Indian (American) identity
I am a Hindu Indian American, with a common Muslim first name and a common Muslim last name. Also, I grew up in the rural Rustbelt. Suffice to say, I have a lot to unpack.
Money Talks: The special interests of Shalabh Kumar, Trump’s favourite Indian American
In this piece for The Caravan, I investigate Shalabh Kumar’s extensive history of political contributions (both financial and in-kind) to the Republican Party and BJP.
Kumar is a fascinating figure, in many ways larger than life. A 10k-word piece could have easily been written just on his eccentricities. Kumar’s has been involved with so many different developments in the last ten years, that the intrigue of the piece alone excited me. Still, I’m glad I could use Kumar to talk about a lot of issues bigger than the man himself: the trade war, botched immigration policy, campaign finance deregulation, the thick web of connections tying conservative NRIs to BJP politics, and the stunning flouting of ethics guidelines that characterizes the DC “swamp.”
Race to the Top: The racial opportunism of a rising political star in Trump’s America
In this piece for The Caravan, I investigate Nikki Haley’s strategic use of ethnic identity to become a major figure in the Republican Party. I also situate her rise to power within the broader context of US racial politics.
Nikki Haley had long been a subject of great interest to me due to certain parallels: she and I both spent formative years of our adolescence in rural, conservative towns to first-generation immigrants. Moreover, her meteoric rise to power remains truly remarkable. She is the first woman of color to become governor (a distinction she shares with Susana Martinez, who also became governor in 2011). I found myself questioning how she has managed to succeed in such political tumult. This piece was born from that curiosity.
Making Fun of How South Asians Talk: A History
In this piece for The Atlantic, I talk about the history of the infamous “Apu accent.” While few South Asians enjoy hearing white people use the accent, there’s greater diversity in attitudes towards it than one might suspect.
The piece was unsurprisingly inspired by Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The Problem with Apu. I’ve been a big fan of Kondabolu’s comedy for years, and his own discomfort with the accent has been a lightning rod. I wanted to add a slightly more academic flair to his work, but I also wanted to push it a bit to explore nuances of attitudes within the Indian American community.
The Dark Side of the Comics that Redefined Hinduism
In this piece for The Atlantic, I talk about the casteism, racism, and sexism implicit in the storylines and illustrations of beloved comic book series Amar Chitra Katha.
Full disclosure: As a child, I loved Amar Chitra Katha and its siblings: Panchatantra, Jataka Tales, Akbar & Birbal, Vikram & Betal, the list goes on. I did not want to bash fans of the comics, or even to say that the Thing was Bad. ACK has a complex legacy, and I wanted to draw attention to some of its more toxic messages. Because these comics sit so closely to many Indians’ hearts, this piece received the strongest backlash of any piece that I’ve written. In many ways, I wrote this piece for the fans who have grown up. We aren’t children anymore, and we get to decide how to tell the stories we love to our own children and grandchildren.