Bobby Jindal plans to run for US presidency in 2016: Senator

[pmaitra]

Perception ? Dude....Bobby Jindal doesn't even register on the radar. He is a non-entity except for some people on the right. Plus....he made a royal fool of himself on national TV with his rebuttal to Obama's state of the union speech.
If you wanna good laugh...watch his speech....I'm sure it's on YouTube.

Well he makes a fool of himself often, but my comment was about Hillary Clinton. My estimate of her calibre would be modest, compared to the way you put it.

 

[Bangalorean]

Bobby Jindal and all such NRI fellows in high positions are MUTUs (More Unkil Than Unkil). In simple language, it means that they try to run down their country of origin and dissociate themselves from the "backward masses in their third world nation of origin", and have a fanatical zeal to try and show their hosts how they are "different" from the unwashed masses back home. They are forever waiting for a pat on their back by their white hosts, and will go to elaborate and ridiculous lengths to get that pat.

 

[PredictablyMalicious]

Bobby Jindal and all such NRI fellows in high positions are MUTUs (More Unkil Than Unkil). In simple language, it means that they try to run down their country of origin and dissociate themselves from the "backward masses in their third world nation of origin", and have a fanatical zeal to try and show their hosts how they are "different" from the unwashed masses back home. They are forever waiting for a pat on their back by their white hosts, and will go to elaborate and ridiculous lengths to get that pat.

Most of these self hating types seem to be South Indians, just an observation.

 

[pmaitra]

Most of these self hating types seem to be South Indians, just an observation.

Not an "observation," but a "perspective."

Unsurprisingly, it is coming from you.

 

[mattster]

Bobby Jindal's original name is Piyush Jindal but to prove his americanness he has dropped it. He is a self loathing convert who can go to any length against India to prove his american-ness. Dangerous guy.

You and Banglorean should become bosom buddies. Self-loathing just because he changed his faith ?

I suppose in your world every single person who changed his faith would be "self-loathing". So an American christian who becomes a Hindu would be self-loathing and I guess the millions Chinese Citizens who work in the US on H1b visa who take on English first names must also be self-loathing.

Maybe you and Banglorean need some therapy.

I'm no fan of Bobby Jindal or anyone on the Republican party - but your and Banglorean's comments are so far off the wall that it makes me wonder about you guys.

 

[PredictablyMalicious]

Not an "observation," but a "perspective."

Unsurprisingly, it is coming from you.

A perspective is an inference made from a single or multiple observations. I'm not sure why it is unsurprising coming from me. I am immune from regional biases.

 

[Blackwater]

would be great if punjabi become president of USA

 

[mattster]

Well he makes a fool of himself often, but my comment was about Hillary Clinton. My estimate of her calibre would be modest, compared to the way you put it.

Personally I think Hillary Clinton will be a very formidable candidate.... I don't think there is anyone on the current Republican ticket that can mount a challenge against her. That just my opinion.

 

[PredictablyMalicious]

You and Banglorean should become bosom buddies. Self-loathing just because he changed his faith ?

I suppose in your world every single person who changed his faith would be "self-loathing". So an American christian who becomes a Hindu would be self-loathing and I guess the millions Chinese Citizens who work in the US on H1b visa who take on English first names must also be self-loathing.

Maybe you and Banglorean need some therapy.

I'm no fan of Bobby Jindal or anyone on the Republican party - but your and Banglorean's comments are so far off the wall that it makes me wonder about you guys.

An affirmative on both counts.

 

[Compersion]

Candidates:
Jeb Bush (George Bush brother) President
with Bobby Jindal Vice President

 

[rock127]

Candidates:
Jeb Bush (George Bush brother) President
with Bobby Jindal Vice President

Updated List of Candidates:-

Jeb Bush (George Bush brother) - President
Bobby Jindal - Vice President
rock127 from DFI - Defense Minister

 

[Waffen SS]

It does not matter, did not our patriotism flood in Devyani issue? Which is against US?

http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/americas/56922-indian-diplomat-arrested-handcuffed-us-visa-fraud-29.html Proof.

Bobby Jindal is American and racist as he thinks whites are superior than others, so he changed his name from Piyush to Bobby and then changed his Religion also.

If any Indian thinks India would be proud of he became first Indian-American president then I call him moron, if any Indian thinks if he becomes president of US and hence he is of Indian origin so India will get better opportunities then he/she is living in fool's heaven.

They are not Indian, and what ever they do does not matter to us. This is it. I feel pity for those Indians and feel ashamed who celebrate an Americans success only because he is of Indian origin.

 

[Deccani]

Most of these self hating types seem to be South Indians, just an observation.

I disagree here. In fact its the South Indians who have to go through all the hardship in Western World and the target of Missionaries are mostly South Indians.

 

[Deccani]

It does not matter, did not our patriotism flood in Devyani issue? Which is against US?

http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/americas/56922-indian-diplomat-arrested-handcuffed-us-visa-fraud-29.html Proof.

Bobby Jindal is American and racist as he thinks whites are superior than others, so he changed his name from Piyush to Bobby and then changed his Religion also.

If any Indian thinks India would be proud of he became first Indian-American president then I call him moron, if any Indian thinks if he becomes president of US and hence he is of Indian origin so India will get better opportunities then he/she is living in fool's heaven.

They are not Indian, and what ever they do does not matter to us. This is it. I feel pity for those Indians and feel ashamed who celebrate an Americans success only because he is of Indian origin.

So you are saying that the real war is between the Dharmic religions and non Dharmic religion be it within India or outside India. And the loyalty of any Indian origin person is measured by his or her religion and as soon as that person or his forefathers embrace non dharmic religions then that person automatically is not Indian . Will you stop dividing the nation in Dharmic and Non Dharmic religions. Billions are coming to the Dharmic religion people from the same America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and it was the NRI of America who were celebrating the victory of BJP in recent elections.

Very good formula is adopted by the Western powers to divide people of Africa,Asia, Latin America . One power claim to be atheist and another religious and then the same powers do things on racial division and multiculturalism and all these formulas are worked out in second and third world countries .

 

[chase]

You and Banglorean should become bosom buddies. Self-loathing just because he changed his faith ?

I suppose in your world every single person who changed his faith would be "self-loathing". So an American christian who becomes a Hindu would be self-loathing and I guess the millions Chinese Citizens who work in the US on H1b visa who take on English first names must also be self-loathing.

Maybe you and Banglorean need some therapy.

I'm no fan of Bobby Jindal or anyone on the Republican party - but your and Banglorean's comments are so far off the wall that it makes me wonder about you guys.

The Whitewashing of Bobby Jindal

As a "rebuttal" to President Obama's inaugural address, Bobby Jindal, the Indian-American governor of Louisiana, delivered last week before the Republican National Committee what I consider a misleading and somewhat controversial address.

A likely presidential contender in 2016, Jindal played his card as a person of color. Referring to the string of offensive remarks and gaffes made by Republicans against women, minorities and the middle class, Jindal declared: "We've got to stop being the stupid party". Neglecting people of color was a big reason for losing elections, he claimed, implicitly positioning himself as the solution. But does Jindal truly speak for any community of color, or is this just another round of creative political opportunism? Most Indian-Americans have been dismayed to see that he has done nothing for our community, while soliciting us for campaign funds. He had morphed at an early age into exactly the kind of candidate that the people of his southern, conservative state would elect.

When minorities in America break racial, ethnic or religious barriers it is assumed that they pave the way for future generations. Their communities celebrate their victories, believing that they too will be the beneficiaries of those accomplishments. In the case of Jindal, however, it's dawned on our community that it is we who are being "stupid" for supporting him. For one, Jindal never loses an opportunity to downplay and deny his Indian and Hindu roots, unlike African-Americans or Hispanics who upon entering powerful positions remain fully anchored to their respective communities, crediting those communities for the nurturing they provided. It is indeed amazing that many Indian-Americans continue to applaud and support Jindal, imagining that he opens doors for us.

My blog last week talked about the way many Indians in the West allay their "difference anxiety" (as minorities) by assuming a "whitewashed" identity where differences are minimized. America's history is the story of new waves of immigrants struggling to enter whiteness, which denotes not race alone but the status of full-fledged insiders in the power structure. The definition of who is white has changed over time. The Irish, Poles, Greeks, Italians and Jews "became white" after much struggle.

Whiteness may have expanded in scope over time, but rejects those, like Hindu-Americans who fall outside the Judeo-Christian religious group. Can the Hindu-American remain a Hindu and "become white"? To address this question, Khyati Joshi's book, "New roots in America's Sacred Ground", provides empirical data to prove that there is religious bias facing Indian-Americans on account of being Hindu. In other words, Hinduism is seen by most Americans as a marker of non-white ethnicity. This should be enough impetus for Indian-Americans (the vast majority of whom are Hindu) to claim a separate identity that is distinct, not white or black, not Judeo-Christian, and yet wholly American.

The example of Jindal demonstrates the pressure to capitulate for the sake of political ambition. Jindal couldn't change his color, but he converted his religion to become less different from the dominant white Christians of his party. His personal narrative amplifies his conversion to Roman Catholicism, even though he was raised Hindu by immigrant parents who were very active leaders in the local Hindu temple in Louisiana. He feels no qualms in making statements hurtful to the sentiments of the community from which he derives his "minority" card. In a piece some years ago, he said when asked about his conversion: "the motivation behind my conversion, however, was my belief in one, objectively true faith (Christianity). If Christianity is merely one of many equally valid religions, then the sacrifices I made, including the loss of my family's peace, were senseless". Presumably the conversion of his Hindu Punjabi wife to Roman Catholicism some years later occurred by her having coincidentally the exact same epiphany as he did.

To those of us Indian-Americans who are unwilling to obliterate our identity and get "digested" into the whitestream, Jindal is no trailblazer. He does not speak for us and merely uses his Indian-American status to gain leverage with Republicans who must now present a more inclusive face in order to remain relevant. His life underscores the fact that America has a long way to go before Indians and Hindus can project openly and without negative consequences the full range of their cultural and religious identity.

Carving a distinct non-white Indian identity is also hampered by the trajectory followed by many Indian-Americans in the humanities, who prove their competence by promoting mainly European epistemological categories which nowadays means "theories" of culture, textual analysis, etc. that have been accepted by the Anglo-American academy as a part of the "canon of theories" in use. The Hindu equivalent of such theories would be the vast and sophisticated range of "siddhantas". But these are simply ignored in modern/postmodern studies, trivially dismissed, or mapped/co-opted into trendy new theories owned by Western experts or their whitened Indian followers. This new kind of colonization is being celebrated as "theory power." I call it epistemic arrogance. Harvard University's Homi Bhabha is a role model hoisted by the American establishment for young Indian-Americans in English Departments and Postcolonial Studies to emulate. He has proven himself as having the "white gaze". This is the liberal path to becoming white, just as Christianizing was Bobby Jindal's biblical path to whiteness. One may think of these paths as left-wing and right-wing whiteness, respectively.

At the height of the Jim Crow era, African-Americans saw in their midst, the phenomenon of "passing", where lighter skinned blacks would assume a semi-white racial identity in order to avoid the restrictions and prejudices of a segregated South. "Passing" was viewed as offensive, an attempt by some blacks to take the short-cut to racial parity rather than pitch in and do the hard work of achieving equality for the entire community including those unable and unwilling to "pass." In 2013, Bobby Jindal doesn't need to scrub off his color. Converting his religion, accent, ideologies and loyalties has sufficed. His brown skin merely positions him to take advantage of America's changing demographics. Jindal shows that in America, Hindu-Americans continue to feel the pressure to pass.

Rajiv Malhotra: The Whitewashing of Bobby Jindal

 

[Bangalorean]

Most of these self hating types seem to be South Indians, just an observation.

Actually you are the prime example of that category of individual, going by your previous posts on the forum, especially the ones you made early on.

 

[PredictablyMalicious]

Actually you are the prime example of that category of individual, going by your previous posts on the forum, especially the ones you made early on.

You can accuse me of many things but the charge of self hating? That is ridiculous.

 

[mattster]

The Whitewashing of Bobby Jindal

As a "rebuttal" to President Obama's inaugural address, Bobby Jindal, the Indian-American governor of Louisiana, delivered last week before the Republican National Committee what I consider a misleading and somewhat controversial address.

A likely presidential contender in 2016, Jindal played his card as a person of color. Referring to the string of offensive remarks and gaffes made by Republicans against women, minorities and the middle class, Jindal declared: "We've got to stop being the stupid party". Neglecting people of color was a big reason for losing elections, he claimed, implicitly positioning himself as the solution. But does Jindal truly speak for any community of color, or is this just another round of creative political opportunism? Most Indian-Americans have been dismayed to see that he has done nothing for our community, while soliciting us for campaign funds. He had morphed at an early age into exactly the kind of candidate that the people of his southern, conservative state would elect.

When minorities in America break racial, ethnic or religious barriers it is assumed that they pave the way for future generations. Their communities celebrate their victories, believing that they too will be the beneficiaries of those accomplishments. In the case of Jindal, however, it's dawned on our community that it is we who are being "stupid" for supporting him. For one, Jindal never loses an opportunity to downplay and deny his Indian and Hindu roots, unlike African-Americans or Hispanics who upon entering powerful positions remain fully anchored to their respective communities, crediting those communities for the nurturing they provided. It is indeed amazing that many Indian-Americans continue to applaud and support Jindal, imagining that he opens doors for us.

My blog last week talked about the way many Indians in the West allay their "difference anxiety" (as minorities) by assuming a "whitewashed" identity where differences are minimized. America's history is the story of new waves of immigrants struggling to enter whiteness, which denotes not race alone but the status of full-fledged insiders in the power structure. The definition of who is white has changed over time. The Irish, Poles, Greeks, Italians and Jews "became white" after much struggle.

Whiteness may have expanded in scope over time, but rejects those, like Hindu-Americans who fall outside the Judeo-Christian religious group. Can the Hindu-American remain a Hindu and "become white"? To address this question, Khyati Joshi's book, "New roots in America's Sacred Ground", provides empirical data to prove that there is religious bias facing Indian-Americans on account of being Hindu. In other words, Hinduism is seen by most Americans as a marker of non-white ethnicity. This should be enough impetus for Indian-Americans (the vast majority of whom are Hindu) to claim a separate identity that is distinct, not white or black, not Judeo-Christian, and yet wholly American.

The example of Jindal demonstrates the pressure to capitulate for the sake of political ambition. Jindal couldn't change his color, but he converted his religion to become less different from the dominant white Christians of his party. His personal narrative amplifies his conversion to Roman Catholicism, even though he was raised Hindu by immigrant parents who were very active leaders in the local Hindu temple in Louisiana. He feels no qualms in making statements hurtful to the sentiments of the community from which he derives his "minority" card. In a piece some years ago, he said when asked about his conversion: "the motivation behind my conversion, however, was my belief in one, objectively true faith (Christianity). If Christianity is merely one of many equally valid religions, then the sacrifices I made, including the loss of my family's peace, were senseless". Presumably the conversion of his Hindu Punjabi wife to Roman Catholicism some years later occurred by her having coincidentally the exact same epiphany as he did.

To those of us Indian-Americans who are unwilling to obliterate our identity and get "digested" into the whitestream, Jindal is no trailblazer. He does not speak for us and merely uses his Indian-American status to gain leverage with Republicans who must now present a more inclusive face in order to remain relevant. His life underscores the fact that America has a long way to go before Indians and Hindus can project openly and without negative consequences the full range of their cultural and religious identity.

Carving a distinct non-white Indian identity is also hampered by the trajectory followed by many Indian-Americans in the humanities, who prove their competence by promoting mainly European epistemological categories which nowadays means "theories" of culture, textual analysis, etc. that have been accepted by the Anglo-American academy as a part of the "canon of theories" in use. The Hindu equivalent of such theories would be the vast and sophisticated range of "siddhantas". But these are simply ignored in modern/postmodern studies, trivially dismissed, or mapped/co-opted into trendy new theories owned by Western experts or their whitened Indian followers. This new kind of colonization is being celebrated as "theory power." I call it epistemic arrogance. Harvard University's Homi Bhabha is a role model hoisted by the American establishment for young Indian-Americans in English Departments and Postcolonial Studies to emulate. He has proven himself as having the "white gaze". This is the liberal path to becoming white, just as Christianizing was Bobby Jindal's biblical path to whiteness. One may think of these paths as left-wing and right-wing whiteness, respectively.

At the height of the Jim Crow era, African-Americans saw in their midst, the phenomenon of "passing", where lighter skinned blacks would assume a semi-white racial identity in order to avoid the restrictions and prejudices of a segregated South. "Passing" was viewed as offensive, an attempt by some blacks to take the short-cut to racial parity rather than pitch in and do the hard work of achieving equality for the entire community including those unable and unwilling to "pass." In 2013, Bobby Jindal doesn't need to scrub off his color. Converting his religion, accent, ideologies and loyalties has sufficed. His brown skin merely positions him to take advantage of America's changing demographics. Jindal shows that in America, Hindu-Americans continue to feel the pressure to pass.

Rajiv Malhotra: The Whitewashing of Bobby Jindal

Good God.......what a contrived piece of utter drivel.

Chase.....you better keep trolling the internet and come up with something better than this piece of garbage.
From what rat-hole did you dig this crap from. And who is this Rajiv Malhotra ?

Dude...i may be a Mallu Christian but most if not all of my Indian friends in the US are hindus.
And i have lots and lots of them. Indians regardless of what state they are from or religion are doing very well.

They dont feel any need to become or "pass as white".
Nor are Indians subject to any major form of discrimination.
Indians are probably one the better assimilated ethnic communities in the US.

Assuming that someone is going to change his faith just so he becomes more acceptable to the white community is about as dumb as it gets.

If you cant hold your own in a debate on DFI....then, dont resort to the cheap name calling like ABCD or accusations of Indian Americans trying to out do the white guy or being More American than American.
Its the refuge of intellectually feeble on DFI.

Chase....your first missed cue on this article was the paper that carried it.
Huff Post......really dude. Think before you copy and post.

 

[mattster]

One more thing to add here - i would never vote for a Bobby Jindal because i think the whole republican party stinks.

But accusing Bobby Jindal of converting for cheap political acceptance is reaching for the utter heights of condescension.
Faith is and always will be a deeply personal choice.

Who the hell is Rajiv Malhotra or anyone else to pass judgement on what Bobby Jindal wants to believe or not believe in.

 

[Bangalorean]

You can accuse me of many things but the charge of self hating? That is ridiculous.

If I remember right, you were notorious for your "India sucks", "India is so uncool" type of posts during your initial days here.