SAJAforum

BURMA: A South(east) Asian crisis, and India's muted response

Burma is one of those sleepy, business-as-usual dictatorships that no one in the West pays much attention to until something exceptionally horrible happens, such as the violence inflicted on anti-government protesters this past week. Pakistan and India have both commemorated their 60th anniversaries this year as states freed from the British Empire and we should not forget that Burma, which is in others way so very different, will celebrate that same milestone in 2008.

Burma, or rather Myanmar — we’ll come to that in a moment — is not usually considered part of South Asia, according to the Asia Society, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and many other organizations. However, it comes very close: Burma shares a long border with India and Bangladesh and is set along a once-lucrative trade route between India and China. During the centuries when Indian culture and trade dominated Southeast Asia, Burma was geographically at the center of things and as a result, Buddhism remains the most common religion in the country. (In a truly surreal twist, the military junta justifies its brutal rule with the claim that it is protecting Buddhism.) India still has a significant interest in trade with Burma, including in petroleum, which is comparatively scarce in India, and this has been suggested as the key reason India has maintained silence over the Burmese regime’s abuses. India sees itself in competition with China over the Burmese energy sector, as the Hindu reported in 2005.

Though they are now split by the magical line dividing South Asia from Southeast Asia, India and Burma were amalgamated in the 19th century thanks to colonialism. The history is a bit complicated but basically Burma was absorbed into India as the British fought three wars of conquest against Burmese rulers between 1824 and 1885. George Orwell spent time as a civil servant in Burma and he famously hated it. It inspired Rudyard Kipling to write one his worst poems. In short, Burma was just the eastern frontier of British India.

RELIGION: A Report on Hindus & Human Rights in the Diaspora from HAF

The U.S.-based Hindu American Foundation has released its annual report on the state of Hindu human rights in South Asian and the Diaspora for 2006. The press release is below. Press contact for HAF is Ishani Chowdhury [ishani.chowdhury at hinduamericanfoundation.org]

From the executive summary (PDF version of summary here):

The Hindu American Foundation's third annual Hindu human rights report details violations against Hindus in areas where they are minority. It extends the scope of earlier reports by covering the nations of Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Trinidad and Tobago, in addition to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. The human rights violations are in the areas of violence against women, murder, ethnic cleansing, temple destruction, socio-political ostracization, disenfranchisement, discrimination and forced conversions. As with previous reports, it has been instrumental in advancing knowledge and activism with other interfaith and human rights organizations, as well as elected officials and government agencies.

The entire 202-page report is available as a PDF here. Please read through and post your comments below.

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.

IMMIGRATION: Skilled workers, out in the cold

Immigration reform looks rather dead at the moment but the quandary of hundreds of thousands of skilled workers remains. So does the issue of what this country plans to do if it wants to retain its competitive edge in the decades to come. Following is a guest post by Vikas Chowdhry, a techie and blogger at Arthshastra.

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Last week, the immigration reform bill, grandiosely termed the "Grand Bargain," failed to gather enough votes and was put on the back burner. This bill had always been more of a Faustian bargain in the eyes of skilled legal non-immigrants because everyone involved in the debate knows that the problems and solutions for the skilled immigrants are vastly different from those of illegal immigrants and yet, the lawmakers insisted on having a single bill to solve all the immigration related problems.

There are all sorts of issues facing skilled legal non-immigrants (A legal non-immigrant is someone legally in the U.S. on a non-immigrant visa - more here), but here's the short version of how it works:

Skilled non-immigrants (Software Developers, Engineers, Doctors, MBAs, etc.) can apply for immigrant visas or green cards under the category called Employment Based (EB) immigration. There are multiple sub-categories within that called EB1, EB2, EB3 based on the skills and education of the potential immigrant. There is an upper limit of 140,000 visas for all EB categories combined, which is further subject to a per-country limit of 7%. So the citizens of the island of Mauritius, India and China each have 9800 visas available to them per year. When you consider the fact that all employment-based visa seekers, like Doctors, Programmers, Scientists and MBAs from a country like India or China have a total of 9800 visas available to them per year, the gravity of the situation and the seriousness of the backlogs becomes readily apparent. Every year, far more people apply for immigrant visas than the numbers available and the resultant bottleneck forces skilled, legal non-immigrants to wait for years in the queue.

In 2006, the U.S. government issued 1,266,264 immigrant visas, of which only 159,081 (12%) were issued to EB categories while 803,335 (63.4%) were issued for Family based categories. Just how many legal, skilled non-immigrants are stuck in the backlog? Conservative numbers put us at 300,000 - 500,000 while some estimates are as many as a million people. When you account for dependents on the primary applicants, you are looking at at least a million affected people, most of them from India and China.

BLOGS: Favorite Desi Blogs

I am often asked for a list of South Asia-related blogs I read, so I thought it might be fun for all of us to share our lists. Please post your suggestions in the comments section below [UPDATE: Many thanks for all the excellent suggestions there already!].

Here's what I try to visit every day:

South Asian diaspora and second-gen roundups (for the most part):

• SepiaMutiny
• UltraBrown
• UberDesi
• SAJAforum, of course

South Asia-based roundups (for the most part):

• DesiPundit
  
• IndiaUncut 
• IndianEconomy
• All Things Pakistan
• Global Voices Online - see the South Asia section

Of course, there are dozens of other fun, informative, useful desi blogs out there, including ones I visit a couple of times a week (hello, FIlmiholic, PassTheRoti). Please list your suggestions in the comments section below (explain what the site covers, please) - and help us expand our blog horizons.

If you are new to the world of blogs, one of the best ways to keep track of them is with a blog reader and RSS feeds (RSS has nothing to do with politics in India, it stands for Really Simple Syndication). And here's one of the best explanations of how they work is this small item that was contributed by Sitara Nieves to a blog I run at Columbia.

STATS: Spending by South Asian Americans on Entertainment

From a request this morning:

I'm putting together a report on the South Asian demographic in the US, UK, and India. I'm looking for the $, £, and Rupee amount of how much South Asians/Indians spend or have spent on entertainment (movies) on average in 2006 or recent years. Do you think that you may be able to help me out? Please let me know what your thoughts are on this matter. Thanks in advance for all your help.

Let's help him out, folks. Post your answers in the comments section below and check back later for updates.

EARLIER ON SAJAFORUM:

• STATS: Numbers for various South Asians in the U.S.
• STATS: Figures about India
• All postings in the STATISTICS category

STATS: Numbers for various South Asians in the U.S.

SAJA often gets requests for the latest stats about Desi America. Those numbers aren't easy to find nor always accurate. This morning, I got this request for 2007 stats for South Asians in the U.S., particularly for:

Pakistanis
Indians
Sri Lankans
Bangladeshis
Nepalis
Bhutanese
Maldivians
Afghans
Indo-Caribbeans (I added the last four to round out the picture)

We'd like to help this person out and also attempt to get good stats ourselves. For numbers for Indian Americans, one resource is ASB Communications' "South Asian Market" stats.  We'd like to hear about other resouces and stats. Please post them in the comments section below and  cite sources, as appropriate. We will pick out the best stats and post them up here, so  check back soon!

STATS: Figures about India

It's often hard to pin down statistics about India and other South Asian countries. Contradictory, inaccurate numbers abound and regularly make their way into the press. I thought I'd post some stats sources I use for India and ask you all for your suggestions for India and the rest of the subcontinent. 

• NationMaster.com India section (2,000+ stats)
• CIA World Factbook India section
• Government of India Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
• Official census site
• UNICEF: At a Glance: India
• InternetWorldStats: India
  [There's also IndiaHealthStat.com, which seems to have a lot of useful information, but charges almost $300 and doesn't seem to have a free trial.]

Please add your suggestions to the comments section below.

Meanwhile, on the back cover of Mira Kamdar's new book, "Planet India: How the Fastest Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World," (see SAJAforum Q&A) is a set of dramatic stats about India. See the full list below. What do you think? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

From the back cover of "Planet India: How the Fastest Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World"

Did You Know?

• India is the world's fourth-largest economy.
• By 2034, India will be the most populous country on Earth, with 1.6 billion people.
• India's middle class is already larger than the entire population of the United States.
• One out of three of the world's malnourished children live in India.
• India is home to the biggest youth population on earth: 600 million people are under the age of 25.
• 72,000,000 cell phones will be sold in India in 2007.
• India just edged past the United States to become the second-most-preferred destination for foreign direct investment after China.
• In 1991, Indians purchased 150,000 automobiles; in 2007, they are expected to purchase 10 million.
• By 2008, India's total pool of qualified graduates will be more than twice as large as China's.
• By 2015, an estimated 3.5 million white-collar U.S. jobs will be offshored.
• India is the largest arms importer in the developing world.
• American corporations expect to earn $20 to $40 billion from the civilian nuclear agreement with India.
• In 2007, there are 2.2 million Indian Americans, a number expected to double every decade.
• Twenty-nine percent of India's population speaks English - that's 350 million people.

RELIGION: The #s on all the faithful (and the faithless)

Hindus are the country's 8th largest 'religious' group by self-identification (just under 1.1 million, placing them behind Atheists, at 1.3 million). There were 4,335,771 Sikhs in India in 1931. There were 555 million Vaishnavites in the world in 1996, and 65,000 Jains in Africa in 1998.

I know your mentality: "How does he know all of this? Is he man... or magician?" No, friend, it's Adherents.com only, from Internet:

"Adherents.com is a growing collection of over 43,870 adherent statistics and religious geography citations: references to published membership/adherent statistics and congregation statistics for over 4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, cultures, movements, ultimate concerns, etc."

I heard about this site through Hindu Press International (see our earlier post on HPI). The site has all kinds of important discussions - What is Superman's religious affiliation? - as well as the curious fact that a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court is Catholic, including all the conservatives.

RELIGION: A new Hinduism resource for journalists

Last August, when SAJAforum was a wee babe, we posted an item about 10 of the top Islamic scholars, as named by ReligionLink.org. We followed up with a Q&A with Diane Connolly, the editor of ReligionLink (which is run by the Religion Newswriters Association). Diane got back in touch with us recently to let us know that ReligionLink now has a Hinduism Primer.

The Hinduism Primer ("Hinduism: a guide to U.S. experts and organizations") is primarily meant for reporters and editors looking for contacts in the Hindu-sphere, and there are dozens, if not hundreds of scholars, community leaders and gurus listed. Separately, you'll find brief items on demographics and scriptures, as well as the issues that Hindus confront in the United States:

• Local recognition of Hindu holidays
• Determining what it means to be Hindu in America
• Responding to hate crimes
• Becoming politically involved
• Constructing temples
• Monitoring textbooks (see our earlier post on this subject)
• Promoting language

Back in August, we'd asked Diane why there was a primer for atheism, Wicca and Sikhism, but not for Hinduism. She said a Hinduism primer was in the works, and asked our readers for suggestions. So here's your chance to look at the actual product.

What we'd like - and what Diane Connolly would like - is to see feedback to the primer. If you have a scholar, group or issue you think should be mentioned, please include him/her in our Comments section. Whenever possible, be specific about the person or group's expertise, and include links to the appropriate site. And for those of you who are not big fans of Jeff Kripal or Wendy Doniger, try to keep the criticism kosher, which is to say, sattvic.