Dec

29

Christianity, India and the US court of Appeals

December 29, 2004 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly—
Call on Rama—he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid “good Christian men rejoice!“

- Rudyard Kipling (Christmas in India)

In 2000, US Court of Appeals for the seventh circuit rejected an immigration-related appeal by an Indian citizen George Ambati. Mr Ambati was a practising Roman catholic and had applied for asylum in the USA arguing that ‘he and his family were persecuted in India because of their christian beliefs’. The court eventually found that Mr Ambati was steadily employed in India, regularly attended church and could not demonstrate any evidence of living in fear or of being persecuted by the fanatic folks of his motherland. It also concluded that Mr Ambati was really trying to stay in the USA at any cost for fear of his economic capacity diminishing once he went back home.

Christianity in India is almost 2000 years old. In 52 AD, St. Thomas, one of the twelve apostles, came to India and established seven churches in south India. Killed by a fanatic 20 years later, he was buried near Chennai.

Today, almost 4 percent of India’s population practises christianity. That makes India’s christian population about 40 million. That number is larger than the combined population of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Switzerland and Greece. And many of those 40 million Christians have had the Christian faith in their families much longer than what most European countries can claim.

Christianity in India
Ambati vs US Court of Appeals

Dec

28

The Pundits who cried wolf

December 28, 2004 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

In spite of a 3800 mile long coastline, India does not have a Tsunami warning system. The top scientist at India’s National Oceanographic Institute recently even mocked the idea of a Tsunami in Chennai.

Interestingly, the earliest record of a modern-day Tsunami has been reported at…surprise surprise… Chennai. In 1883, the island volcano of Krakatau near the Indonesian arc exploded causing enormous Tsunamis killing more than 36000. The Krakatau Tsunamis reached Chennai in India and even all the way to the east coast of Africa. In an abstract presented at the 1999 symposium in Hawaii, Indo-Canadian scientist TS Murty and his Indian colleague A. Bapat list more than a few devastating Tsunamis at or near the Indian coast just within last one hundred years or so.

The oldest record of a Tsunami on the Indian coast dates back to 326 BC when Alexander the great’s returning fleet was almost entirely destroyed by a strong earthquake and the Tsunami thereafter.

T.S. Murty was instrumental in setting up the Pacific Tsunami warning system, and tried in vain to have a warning system set up in the Indian ocean. “The system would cost too much and would cause a lot of false warnings“, he was told. Now almost 25000 lives and billions of dollars later, it may be easier to convince the Oceanographic pundits of India’s prestigious Institute.

Tsunamis On The Coast Lines Of India - TS Murty & A Bapat
Tsunam - Ardeshir Cowasjee
Experts jolted out of slumber

Dec

23

Hollywood’s first Indian star

December 23, 2004 posted by indiatime | 5 Comments

Long before Persis Khambata, Kabir Bedi, Shekhar Kapoor and Aishwarya, long before any Bollywood star entered even the Bollywood (let alone Hollywood) scene, a 13 year-old boy from the southern city of Mysore enthralled the Hollywood audiences. Selar Shaik Sabu was riding elephants for the Maharaja of Mysore when Robert Flaherty, the hollywood director chose him for the part of the elephant boy in ‘Elephant Boy‘.

Sabu came to the United States in 1937, and made about 20 movies in Hollywood between 1938 and 1963. He played many memorable roles including Abu (The Thief of Baghdad - 1940), Prince Azim (The Drum - 1938) and Mowgli (Jungle Book - 1942).

After becoming an American citizen in 1944, Sabu joined the US Air Force as a tail gunner, flew several dozen missions over the pacific and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his valor and bravery.

Sabu died in California in 1964. He was barely 40 but he had achieved some uniquemost distinctions that no other Indian actor has achieved as of today. Sabu remains the only Indian actor to have starred in about 20 Hollywood films. He also remains the only Indian actor to have won the Distinguished Flying Cross. Years after his death, his daughter Jasmine Sabu would achieve yet another first, becoming the only actor of Indian origin to have starred in ‘The Godfather‘.

Sabu - Philip Liebfried
Sabu - Filmography

Dec

22

The Fake and the Real Mata Hari

December 22, 2004 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

The most famous spy of the first world war, Mata Hari (real name Margarete Gertrude Zelle) falsely claimed that she was born and raised in India. It is believed that she might have spent some time in India, but her stories about her Indian heritage were really just stories. Her friendship with the German espionage agents and French military officers allowed her to become a double spy, though the French suspected her of really spying for the Germans. This led to her downfall and her eventual execution at the hands of the French firing squad in 1917.

25 years later, another Indian woman working as a wireless operator for the British, joined the French resistance as a covert operator - a spy. Noor Inayat Khan was eventually captured by the Nazis while she was working for the French resistance. In 1944, the Gestapo firing squad executed Noor and three other resistance agents in the infamous Dachau concentration camp.

Unlike Margarete Zelle though , Princess Noor Inayat Khan had real roots in India. She was the great-great-great-granddaughter of India’s famous ruler Tipu Sultan. Her american mother Ora Ray Baker (aka Sharda Ameena Begum) was related to the founder of the Christian Science Movement - Mary Baker Eddy. Her father Hazrat Inayat Khan was the grandson of India’s famous musician Maula Baksh and is revered as a sufi saint.

Margarete Zelle’s alias ‘Mata Hari’ literally meant ‘sun‘ or ‘eye of the dawn‘ in Malay language. 25 years after Mata Hari’s execution, Noor Inayat Khan, a woman of diametrically opposite ideals met similar fate under the hands of the Gestapo. Interestingly, Noor, an Arabic word also means ‘light‘. But Noor Inayat Khan didn’t need an alias. She was the light of the French resistance and was posthumously awarded the George cross, one of the highest awards for bravery.

Mata Hari
The Princess Who Would be Spy
Hazrat Inayat Khan

Dec

19

Author, Masseur, Restaunteer Extraordinaire

December 19, 2004 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

Dean Mohamet from Kolkata was 25 when he traveled to Ireland. Fascinated by his new surroundings, he started writing a travelog of his days in Ireland. A few years later, he fell in love with an Irish lady and married her. At 36, he published an English novel about his days abroad - The Travels of Dean Mohamet. A few years later, he opened an Indian restaurant where his staff served the perfect Indian cuisine. Not happy with the response to the restaurant, he now opened a massage parlor that pampered the tired English bodies with aromatherapy and exquisite shampoos.

Under any circumstance Mohamet’s story would be a great immigrant success story. What makes it extraordinary and unique was his timing. The year Mohamet’s english novel was published was 1794. The year he opened an Indian restaurant in London was 1809. And the year he started his massage parlor was 1812.

Sheikh Dean Mohamet (Mohamed) was the first Indian to publish a novel in English language in his own English words (besides being the first Indian to open a restaurant in London and also the first Indian to run a massage parlor in London). Almost a hundred years after his novel was published, another Indian - Ravindranath Tagore - from the same land of Bengal received the highest literary honor on the planet, the Nobel prize in Literature. “….he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West….“, cited the Prize committee. It would be almost another hundred years before another person of Indian origin, V.S. Naipaul would claim that prize for his own English words.

What do Aromatherapy and Curry have in common? - Peter Grove
Medieval to Modern
When the twain met - Sujit Chowdhury

Dec

18

The First Indian in the USA

December 18, 2004 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

The earliest known record of an Indian in the USA is that of a gentleman from Madras who was soppted in Masachussetts in the December of 1790. He had sailed on an American ship ‘Henry’. After a six-month stay he left the USA in the summer of 1791 aboard a ship called ‘Astrea’.

After the abolition of slavery in the British Carribean islands in 1833, there started a wave of Indian immigration to the carribean, Africa and the South Pacific. Between 1838 and 1917, more than half a million Indians migrated to Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Suriname, French Guiana, Grenada, Belize and St. Kitts. During the same period, several hundred thousands traveled to South Africa, Mauritius and Fiji.

Only a few hundred Indians had made it to the USA by 1900. In the next 10 years, almost 5000 Indians entered the USA, only 10 of them females. From 1910 to the middle of the 20th century however, the Indian immigation to the USA slowly declined. It picked up some steam again in 1948, but really took off in 1965.

Despite a radically different history of immigration, the year 2004 saw two great achievements by people of Indian heritage in their new lands. Vijay Singh of Fiji became the world’s best golfer. And Bobby Jindal became only the second Indian-American to become a US congressman.

Indians in Fiji
East Indian Indentureship
A History of Indian Americans

Dec

15

A little Poland in India

December 15, 2004 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

Around 1942, a very large group of polish exiles, mostly women and children, made their way from Iran to India. This group of almost 5000 polish nationals found a loving home in a place called Valivade near Kolhapur in the state of Maharashtra.

The polish community at Valivade transformed their barracks into picturesque homes with banana gardens and flowers. Little girls joined the Girl Guide movement, and mothers worked as teachers or health care workers. The small community thrived into a bustling town with a barber shop, shoe shop, postal service that regularly brought letters from Poland, a restaurant, and even a cinemahouse that showed Hindi movies.

3 kindergartens, 4 primary and 4 secondary schools catered almost 1800 pupils and employed a 100 teachers. The Indian postmaster and his assistant learnt to speak polish and many polish settlers spoke fluent Marathi.

After the war ended, unable to return home to their native Poland, some settlers migrated to Australia, some went to England. One young polish woman married into the local Marathi family. 84 settlers died of natural causes and to date rest in peace in the local christian cemetary.

Years later, the settlers carried fond memories of their stay in Valivade. For almost five years, the little peace of land in India became their home and touched their hearts. And in the midst of a bitter world war, a small Indian village hosted five thousand polish people with grace, love and affection.

The Asociation of Poles in India
The Polish Settlements in India

Dec

12

Paradise Split….

December 12, 2004 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

“Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material”…
- F.Scott Fitzgerald

There is a crisis in India’s largest industrial house. For some time now, brothers Mukesh and Anil have been said to be feuding about the control of the Ambani family’s Reliance empire.

India’s history is replete with examples of feuding brothers and lost empires. It is also filled with amazing examples of love and sacrifice between the brothers. The Ramayana reminds us of brotherly sacrifice made by King Bharat for his elder brother Rama. The Mahabharata reminds us of two arms of the royal family in a bitter feud fighting the mother of all battles.

The rest of the world has its own versions of brotherly feuds, the most famous of all, the one between Cain and Abel, the two sons of Christianity’s first couple. The consequences of that rivalry landed Cain in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden. Interestingly, it was in the modern city of Aden that the founder of the Ambani empire, the late Dhirubhai, started his illustrious career..

Though the wellwishers of the family have been trying to heal the rift, it may already be too late. This was one skin split that really should have been stitched in time….

The Reliance Split Wide Open
Dhirubhai Ambani - A Tribute
Remembering the Prince of Polyester
In Search of The Garden of Eden

Dec

11

Suitable, but not living

December 11, 2004 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

A few hours ago, Kenyan environmentalist Wangar Maathai became the first African woman to be awarded the 2004 nobel peace prize…

Every Nobel peace prize award is a reminder that the last century’s hero of the non-violence movement was not a recipient of the award. Students of this prize have always wondered why. Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for the peace prize five different times, but never got the final nod of the committee.

Gandhi was first nominated for the prize in 1937. The 1937 peace prize went to Lord Ceceil of Chelwood, the founder of the League of Nations. Fast forward to 1946, Geneva. “The league of Nations is dead, Long live the United Nations”, said Lord Cecil in a speech at the final meeting of the league.

Gandhi’s second nomination came in 1938. This time the award went to the Nansen International Office for Refugees, an international refugee agency authorized by the League of Nations. Though the Nansen Office managed to help a lot of international refugees in various ways, it was plagued by problems throughout its existence and was finally dissolved in 1938.

Nobody was awarded the prize in 1939.

Gandhi was nominated again in 1947, this time the award went to the Quakers, a missionary cum relief organization.

Gandhi was renominated in 1948, the nomination supported by 1946 peace prize winner Emily Balch and the 1947 winners - the Quakers. In November of 1948, the commitee declared its decision - no award would be bestowed in 1948. “There was no suitable living candidate”, the commitee said. Duh, the most suitable candidate in the history of the prize yet had died just ten months earlier.

Of the five times Gandhi was nominated, two of the five winners who won over Gandhi had lost their importance by the time Gandhi got his final two nominations. One of the other winners recommended him for one of the other three nominations. The two times no one beat him to the prize, however, the commitee found no suitable candidate. In 1939, Gandhi was living but not suitable. In 1948, he was probably suitable, but not living.

Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate - Øyvind Tønnesson
Gandhi and The Nobel Prize - Vinay Lal
Mahatma Gandhi And The Nobel Prize - Vivek Gumaste
Gandhi nobler without a Nobel - Prasenjit Chowdhury

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