interested in people from the Bay Area in California since some of the outlets the story would be published/aired in are California-based. So a California connection would be great but not imperative.

My email is sandiproy[at]hotmail.com

If you know of resources, blogs, etc, you want to share, post them in the comments, too, please (do not post individual contacts in the comments section).

MEDIA: A primer on yoga publications

Working at Yoga + Joyful Living magazine--and serving as a certified Sivananda yoga instructor--have opened my eyes to our expansive national yoga community. Downward dog pose, ayurveda and sun salutation have become household words, if not household practice. And commerce has kept pace: From the first time that batik-clad flower children got a whiff of yogic practice, the market started to integrate the nirvana-bound consumer with everything from hemp pants to rudraksha malas.

About 16 million Americans now practice yoga, and there are dozens of spiritually inclined publications catering to them. Today, yoga magazines are fixtures at newsstands and on coffee tables, amidst Cosmopolitan and Esquire, and are supported mostly by the demographic of 25-45 year-old women (some marketers call them Yoga Mamas). Here are some of the top yoga publications:

• Yoga Journal – Founded in 1975 by members of the California Yoga Teacher’s Association, YJ hit mainstream circulation in 1990 and has continued to grow to its current readership of over a million. As the most popular yoga magazine in the country, YJ also features an extensive Web site with links for the yoga community. The publication is a glossy amalgam of trendy new-age style, health tips, travel and practice.
• Yoga + Joyful Living – Produced from the non-profit Himalayan Institute, this bi-monthly magazine was founded in the 90s by Swami Rama as a response to the watering down of traditional yoga practice he was witnessing. Featuring articles from renowned spiritual teachers Rolf Sovik, Rod Stryker and Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, Yoga+ covers topics of holistic living, classical yoga scriptures, journeys and spirituality in action.

NEPAL: New Report Released on Nepali Dalits' Rights

The new Nepali constitution must recognize and protect the fundamental human rights of Dalits, according to a new report released by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University's School of Law.

Click here to read the full report.

Dalits are considered "untouchables" according to traditional Hindu belief. Although the constitution strongly forbids any kind of discrimination against Dalits in Nepal - where Hinduism is the major religion, and the caste system lives in every corner of the country - Dalits are still facing a tough time socially, politically and economically.

From the CHRGJ press release:

The 89-page report, Recasting Justice: Securing Dalit Rights in Nepal’s New Constitution, analyzes Nepal’s interim constitution to inform how the new constitution may be drafted in accordance with the country’s international human rights obligations to secure the rights of Dalits - a group which has faced more than 2000 years of systematic discrimination on the basis of caste. As Nepal prepares its new constitution after years of prolonged civil war, Recasting Justice provides Nepalese lawmakers with tangible means to demonstrate the country’s commitment to the inherent dignity and human rights of all individuals.

Click here to read the briefing in Nepali.

Click here to read the 2004 Human Rights Watch report on discrimination against Dalits in Nepal.

What are your thoughts on discrimination against Dalits? Please post your comments below.

RESOURCE: TasveerGhar.net, all about South Asian visual culture

Rohit Chopra, a professor of media studies at Babson College and creator of Interjunction.org, a new site that connects media and academia (see SAJAforum item), wrote in to tell us about a valuable resource:

This is a terrific resource on South Asian visual culture: Tasveer Ghar, a digital archive of images of popular culture, media, film etc -- that I recently discovered. It can be accessed at TasveerGhar.net.

I found it thanks to a friend Aswin's blog Bollyspace 2.0. Aswin is Assistant Professor of Communication at University of Michigan Ann Arbor and doing some terrific work on globalization, media, and Bollywood.

What do you think? Post your comments below.

RESOURCE: Explaining "off the record" to sources (and to journalists)

The recent resignation of Samantha Power, Barack Obama's foreign policy adviser, has touched a chord among non-journalists I have spoken to. Even setting aside their own preferences for Obama, Clinton or McCain, I realized - again - that the term "off the record" isn't properly understood. Journalists and sources use terms like "off the record," "not for attribution,"  "deep background" without knowing what it means exactly. So I thought I'd point to some places where sources - and journalists - can learn about this.

• Slate's always interesting feature, Explainer, has a good, well, explainer on just this topic. From the piece by Michelle Tsai:

How do you go off the record with a journalist?

Ask to go off the record, discuss what that means, and don't reveal any secrets until the journalist has agreed to the understanding. The same basic guidelines would apply with most reporters, but there are no rigid and universal rules; in the end, it always comes down to individual judgment. The New York Times style guide talks about the attribution of information and granting of anonymity—i.e., how to accurately present the information and sources you have—but doesn't issue specific advice for how to negotiate with a source by going off the record. Neither does the Scotsman have any written rules on the subject.

Both parties—reporters and their sources—should agree to going off (or back on) record in advance.

Read the rest of her piece here (thanks to Lizza for the alert).

• Steve Buttry of the American Press Institute (and a former SAJA convention speaker), has tips on developing and cultivating sources. Among them:

SURVEY: CNN-IBN study on the dangers of being a woman in India

So here’s a study by CNN-IBN that confirms my worst fears about the lives of women across India. I grew up in a big city like Delhi in the early 90s and sometimes, it wasn't easy. Most public transport spaces were male domains that made sexual remarks and outright groping very viable. Offices had their share of seemingly polite perverts and men who thought women dressed well with the hope of attracting their male colleagues. And then there were the women who experienced violence at home and probably felt safe nowhere. I had held the belief that Delhi was the hub of such activity and not representative of the entire nation, at least not anymore. Apparently I was wrong.

The CNN-IBN-Indian Express-CSDS study which was conducted with 4000 women in 160 locations across 20 states including metros, big cities, towns and villages has some disturbing findings:

• Nearly half the women interviewed, 44 per cent to be precise, said that they felt ‘mostly’ (17 per cent) or ‘sometimes’ (27 per cent) unsafe outside their home. The survey findings also confirm that the metropolitan areas (million plus cities) are most insecure places for the women.
• Women in small towns feel much less insecure than big cities or villages. Young women below 25 years, especially in villages, poor women in big cities, single working women and young Muslim women are among the most vulnerable group.
• A majority of young women living in the metros said they had experienced teasing and one-third of them had experienced molestation in the last one year in public transport.
• Harassment at the work place is not confined to daily-wage workers or those who work in the unorganized sector. Organized sector professionals who work in offices report a higher than average experience of harassment at the work place.
• Nearly one-fifth of our married respondents said they were beaten by their husband or in-laws in the last one year; the figure for husband alone was 17 percent.

Click here to read the full study.

However, the study/media story (written by two men, Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Kumar) depicts women as passive beings (victims) and certainly does not provide an opportunity for women to talk about how they dealt with their situation. As for taking the matter to the authorities, about half of all women - across caste and class - said they're not comfortable turning to the police.

PREZ RACE: The top Indian-American bundlers

Achal Mehra of Little India magazine presents a comprehensive list of Indian-American bundlers - those supporters of the presidential candidates who gather money from other supporters (see the complete list at the bottom). Many bundlers secure government posts if their candidate wins, or have the inside track on lucrative business deals. Hillary Clinton has the most bundlers from the community, followed by Barack Obama, John Edwards and Mitt Romney each have 2 Indian-American bundlers. From the article:

The 10 Indian American "Hillraisers", as Clinton's bundlers are called, have each committed to raising over $100,000 for her campaign. Of Obama's six Indian American bundlers, four committed to raising $50,000 and two over $100,000. The other campaigns do not list the dollar amount their bundlers commit to raising.

The best known bundler is probably hotelier Sant Chatwal (see our earlier post on his efforts), who says he'll help raise $5 million for Hillary from the Indian community. His son, the erstwhile party boy Vikram Chatwal, is also a Hillary bundler of the $100,000+ order, as is Arvind Raghunathan of Deutsche Bank.

Obama's supporters include Vinai K. Thummalapally, whose company, Mam-A Inc., makes blank CDs and DVDs (I was almost certain, from the name, that it was a medical company specializing in mammography equipment or such). Another is Illinois-based Jatinder Bedi, of The Indian Reporter (the community newspaper).

One of the surprising things about the political season thus far is the absence of Zach Zachariah, the cardiologist and fundraising powerhouse of the Bush era (Bush 1 and 2 and Jeb Bush). According to the article he's raised  $19 million for Republicans over the years but has been sitting out the primary season. But without him there are only 3 Indian-American bundlers on the Republican side: 2 for Romney and one for McCain, neither of whom have stated fundraising goals.

I'd be curious to see if there's a similar imbalance among Hispanics, where there are reportedly many voters drifting to the Democrats due to the tone of the immigration debate, despite strong support from Hispanics for Bush in 2000 and 2004. As we noted earlier in a post on the 2006 exit polls, South Asian voters are overwhelmingly Democratic. But I think the perception among members of the Indian-American community has been that wealthier Indians - doctors and the like - are more often Republicans. This list of bundlers clearly belies that, but without older statistics it's unclear whether this is a departure from the norm or more of the same.

Following is the complete list of Indian-American bundlers, as compiled by Little India:

STATISTICS: Nearly 2.3 million Hindus estimated in America

Hinduism Today estimates that there are more than 2,290,000 Hindus in the United States. The editors decided to use the percentage of Hindus in India - 81% of the population - and apply that against the total number of Asian Indians in America. Here's an excerpt from the Jan/Feb/March issue of the magazine:

"The 2006 [American Community] Survey, which was released in October, 2007, counted 2,482,141 Asian Indians. This includes those of Indian origin coming from countries such as Trinidad, Kenya, Surinam and Fiji. To update this figure for 2008, we must consider the average annual growth rate for Asian Indians. In the year 2000, the decennial census counted 1,678,765 Asian Indians; the Survey estimated 2,482,141 in 2006, which works out to an annual growth rate of about 6.8 percent. Using that growth rate to extrapolate the 2006 Survey result two years, we calculate 2,831,190 Asian Indians in 2008. Assuming 81% of these Asian Indians are Hindus, just as in India, we conclude that of the 2,831,190 Asian Indians, 2,290,000 are Hindus--qed! But despite the compelling logic of this analysis, Hinduism Today has never seen it published elsewhere. What about the other estimates?"

The article then addresses the problem with the definitive figure, cited by the American Religious Identification Survey, or ARIS:

"This was a telephone survey involving 50,281 households. ARIS concluded that 0.4% of America's population, or about 1.2 million people in 2008, are Hindus. In the absence of a more extensive study, this has become a semi-official number, sustained by the ARIS report's easy availability at the main US Census Bureau website. Before the advent of the American Community Survey, there was no way of challenging ARIS' conclusions. The ARIS report forthrightly acknowledges its limits. It admits, "because the survey depends on telephone interviews, overcoming language barriers has proven prohibitively costly. In effect, this survey has interviewed only the English-speaking population of the US. In addition, many new immigrants originate in societies and states where responding to personal questions over the telephone is an alien experience, and discussions of one's religious beliefs and identification are deemed to be risky."

"The report's conclusion mentions the impressive growth of Hinduism in America, observing, "there are more than three times as many Hindus in the US today as there were in 1990. Undoubtedly, due to the limitations of this study, we have not picked up the full impact of those changes yet." Unfortunately, the ARIS estimate is typically quoted as fact, with no mention of these caveats."

Earlier on SAJAforum:

• CENSUS: The top desi surnames in America
• STATS: Numbers for various South Asians in America
• RELIGION: The numbers on all the faithful, and the faithless

RESOURCE: OneNationForAll.org - new site for reporters about Muslim Americans

An alert about a new website from SAJAer Sharene Azimi at Fenton Communications. Please take a look and post your comments below.

Dear Colleague,

I'm writing to let you know about a new online resource, http://www.onenationforall.org - recently launched as a service for reporters that cover the American Muslim community.

Among the features you'll see are:

*         A listing of some of today's leading experts in the American Muslim community and their contact information, searchable by issue area (for example, civil rights, interfaith issues, or women's rights)

*         Profiles on everyday American Muslims who are making a difference in their communities

*         News from the American Muslim community

*         Brief backgrounders on Islam

*         Links to organizations, publications and other resources