Sep 1, 2008

Lifestyle - Barack Obama Ki Jai

Barack Obama jokes about just how improbable it is that someone with his kind of name can run for the White House. “If it was Barry Obama i’d be okay, and if it was Barack Smith, i’d be fine,’’ he says. “But Barack Obama? That’s a killer.’’ He seldom mentions that he has an even “deadlier’’ middle name, Hussein, which he gets from his Kenyan Muslim father. It’s also the other half of Saddam’s name, and if you add that to the Osama-sounding Obama, you have two of America’s sworn enemies rolled into one name. Yet, here is Barack Hussein Obama, on the threshold of US presidency, just one step away from the White House. Obama thinks only in America could something like this have happened. Wrong. There’s one other country where more amazing things can, and have, happened. Take a guess which one. Still, these are momentous times in America. It might not translate fully on November 4 into a “Black man goes to the White House,’’ kind of storied ending, but Barack Obama has brought colour and panache to the usually monochromatic US elections. Here’s a man who did not feel the need to change his name to “Bobby’’ or whitewash his views to wow the mainstream. He just let it all hang out — from his nomadic upbringing by a mostly single white mother married successively to coloured foreigners, to his several half-siblings of various mixed ethnicities, and nationalities, to his difficult youth on the dark side of Chicago and New York, to his date with drugs and near homelessness. Recent census projections have shown how racially mixed America is becoming. It’s heading towards 50:50 — 50 white, 50 others — and beyond. Obama is a composite who reflects that trend. He’s African-American in the true sense — as opposed to Black American — because his white mother was from Kansas and his black father was from Kenya. But he’s also African-American-Asian because he grew up in Indonesia, and in Hawaii, for all intents an Asian state. Conventional wisdom — and past surveys — shows that four in five voters of Indian origin are of Democratic persuasion. More recently, many have been moving into the Republican camp as they become wealthier. In either case, first generation Indian-Americans did not have a choice beyond a white candidate. Obama has changed that, offering a refreshing new internationalist option that may resonate more with next-gen Indian-Americans. Kamala Harris, San Francisco’s district attorney, who is of mixed Indian-American-Afro-Caribbean heritage (her mother Dr Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer specialist, is Indian, and her father Prof Donald Harris, a Stanford University economics professor, is Jamaican), is one of the many Obama-esque pols in what is now a vibrantly multi-cultural America. While some Indians derive pride and comfort from the fact that Obama is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, carries a figurine of Hanuman, can make daal, and presents himself a desi etc, it’s his political journey that is inspiring to many young Indian-Americans. Raj Goyle, a freshman Kansas legislator, talks excitedly about how he was crashing parties in the 2004 Democratic convention, much like Obama was doing in 2000, when he was so broke that he was nearly turned away by a car rental company because of unpaid balance on his credit card. The Obama breakthrough is what gives young Indian-Americans like Ashwin Madia the audacity to hope and the will to overcome. Earlier this year, Madia shocked the Minnesota political establishment by winning the Democratic Party nomination to run for Congress this November. Bobby Jindal’s win might have come on the coattails of arch conservatism, but here is a watershed moment that may well lead to many Bharat Obamas.

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