Elephant in a lungi
When I was living in Bombay, a cute brown bird kept eyeing me at Bandra restaurants and cafés. She finally came up to me at Coffee Day and said hi. Then she handed me a pamphlet. I’d traveled halfway around the world to be evangelized by a Malayali-American missionary.
The Rachel Paulose drama reminds me that most of the Malayali-American political junkies I know are Republicans. Mallus are a natural pickup for the Republican Party. Like Cuban-Americans (and indeed desis in general), many fled the socialist dysfunction of their home state. They’re comfortable with the evangelical Christian tinge of modern Republicans. The ones I know tend to be intrinsically conservative, cautious law ’n order types. Many congregated in Houston, where people lean GOP. Mallu moms are obsessed with their kids becoming doctors — specifically doctors, not engineers, not lawyers. And doctors vote against tort, leaning red.
In Rachel Paulose, the Rove administration found an alluring interim U.S. attorney: a minority Republican who’s both smart and Christianist, albeit unqualified for her position. In India, of course, Malayalis are renowned for their wonkishness; many staff the space program and the CDOT supercomputer center, while one runs the brilliant Delhi Metro. The ’65 immigration act filtered even further the pool of capitalist Malayalis by taking only the most credentialed.
This community of dark-skinned Southern minorities who are prospering just one generation in must make Rovians salivate. In their eyes, the existence of wealthy Malayali-American Republicans is a slap in the face to black Americans and the ‘narrative of victimology.’
At a Harlem café last week, I saw a preacher, a polished, shaven-headed black man who makes it a point to greet everyone in the café, goofing off and playing the first-person shooter Prey. In the global conversion game, the cute Mallu was one up.
on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007, 12:07 am in Musings, Politics, Religion › 
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Tam Brahms would fit a similar profile, except for the Christianity, don’t you think? They’ve got the narrative of having been Kicked Out due to Populist Reservations for Undeserving Others. Are they more likely to be Republican? I know there’s a lot of them in the VHP and Hindu Students Councils in US universities, so perhaps that brand of conservatism leans to the defence of religious identity, which might explain why they weren’t Republican (if indeed they aren’t).
Do Mallus wear Madras pants?
Manish, it’s best you focus on the cute Bollywood type posts, as bigoted analysis of political motives is unbecoming of your wonderful blog
Statscan recently did a study that discovered second gen Canadians from visible minorities had a marked difference in the performance of the women relative to their male peers. A bigoted, impolite perspective from me is that when the Man opens the door for the minority, He prefers to have a cuter behind to watch as it goes through. The polite version of me believes it is only due to the merit and the fact that the women have to work double as hard to get through.
That said, it doesnt help that 78.2% of all Mallu men wear that ridiculously thin line of hair on their jawline. You mean, you want to look an idior by choice!! ooo-kay.
To #3 Benarsi, re –
I think this is a quick easy hit you can make about anytime someone raises the issues Manish has raised. But it’s not fair. I don’t think Manish is coming from a place of bigotry. I love Cubans, for example, but there’s no denying the vast majority of Floridian Cubans have an especially intense distaste for diplomatic gestures to Castro proferred by Liberals. It’s a major issue for them. Thus, they lean Republican. Nothing damning about that; just gives a little context of why some demographics tend go the way they do. And why successful ones would be embraced by opportunistic political parties.
I think Manish is doing pattern analysis. It’s not the whole story, and it’s not cause-and-effect. I for one found it to interesting, insightful and non-inflamatory. I’m curious why you found it otherwise, unless this was just a knee-jerk reaction.
#5 Zack -
“I don’t think Manish is coming from a place of bigotry….”
I to agree that Manish babu is not basing his ideas on some core reservoir of hatred, but alas, he is choosing to parrot the standard line against the ‘Rove administration’. This type of popcorn analysis, as I said, should be left to his cutesy movie reviews and the like, not serious discourse on the actual problems that the Polouse issue point to. In effect, he discounts any validity of his argument by approaching it this way.
That being said, Manish babu, when you run for Mayor of New York, I will vote for you only!
The graphic would be more accurate if the lungi were folded up at the knees and the elephant had a moustache.
So are we saying that the primary reason keeping non-christian minorities away from the GOP is their alliance with christian-fundies ? I think that might be true. And if so, I say: may the repub-christianist alliance last long. In some ways I find it easier to talk to a republican-christianist than a ayn-rand-type republican because I can resort to the things Jesus said about caring for the poor and loving your enemies and not living by the sword.
Also: all but one of my mallu-american relatives is a staunch democrat. But that’s probably because they are not evangelicals like Paulose.
benarsi kaka - even i, a card carrying [”ayn-rand-type” sorry, ashvin] republican, don’t understand why you consider the post “bigoted”. please elaborate.
When I was at school, I once heard an evangelical christian speak. I was shocked at her presence in my ultra-liberal school. She held on to her mike as people milled around, trying to ignore her. Clearly desi, her speech contained cringe-inducing lines. I did not know whether I was more embarassed that a fellow desi would choose to be so evangelical, or that she was broadcasting her evangelism in a school where no doubt, everyone was laughing at her.
Please don’t feed the trainee trolls…
Hi. I’m coming in late to the conversation, but it looks like everyone here needs a sound thrashing from me. Permit me to roll up my lungi, erm, there, that’s better, O.K., let me take my clean white shirt off, there…., please to pardon the distended belly, it’s the wife-beater I’m wearing, really, I’m fit. What were we talking about again?
The “I left Kerala because of communism” is now officially the reason Malayalee christians leave?
It works well for Poulose types because they are pandering to the fundamentalists in the republican party and makes for a great “escaping communism” storyline but it is just horse shit.
Please don’t feed the trainee trolls…
I am not sure which comment you are referring to. I am not sure how my comment is more delectable troll feed than any other, but what do I know?
While no fan of the Kerala Communists, I have heard ridiculous “terrifying, night time in the jungle” escape narratives from some Malayalees here (always in largely non-desi crowds) that make me laugh. And then there are certain high caste Hindu communities that like to say “We are the Jews of India”. Yeah, reservation has been extended beyond Dalits to historically priviliged communities masquerading as OBC who don’t deserve it but that comparison shows disturbing ignorance of the Holocaust (and the status in society of high caste Hindus in India vs. Jewish people in Europe). These aren’t Vietnamese boat people fleeing reeducation camps or East Germans who had to outfox the Stasi. You can pretty much play hopscotch across the “border” into Tamil Nadu last time I checked
Lekhni: was responding to the BK feeders.
As a mallu christian,I can testify that there are many different type of mallu christians.There are traditional christians like Orthodox,Jacobite,Marthoma,Syrian Catholic,Genuine Catholic,Syro Malabar(Catholic lite)..i can go on.There are also “fire & brimstone,believe or die” types who belong to numerous ever dividing landscape of evangelical/pentecostal denominations.They know the history and the fact Christianity has been india more than 2000 years now,but conveniently ignore tradition and culture.As far as the voting bloc,i think its distributed among both parties while the evan/pentes are fervent Bush worshippers(no pun intended). The author should not be surprised by the conversion effort. A bald Czech native once approached me on a German University campus and try to convert me to the Hare Krishnas.People like ms.poulose are elitists and does not care about the larger desi diaspora.
I beg to disagree,
This has a tinge of the inflammatory. You are basing your evaluation of mallus political affiliations all on Rachel Paulose? She’s in Minnesota where there is negible mallu, even indian population at that. I from Houston also, and I don’t see christian mallus (of all denominations) mass voting for the republicans even the evangelical ones(can’t speak for the pentecostals, theres a slight difference). Most mallus I would come across, usually vote Democrat ( not that some, as well as Hindu Indians, were voting republican), even now alot of them gripe about how much things were better under {Bill} Clinton. I think the views presented in this blog come more from a bias (or possibly ignorance) against the christianity of Malayalis, which is all the gripe I heard about when Bobby Jindal got elected for governor (No gripe about him being republican, Oh thats great we finally have a indian, but he doesn’t count because, gasp, “converted” to christianity!) As far as evangelism, I had a similar experience, except it was a white Hare Krishna trying to convert me on a Texas campus at that, and then asking me for a donation when I declined. Mallus seems like a easy target for some of our desis, because they think they can get away with it, alot of mallus do like to rock the boat and just go along with everyone just so their “indianess” is not questioned, as a lot of Hindu fundies, have been trying to spread that Indian=Hindu, and no other religion matters. The ironic thing is that they do this in America (a predominantly christian country) where they demand that Hindu be recognized as just as american as any other faith especially Christianity. Just so we can get one thing straight; Indian Christians are true Indians! American Hindus, true Americans, it doesn’t matter your faith. America has a good tradition of accepting everyone, while Indian christians are, guess what, genetically Indian! Get your minds out of your holes and accept people for who they are.
These RSS, VHP, practicing Hindus preach morals and traditional values back in India yet they vote for the most immoral party, the Democrat party, here in the United States. They just can’t get their bigoted minds over the fact that they live in a country that is more Christian than India is Hindu and the idea of being part of the same party as a large number of church-going Christians. Unfortunately, Hindu bigotry will prevent unity and hinder the progress of the Indian community in the US, especially in the area of politics. I wouldn’t be surprised if the VHP starts a movement to de-Indianize Bobby Jindal because they can’t stand the fact that he is Christian. The only other group from India that i see as more open minded in these matters are Sikhs, who already have produced several excellent Republican candidates.