Author: Josh Philip Ross

I’ve come to believe that weather is too often overlooked as a factor that influences political events. What was the weather like in the summer of 1967? I bet it was nice both in the US and in Europe. And in 1968? I bet it was hot. And how was the weather in Paris in July of 1789?

Or take India, for example. While the drama in Delhi these last few days might seem a little nuts, just consider how sane you’d feel if the weather was 111 degrees with widespread dust, and you lived in a town where most people have no air conditioners and the electricity craps out in the heat of the afternoon.

If it ever hits 111 in New York for more than two days running, I expect mass looting and general carnage, not to mention multiple hijackings of ice cream trucks.

Topic: Humor

Topic: India

Saturday, June 5 is Change Your Mind Day, “An afternoon of meditation, movement, and music [that] will take place in more than 40 cities around the globe.” Here in New York, the events will take place on the Great Hill in Central Park, from 12:30 to 5:30.

The subsequent week is Meditate NYC, a weeklong opportunity to explore NYC’s diverse Buddhist communities as they offer open houses and meditation sessions for beginners or the curious.

Topic: Culture

Slate has a series of dispatches from India by Akash Kapur, beginning on Monday, with the final round of voting, and continuing through the week. Definitely worth a read.

Topic: Around Town

In an election whose results surprised everyone, the BJP has fallen from power in the world’s largest democracy. The BJP, which called the elections six months early, had expected to coast to victory on India’s spectacular economic growth over the last few years ? their slogan was “India Shining” ? but instead Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party and an alphabet soup of allied leftist parties have won enough votes to prompt Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to tender his resignation and give the new victors a chance to establish a governing coalition.

The BBC, as usual, has the best reporting from India, though their lead headline, Gandhi triumphs in India election, may overstate the case. While this is indeed a kind of restoration, with the Congress party and the Gandhi family back in power (descendants of Nehru, including former prime ministers Indira and Rajiv, no relation to Mohandas K. Gandhi or Ben Kingsley), I think the results are better interpreted as a rejection of the status quo. After all, in Kerala, where the Congress Party held power, they were soundly defeated by one of India’s communist parties.

Indian politics are incredibly convoluted and difficult to parse, complicated by language barriers, illiterate electorates, rampant political corruption, and the country’s sheer hugeness. As such, drawing large conclusions is always a difficult game. Still, I think there are some important messages in this election.

1) India is a secular country. The BJP rode to power on a wave of Hindu nationalist emotion, having played a key role in the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya, which led to anti-Muslim riots that killed over 2,000. And in 2002, when anti-Muslim riots broke out in Gujarat, the resulting nativist feeling helped the BJP win that state’s local elections.

All that would seem to demonstrate that the BJP’s ill-defined but divisive policy of Hinduttva, or “Hinduness,” was a sure winner at the ballot box. But India is a land of minorities, with substantial Muslim and Christian populations. And even among Hindus, there are divisions at least as wide as those between, say, a Polish Catholic and a Texan evangelical. Most of India’s south is uneasy about the BJP’s Hindi-centric nationalism; after all, Hindi isn’t even in their language group, much less in their local languages. Tamil Nadu especially has a long history of domination by northern rulers, and they fear losing their language rights and their cultural heritage. And among northern Hindus, caste differences still matter: the BJP has tried to win votes from the lower castes and Dalits (untouchables) by playing them off the Muslims, but the relationship has always been uneasy.

Gujarat was the biggest surprise in this election full of surprises. The voters there rejected the communal violence of two years ago, which has devastated their economy, and chose instead the party of inclusion.

2) The economic reforms are working. The central plank of the BJP’s platform was the economy. It’s booming, and the BJP’s economic reforms are to a great extent responsible for transforming India from a sluggish cryptocommunist backwater into an economic up-and-comer. The positive effects of these changes are visible everywhere: MTV, fancy new shops, better cars, cellular phones. The trouble, however, is that while these benefits are visible, they’re still unattainable for most Indians. The economic changes have benefited the rich and the urban middle classes, but India’s majority is still rural and poor. The government that spent the election campaign crowing over stock market results and GDP increases also overlooked fundamental matters such as water shortages and rising electricity prices, and they paid for their neglect at the polls. Indians are pleased with the economic boom, and I don’t think the new government will lead the nation back into socialism. But the Indian people are right to insist that the fruits of the recent success be distributed more widely.

So this election is not a rejection of India’s new economy. On the contrary, had there been no boom and only business as usual, India’s voters might not have been disgruntled about not getting their fair share.

3) Indian democracy works. The voters surprised the pundits and made real choices that were based on enlightened self-interest. They didn’t fall prey to apathy or nativism. This is a rare case of a great mass of poor people making their voices heard through a legitimate democratic process. The new government will be all too aware of the power of India’s voters to pay attention and turn them out of office if they don’t satisfy people’s basic needs. In a country of nearly a billion people, the government has been held accountable for the state of the nation. This is a triumph for India, for democracy, and for humanity.

New Yorkish helpfully alerts us to the exciting news that McDonald’s is now pandering to Asian-Americans with a marketing website that ranges from the banal (“As Americans with Asian and Pacific Islander heritage, we have many things in common. But we are very different too”) to the bizarre and upsetting (“We’re Asian and Pacific Islander Americans ‘living on the rim'”). Just the pictures alone are gag-worthy (like the food they’re trying to sell).

But my experience in Korea taught me that Asians are just as happy as we are to scarf down foods that have been scientifically formulated to satisfy our basest chemical cravings. Pizza joints are everywhere, fried chicken is a delicacy (as teachers, we were given it as a gift by our kindergarteners’ parents when their kids’ birthdays rolled around). McDonald’s had it’s presence, of course, and even offered a kimchi burger, which had bits of the pickled cabbage cooked into the meat and was served on a rice-cake bun.

But the vilest fast food was Korea’s own Mickey D’s knockoff, Lotteria, brought to you by the giant Lotte corporation whose slogan is “Lotte: Always With You.” I remember being lured repeatedly by one of their posters with what looked like onion rings on it. Time and again I would get all excited for a moment, only to be reminded that those were in fact ojingeo rings: the dreaded squid.

Lotteria, always in step with McDonald’s, is now offering a supposedly healthier “Wellbeing Life Meal,” which is reviewed by A Geek in Korea, who claims that “Eating this was like dropping a small brick in my stomach.”

Bon appetit!

With all the brouhaha over abuse in Iraqi and Afghan prisons run by the U.S. military, it was only a matter of time before someone pointed out that American civilian prisons aren’t much different. This from a New York Times article that it’s important for many people to read: