Archive for category January 2010

By Rohit Dharawadkar
Attorney, Elliott & Davis, PC, Pittsburgh, PA
Phone: 412.434.4911 x. 28 /Email Rohit

Rohit arrived in Pittsburgh in 2005 with a law degree from Southwestern University, Los Angeles, Calif. His specialty is immigration law which he has practiced for nine years. He lives in the South Hills.

One of my earliest memories is standing underneath the staircase at my aunt’s house in Los Angeles, a few hours after arriving in the United States on a Pan Am flight from Bombay. Even then, at the age of five, I realized that my family had embarked on a great adventure, and I remember feeling very far away from what I had known to be my home. My family settled in the Los Angeles area, where I ended up attending school and college.

After completing college and graduating from law school, I began practicing immigration law in San Francisco in April 2001 and have been doing so ever since. Till then, I hadn’t considered exactly how my family had immigrated to the United States. As a child, I simply accepted that we were here, and as a teenager I swore the oath of allegiance to the US government without much thought.

Until that spring of 2001, as I began my practice as an immigration attorney, I had never really considered what it took for my parents to get me to this country. I eventually learned that my aunt had filed an immigrant visa petition on behalf of my mother, my father, my brother and me. An interview had taken place at a consulate in India, after which my entire family was granted Green Cards to enter and live in the United States. In 1980, the process took a total of five months.

Today, the beneficiary family in the same situation as my father would be waiting no less than 12-15 years for an approval. The processes and timings for immigration petitions have changed, but it appears, through all the clients I have helped, that the goals remain the same: a better life in the United States.

Just about every first or second generation child, in the re-telling of their parent’s immigration story, talks about how their parents came to the United States with around $300. For some reason every parent seems to have immigrated with only $300. These stories often conclude with the parents achieving the American dream. A few years back, I asked my father why he decided to leave his parents, extended family and friends, and move half way across the world to a place where he knew only five people — three of whom were children. Echoing the sentiments of all my immigration clients, his answer was simple: to make a better life for his family.

For most, the journey and the right to remain in the United States have become more lengthy and difficult. I am immensely satisfied to say that my life’s work has been to help individuals and families from around the world achieve their dream of coming to America, whether it’s applying for an H-1B visa after finishing graduate school, or navigating the sometimes treacherous path through the PERM employment-based labor certification process, or completing a filing for a mother or father who still lives back in the home country, I.

I recently received a post card at my office from a client whose wife had been granted a green card to the United States. It had a picture of the couple and a photo of her approved immigrant visa and simply read “Thank you very much Rohit for all your help.”

I have proudly hung the post card in my office as a reminder of why I do what I do, and the journey that my own family had taken to our life in the United States.

By Premlata Venkataraman
E-mail Premlata

Recently I read in the NYT that they have instituted awards for the superb street food collection that exists in New York. That brought memories of my Bombay days… … …

I was lucky I lived in Bombay which is a gastronomes’ delight for food from all regions of India. I am not talking of the trendy restaurants that litter all over the city today. I am referring to the street food culture in Bombay where you can get every meal from breakfast to late night snacks (even after watching the late-night “2nd show” crappy masala Hindi movie!)

And what an array there was… … You could have piping hot dosas with chutney & sambar, or with an egg fried on top. You could have the uniquely Bombay pav bhaji, the delicious and nutritious lunch of the rich and poor alike, served piping hot and spicy and, also hygienic because no germ would survive those volcanic temperatures.

You could have the real poor man’s snack vada pav at any time of the day and wash it down with a glass of water and call it a day. Of course the bhel puri/sev puri/dahi puri combos were ambrosia from heaven to stifle hunger pangs at any time of the day.

And pani puri, the snack that is a symbol of democracy and equality in eating.. Customers stand in a circle around the vendor as he plunges his thumb into the small 2″dia hollow puris to make a hole, fills the puris with spicy potato pieces, dunks the puri into sweet-and-tart jeera-tamarind water, and hands it over to his customers one by one. You put it into your mouth, and a rainbow of culinary experience explores in your mouth: As you bite into it, you find it is crispy, salty, cool, spicy hot, tart, sweet, with just enough liquid to smoothly swallow it down transporting you into a rapture of sorts to your taste buds… …

The New York Times story mentioned that Biryani Cart, won the People’s Taste Award at the Vendys second year in a row. They also commented that, “Their rice is a lot better than any of the other street carts. Most have plain old yellow rice. Theirs is actual biryani.”

Of course, in New York with its diverse multinational population, it is easy to have street food running the gamut from Japanese to Icelandic to Brazilian. (some more infor about the Vendys…)

Even after living in the suburbs for over 20 years, I have not lost my penchant for eating street food. Luckily I work in Oakland in a university, where we have several ethnic food “enclaves” – really they are street foods served from a truck — that serve the same delicious, hot, inexpensive fare for those days I do not pack a lunch. See above: Dining a la “Carts” at CMU. Inset: Saran from Thai Kitchen graciously serves food.

By Kollengode S. Venkataraman

Interfaith dialog has been with us in this area for well over thirty years. A few Hindus and Sikhs, on their own personal initiatives, and decades before temples jumped into the bandwagon, met with mainstream Christian and Jewish groups during the year-end holiday season. After Nine-Eleven, interfaith dialog gained urgency, and officials from temples, gurudwaras and mosques all over the US have become proactive in organizing interfaith meetings in their places of worship.

In India, given its convulsive history in matters of religions and faith, live-and-let-live is the norm more-or-less, with no formal attempts for any faith-related dialog. This works for the most part until fresh inter- and intra-religious violence erupts, after which society adjusts itself to a new pseudo equilibrium. This cycle repeats itself over and over again.

Living in the U.S., I always wondered what the tangible outcome of these interfaith meetings is, given all the efforts that have gone into organizing these events, other than giving the representatives of the different faiths  face time to recognize that the fabric in America’s social-cultural-religious quilt is changing.

Representatives of the diverse faiths participating in interfaith meetings differ substantially on the matters of both body and spirit of the important underpinnings in their respective faiths. But when they share the stage and talk to each other on the effectiveness of the interfaith dialog, and address the general public, despite their theological differences, they will agree on their pessimistic and less than sanguine assessment of these meetings. But they can’t say it in public.

In this background, I read an article by Dr. Farish A. Noor, a Malaysian and a Senior Fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has spent over 15 years in interfaith dialog, and what he says is quite disheartening:

“I have been in this dialogue ‘business’ (and it is a business, mind you) for more than fifteen years now, with no tangible results, having attended more than fifty conferences, I have had the privilege of meeting the Pope, the Ayatollah of Iran, hundreds of prime ministers, presidents, ministers, deans, rectors, professors and public intellectuals; but with little to show for it. The inter-religious dialogue industry has become a law unto itself, driven by its own infernal logic and political economy that ultimately benefits only five-star hotels who… …host such events.”

He continues: “Everyone agrees that all religions preach peace and love, but as soon as they return they declare war on their neighbors. None of the sensitive, thorny issues — such as freedom of belief and conversion [coercive or enticed, we may add] is ever discussed, and all we have are platitudes and commonsensical bits of pedestrian wisdom dressed up as sound bites… [Meanwhile] age-old differences and prejudices remain intact and nobody really wants to be honest about our collective hypocrisy.”

He goes on: “[In these meetings, speakers] invariably frame inter-religious differences in terms of an oppositional dialectics where the Self [or one’s faith] is contrasted positively to the negative Other; and from these dialectical premises we are [expected] to reach a consensus and a great communal love-in. To expect such results from such flawed premises is silly to say the least, and waste of time and financial resources.”

In Pittsburgh I have attended a few interfaith gatherings myself, not as an organizer, but as a lay listener sitting in the audience. And I see Dr. Noor’s points. Several years ago I attended what was billed as an interfaith meeting at Carnegie Mellon University with a rabbi, pastor, priest, and maulvi, and two lay followers (one Hindu, and the other Zoroastrian) participating. As the meeting unfolded, it ended up with speakers scoring rhetorical points over each other’s faith. A few atheists in the audience derided everybody on the panel.

Often the formats of interfaith dialog are predisposed to failure simply because spiritual journey — the real purpose of all religions — is always arduous, painfully slow and solitary.  Over 2500 years ago, it took several years for Siddhartha Gautama to become the Buddha.  It is no different today.  Decades ago, while in India, I remember reading about a few European Jesuit missionaries working in India for years, only to leave their order, becoming Vedantins.

This solitary spiritual journey, though mentally arduous, I must add, is rewarding in the end for individual Seekers of Truth. Siddhartha Gautama spent years before becoming the Buddha. So is the case with Vivekananda and Chinmayananda in our times, and others in every faith.

But when religions are organized with hierarchies, managing the temporal affairs of churches seriously erodes their legitimacy as we see repeatedly in all faiths, “Harvesting souls” — actually, it is increasing the market share — becomes an objective. “Harvesting souls” is how Pope Paul John II euphemistically put it during his visit in India in 2004 about hitting heard count targets in organized conversions.

Dr. Noor continues: “We talk of ‘bridge-builders’ …as if the inter-religious dialogue was already a contested territory … To even suggest that Is’am and the West require bridge-builders is to assume that there is a gulf between the two, and that this gulf has been there all along.”

But isn’t this the simple truth staring at all of us?

Again, Noor: “The fact is that both the Western and Muslim worlds share the same Abrahamic roots — and that both have been the oldest civilizational neighbors to each other. In our attempts to be politically correct and to recognize differences — we have invented divisions that were not there (or perhaps were not so pronounced in the past) and amplified them instead.. And instead of accepting that neither the Western nor Muslim worlds are homogeneous, we perpetuate the febrile fiction that the two are distinct and therefore need representation and representatives.”

Dr. Noor’s thesis that faiths that trace their tenets to a common root should not have so much strife contradicts what we see all around.  The scriptures of the many faiths themselves and their dogma do not bear witness to this. Nor does the flow of world history. Read End of Faith by Sam Harris for details. Strangely, while Harris is harsh on organized religions, he himself is a seeker of personal spiritual growth.

On the basis of Dr. Noor’s thesis, how do rationalize the following?

• The strife between Jews and early Christians that persisted through two millennia leading to the Inquisition and persecutions?
• The strife between the Vatican and the Eastern traditions of Christianity, namely, Russian, Greek, Syrian traditions?
• The clash between the Catholics and the Protestants in Europe since the time of Martin Luther and the birth of the Anglican Church? Read Ross Douthat’s article “Benedict’s Gambit” in New York Times on Pope Benedict’s overture to the Anglicans to stem the rise of Islam in Europe.
• North American Evangelicals and Charismatics raiding the flock of traditional Catholics in Latin America?
• The divisions between Shias and Sunnis soon after the death of Prophet Mohammed? And Shias and Sunnis together not recognizing Ahmedias as Muslims, considering them apostates?

The scene in India is similar, but not anywhere as violent I must emphasize, as among the Abrahamic religions in Europe and the Middle East.

• So was the case with Hinayana (Theravada) and Mahayana Buddhism at the peak of their influence in India. Ironically, Buddhism, by far the most practical and nondogmatic religion, could not avoid getting enmeshed in dogma after the Buddha’s time. Incidentally, Hinayana (literally, smaller or weaker vehicle) is a pejorative phrase coined by  Mahayanis. Theravada (or the Path of the Elders) is how Hinayana is now called.
• Among Jains, Digambars and Shvetambars have had strong differences, though not violent, thanks to the Jains’ commitment to ahimsa.
• Hindus have had their differences with the Buddhists and Jains, some of whose outcomes were not very pleasant, to say the least.
• Among Hindus, the Advaitins, Saivites, and Vaishnavites differ on theology, dogma and rituals, which has manifested in silly, laughable ways. The caste differences among them add another layer to the complexity.
• And Vaishavites among themselves have problems too. In India, the two branches of Tamil Vaishnavites — Vada-kalai and Then-kalai, literally Northern and Southern Schools — went all the way up to the Indian Supreme Court. Why? To resolve whose naamam (the religious mark in vermillion and white clay powder traditional Vaishnavites wear on their forehead) can be put on the forehead of the elephant in the Vaishnavite temple in Kanchipuram. (Note for the uninitiated: The naamam of the two sects differ slightly that outsiders may not be able to notice at all.)

Coming in this tradition of theological nitpicking, Indian communists with their allegiance to Russia have had problems over doctrine with Indian Marxists whose inspiration in China, similar to religious orthodoxies. Recently, Indian Marxists vowed to annihilate Maoist in Central India.

Human institutions are like living organisms. They grow, bifurcate or trifurcate, become weak, die and become extinct, or morph and evolve. And man’s instinct to influence, control and dominate others, and others’ instinct to resist, are visceral that bring out the animals in human beings. However, highlighting the differences in the arcane nitpickings in dogma and theology give man a patina of intellectual sophistication for his instinct to control and dominate. Of course, when intellectual persuasion fails, inducements and brute force are always there.

I think the driving force for much of the religious strife is as much biological as it is theological; driven as much, if not more, by man’s hormones as by his intellect. I use masculine pronouns deliberately. Without sounding sexist, why is that through history, the leaderships in religious and political strife have been overwhelmingly male?  ♠

by Lakshmanan Krishnamurti,
Pittsburgh, PA
Email Lakshmanan

Lakshmanan Krishnamurti was born in the temple town of Madurai, India. He has lived in many places in India, first as the son of an Indian Air Force officer and then as a physician in the Indian Air Force. He moved to the US in 1993. He is currently a physician specializing in blood diseases, cancer and bone marrow transplantation in children.

The article by Sridevi Rao James in the last issue raises important questions on how to sustain Hindu institutions in the United States. Rao James observes that as the first generation of founding Hindus slowly fades away, the mantle of leadership will have to pass to the next generation born and raised in the US. At first glance, this appears to be an obvious an inevitable change. However, public institutions are living organisms with a natural life cycle of growth, maturation, stagnation, even decay. They can also change course according to the people who participate and run these institutions. The composition of the worshippers and leadership of religious institutions set up by immigrant communities in the US will change over time. Many may even cease to function as the founding members of their congregation age and eventually fade away.

Ms. Rao James says, depending on only new Indian immigrants to take care of the temples is not only shortsighted but also likely to further alienate the already disengaged Hindu Indian-Americans born and raised here. The alienation of US born Indian-Americans from Indian immigrant students and their institutions is evident on university campuses. However, there is a distinction between college students who may be still grappling with their own identity and their need to fit in and adults who are trying to raise children in their own cultural traditions.

In Hindu temples across America, Indian immigrants, US-born Indian children and adults, American spouses, interracial children and some children and adults with no Indian heritage at all, all worship and participate in the various classes and activities, motivated by their interest in the Hindu tradition. That these individuals with diverse backgrounds are able to participate in the activities of the temple indicates that these institutions not only welcome people from different backgrounds, but also accept the attitudes and values people from diverse backgrounds.

If US-born Hindus overcome their reservations and become involved in these institutions, they will fit in very well..

There are however, many challenges that we face to make our institutions relevant and attractive to our young people. Attendance of children in Temples drops off after 10th grade though some young college students continue to attend. Hindu temples in the US are thriving largely because of the dedication of the large number of recent immigrants and the organic link they provide to India. However, the seemingly unending supply of immigrants from India is subject to change by social, political and economic forces.

While many Indian immigrants view their institutions through the prism of caste, region, language, and social mores as they existed at the time of their emigration from India, others are completely turned off by these.

For too many immigrants, the temple is merely a salve against social isolation and a means to get the acceptance they seek, but do not seem to get elsewhere.

As the new immigrants have struggled to adapt to the American mainstream, a whole generation of American-born Hindus have come of age. They take for granted the fruits of the struggles of their parents. Besides, youngsters, often pushed by their families to excel in school and at work, have had neither the time nor the opportunity to acquire more than a superficial familiarity with their culture and religion.

Many living in biracial and two-religion households may find the institutions of the non-Hindu/Indian half of their families more welcoming.

US-born Hindus may be different from their Indian born parents, but that does not make them less deserving of celebrating their religion, culture, and heritage. We ignore this shift in the demographics at the peril of losing the long-term viability of our institutions.

How do we attract and retain the interest of this generation? The
answer is astonishingly simple. We, who are rediscovering Hinduism in America, need to restore temples from their recent role as mere places of worship, to their traditional place as centers of social and cultural life of our communities. This holds the possibility that American-born Hindus will be drawn to these places during the different transitions in their lives. We must also actively recruit US born Hindus of every age to our temples, trust them, and give them responsibility of running it.

Like Rao James, I too believe it is time to be creative and thoughtful about how to bring our youth back into the fold. Otherwise, Hindu temples all across the US built with love by a whole generation of immigrants may survive only as museums.

Editor’s Note: We thank all the authors who came forward to share their thoughts and ideas on this thread of topic. This topic, we hear, has triggered lot of table-topic discussions in many homes and gatherings of our readers.