Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today

by Vijay Prashad

Within hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center, misdirected assaults on Sikhs and other South Asians flared on streets across the nation, serving as harbingers of a more suspicious, less discerning, and increasingly fearful world view that would drastically change ideas of belonging and acceptance in America.

Weaving together distinct strands of recent South Asian immigration to the United States, Uncle Swami creates a richly textured analysis of the systems and sentiments behind shifting notions of cultural identity in a post 9/11 world. Vijay Prashad continues the conversation sparked by his celebrated work The Karma of Brown Folk and confronts the experience of migration across an expanse of generations and class divisions, from the birth of political activism among second generation immigrants to the meteoric rise of South Asian American politicians in Republican circles to the migrant workers who suffer in the name of American capitalism.

A powerful new indictment of American imperialism at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Uncle Swami restores a diasporic community to its full-fledged complexity, beyond model minorities and the specters of terrorism.

Genres: Nonfiction, India, Politics, Theory, American, Asian American, Essays

208 pages, Hardcover

First published April 23, 2013

About the author

Vijay Prashad is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. His most recent book is Red Star Over the Third World. He writes regularly for Frontline, The Hindu, Alternet and BirGun.

Reviews

[Nini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s the thing- I agree with Vijay Prashad on just about everything. His ideas and his analyses are obviously well researched and wonderfully progressive. As a progressive, justice-seeker, his leftist views are incredibly informative and valuable.

But, as an author, god this book was so poorly written. It lacked focus, a narrative arc, and a firm takeaway. The book was steeped in such specific visages from history, to the point of detail that felt unnecessary to the average reader. It was confusing to follow, the chronology of events was convoluted (as with The Karma of Brown Folk) and it was generally all over the place.

Overall, this gets three stars for simply having the opinions and ideas that I agree with and intellectually further me. But god, he has to become a better author.

[Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading Prashad’s enigmatic writing is always a treat, no doubt about that. But I have to admit that Uncle Swami left me uncharacteristically disappointed. It’s like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to write a memoir, financial analysis, history of the disenfranchisement of Black Americans, or an account of right-wing Hindu fascism. The only chapter where he actually head-on addressed the state of South Asian American life was in chapter 5, and even then it’s exclusively through a political lens. The best chapter of this book was by far the last one, and it didn’t mention America at all, which was supposedly the whole point of this book! Unfortunately, I can’t rate this one very high. Go seek out his other works (Red Star Over the Third World is a personal favorite).

2 ⭐️'s.

[Navneeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled to find what the theme and arc of this composition. There is a lot of overlap with his other works, and hops around history, geography and context shifting all the way through.

Don’t get me wrong... I think the author is intelligent and has his pulse on the maladies of the mankind. He lashes out rightly against the hypocrisy of the Hindus in the US, and the danger of the right.. here as well as back in India.

Clearly driven by his liberal thoughts, he is one who demands radical change rather than incremental progress within the system.

I would recommend Doug Rushkoff for a more well planned book

[Kabir Motwani · Rating 4 out of 5]

What would you do if you and other people of your ethnicity were victims of prejudice? Uncle Swami by Vijay Prashad provides an in-depth discussion about South Asians and Middle Eastern people in America and the racism and prejudice they endured following the September 11th attacks. Throughout the book, Prashad brings up points about racial politics and their effect on the United States, as well as how the terrorist attacks changed the way South Asians and Middle Eastern people were perceived in the country. Uncle Swami discusses a series of themes that are frequently overlooked, but still affect us more than a decade after 9/11.

Hours after the Twin Towers were destroyed by hijackers, South Asians and Middle Eastern people were beaten, murdered, and questioned because of their resemblance to Islamic terrorists. Men with turbans were run over with cars and physically abused by people of other races. These violent actions proved that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon would ignite racial paranoia across the nation. Vijay Prashad recalls a time eleven days before 9/11, when he was on a train headed to Grand Central Terminal, and a troop of policemen asked him and a few others to go with them onto the train platform. They would be questioned for a few minutes. Every person who was questioned was from the Middle East or had a similar skin tone. With this allusion, Prashad puts the reader in the mind of a perceived terrorist, exposing the fear that they had following the attacks. Prashad also mentions quotes said by “patriots” of other races to anybody who looked like a terrorist. “You Islamic mosquitoes should be killed.” “I hate you. I hate you and your turban.”The anger towards Muslims had turned into a hatred for their people.

Before 9/11, Muslims were usually viewed as regular minorities, despite events such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. the year Ramzi Yousef planted a truck bomb under one of the Twin Towers. In America, this sparked a very slight wave of fear. From 1993 to 1998, the percentage of assaults on Asian Americans went from about 4.5% to close to 32%. When the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing happened, news reporters made statements like “The betting here is on Middle East terrorists.” This showed that incidents that resulted in many deaths were expected to be perpetrated by Middle Eastern people and South Asians. Whenever a mass murder occurred after 1993, Muslims were usually the first to be suspected, but 9/11 changed everything, not just for South Asians and Middle Eastern people, but also for pilots, flight attendants, and many others. Prashad includes these facts and statistics because they gave an example of how much racism has spread to the brown-skinned after 1993, and how 9/11 made it worse for everybody.

While Prashad doesn’t have a clear message in the book, I believe he is trying to say “don’t judge a book by its cover”, even though he is more informative than intellectual. I also think that he is trying to put a reader in the mind of a perceived terrorist, so they can understand the fear that was washed upon everyone after September 11th. This book is important because it can inform anyone too young to experience 9/11 and all of the prejudice that came immediately after. Prashad uses precise imagery and flashbacks to pull the reader in and explain to them these events.

Overall, the September 11th attacks sparked a huge wave of racism and prejudice that is still evident in the country today, thirteen years after 9/11. Now that Uncle Swami has detailed a post-9/11 America, we can attempt to understand what it was like to be a perceived terrorist directly after the attacks. While I don’t believe Prashad’s intent was to persuade white supremacists and casual racists into feeling positively about South Asians and Middle Eastern people, I do think he was attempting to expose an unfortunate truth about how nineteen hijackers changed the lives of brown-skinned people, and everybody else in the country.

[BubbyY · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wasn't an easy read, but t'was a worthy read. I especially appreciated the explicit acknowledgement of how post-1964 immigrants benefited from the civil rights efforts of PoCs already in the US.

I picked this book up for Asian and American Pacific Islander Heritage month, and I was curious about evolution of the experience of Asian American groups in the US. I realize that's quite a broad umbrella--and the author acknowledges that as well. This book does focus on those who emigrated from India.

The beginning is more accessible. By the end I felt like was wading in the deep end--I don't have enough historical context to easily track all of the groups Prashad was mentioning by the end--but I learned throughout, every section was important enough to me. While it didn't improve my sense of geography, and I'd struggle to list most of the political and professional/social groups he mentioned; I feel much more aware of how and why they developed: What motivated people to create different groups. How US interests in India evolved and vice versa. He illuminated some of the incredible complexity in the evolving relationship between community, culture, politics, economics and religion that's part of "being Asian American" (my poor words).

Ultimately, the author poses a really powerful question. Not sure what my response would be, but I was happy to pause and consider it while taking in his perspective. I feel a little less ignorant now. :)

[Ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vijay Prashad presents a secular approach to what it means to be South Asian in the United States. He starts with a brief history of South Asian immigration. I was surprised to learn that, between 1917 and 1943, South Asian immigration to the US was virtually banned. The growth of the South Asian community in the US only really began in earnest in 1965 following a change in US immigration law. This was motivated by the US's worry that they were falling behind in the space race with the USSR. So they decided to import highly qualified Indians to fill the gap.

Next, Prashad discusses how Indian immigrants to the US benefited tremendously from multiple political and social movements. They enjoyed the benefits of an independent India that their parents fought for, which allowed them to pursue higher education in India. Once they got to America, they once again reaped the benefits of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that African Americans fought for in the US. Most Indian American immigrants did not have to participate in either of those struggles. Prashad argues that this lack of participation in a major sociopolitical movement lulled the newly minted Indian American community into a state of complacency and ease - which left them completely unprepared for the racist aftermath of 9/11.

From here, the book took a bit of an uncomfortable turn, as Prashad heavily criticized the US's imperialist approach to non-white citizens. Prashad argues that, in the 1960s, US immigration officials recognized the opportunity to basically curate and hand-craft a "model minority" - the newly arriving Indians. US immigration policy intentionally made it much easier for doctors and individuals with advanced degrees to immigrate to the US, recognizing that these people would integrate more successfully with American society. The US then used, and continues to use, the highly successful Indian community as an example of a model minority that can integrate with white culture. As in, "look at this group of minorities who don't complain about their lot in life. Why can't the African American community behave more like them?". It became a great way for the US to ignore history, and instead blame African Americans for problems they did not create. For Indians, it was great - everyone assumed they were model citizens, and everything was dandy.

This all went out the window after September 11, 2001.

Overnight - anyone with brown skin was now a terrorist. Prashad discusses a hate crime that took place minutes from where I grew up. In Mesa, Arizona, a Sikh man was shot dead in his gas station on September 12, 2001. The man responsible later told police, "I stand for America all the way," as justification for murder. I distinctly remember this event, against the backdrop of the sheer terror following 9/11. It was my first experience with blatant, harsh, and unrepentant racism. It would not be my last.

Many hate crimes were committed in the aftermath of 9/11. As a result, "Those of us who look like terrorists felt that we would perhaps never be able to shake the occasional suspicious glances and hostile remarks." The Hindu community in the US, fearing for their lives, would proudly fly as many American flags as possible, in an attempt to reassure their neighbors that "We are not Muslim. We are American." Prashad states, "As the 'Muslim' increasingly bears the mark of Cain, it opens up immense opportunities for middle-class people of color to demonstrate their patriotism in anti-Islamic terms." In other words, anti-Muslim rhetoric, which is already well-established in the frightening Hindu nationalist movements in India, found a mainstream outlet in the Indian community in America. Talking shit about Muslims is now a sign that you are a "true American".

To finish the book, Prashad fortunately offers us hope. He argues that we need to reject religious fanaticism and chauvinism, and embrace the simple notion of equality. Of ensuring everyone has enough to eat. Of treating your neighbors, whether they live in a house or on the street, whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or atheist, equally. "The choice lies between giving over the traditions you love to the forces of hatred who might masquerade as the defenders of tradition (in religious terms) or as the promoters of progress (in economic terms), or to the force within you, and around you - a force of love and ecstasy, passion and pain - to transform the world. What would you have?"

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Quotes:

P. 27: "After 9/11, many Muslims in the United States took refuge in their communities and in Islam. What others saw as fearful was to Muslims the heart of a heartless world, a refuge from their neighbors' hatred, so powerful that it mixed class fear with existential fears and, of all else, fears of devil incarnate, walking the streets of cities they dare not enter."

P. 29: "Those of us who look like terrorists felt that we would perhaps never be able to shake the occasional suspicious glances and hostile remarks."

P. 98: "As the 'Muslim' increasingly bears the mark of Cain, it opens up immense opportunities for middle-class people of color to demonstrate their patriotism in anti-Islamic terms."

P. 179: Gandhi, "The test of orderliness in a country is not the number of millionaires it owns, but the absence of starvation among it masses."

P 180: Kabir,
Aasha jive jag marey
Log marey mar jayee
Soyee subedhan sanchte
So ubrey jey khayee

Hope lives in a vanishing world
People die and die once more.
Cease to hoard wealth.
Gain your liberation by giving.

P 182: "A roadblock right before us is the belief that religious chauvinism is a reasonable substitute for a good meal. It must be rejected."

P 183: "The choice lies between giving over the traditions you love to the forces of hatred who might masquerade as the defenders of tradition (in religious terms) or as the promoters of progress (in economic terms), or to the force within you, and around you - a force of love and ecstasy, passion and pain - to transform the world. What would you have?"

[Vandana]

Didn’t finish this one. I think I needed something with a bit more narrative.

[Girnar Anand · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the content was incredibly insightful, the writing was so over-the-place that I wanted to give up on it a couple of times.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a historical account of south Asians who migrated to USA from early 1900s the the most recent. The language is some what complex prose with multiple ideas on the same sentence and extensive use of jargon or words that I could not readily relate to. I may have to re-read this book later to get a clearer understanding.

[Usha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vijay Prashad brings out what it felt to be a south Asian, or a Muslim during the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy in the US in a very detailed manner. The prejudice and backlash was faced by anyone with brown color, or of the middle eastern community. Although the backlash was mainly against the Muslims or middle eastern community, not that it was right in any way, there was no way of distinguishing between the south Asians due to the brown color of the skin or similarities in features. Hindu women could be distinguished due to their dots on the forehead, but men not so. In our home town, very close to home, a Sikh man wearing a turban was shot in broad daylight being mistaken for a Muslim.
I ran a small tutoring business in a strip mall around this time. Not a day went by that I was not fearing for my life and that of the students that a madman might walk in and start shooting. I felt insecure to stay by myself at the center due to fear that I could be targeted for my ethnicity. Some of those feelings have resurfaced during the last few months since prior and after the election. Only this last fall, an eighty-four-year-old person of Indian origin was stabbed to death outside a fitness center in a busy intersection in broad daylight and the culprit has not been identified yet.
Vijay Prashad has specialized in south Asian history and chronicles well the history of south Asian migration since the 1900's.
The identical comparison to the history of Israel and India is remarkable. How the Indian-American Community identifies with the Isreali-American communities in the US and that both are considered model communities are even more interesting.

[Seema · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like and largely agree with his overall view of the world but the writing was way too dense and meandering.

[Scot · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a worthwhile read. It's well written and goes quickly, presenting a lot of information in relatively few pages. Interesting information about the South Asian American right, and some good background on South Asian American immigration history that helps to explain some of the community demographics and political trends. I recommend it, especially because it genuinely is a book that even a slow reader like me can consume in one, albeit longish, sitting.

[Leigh Patel · Rating 4 out of 5]

My academic crush on Vijay Prashad only deepened with this book. It is a quick read and highly accessible, situating South Asian diaspora in the context of global imperialism and capitalism. For those of us interested in coalition building and seeing our culture reflected in discussions about the construction of race and division, this one is a must-read. d

[Amber Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting and knowledge stimulating book that I had to read for one of my modules. I felt that although there is plenty of substantial information in this book regarding the South Asian Indians and the white Americans, one must practice scepticism when reading and absorbing the information in the book.

[Sonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Prashad speaks to my soul and validates my worldview. I love how he chronicles my history as a second generation South Asian American into a social/political/economic context. Must, Must read!!

[ashwini · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little scattered, but you still get the excellent analysis that Vijay Prashad is famous for.

[Indigo Crayon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 or 4ish. Good book, definitely glad I read it. I feel he can be a bit scattered in his writing here, but there's still good information and his writing is easy to read.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellently researched and written book about Indian Americans in the US. A mix of history, politics, and attempts at sociology so occasionally hard to know what were his main points. However, great snippets of detail, particularly on the meteoric rise of several Gujaratis in American politics and the escalation of the right-wing Hindu agenda through the infiltration of Hindu temples by select organizations. Identity politics is confusing at best and woefully misleading at worst.