Accidental Blogger

Happy Holidays!

December 21, 2007

There will be light or no blogging for the next week to ten days. I expect that most readers as well as our bloggers, will be busy with travel and family get-togethers in the coming days. Even if there are new posts during the holidays, please expect to see more links than commentary. Hopefully, blogging will pick up again in the new year.

Until then – Season’s Greetings, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

(When you have an idle moment or two amidst festivities, please watch this dance number by Hollywood’s funniest screen villain, Christopher Walken. Link via 3 QD.)
The Gilded Apple

December 20, 2007

If you do a google search for Holiday gift giving etiquette, several advice columns pop up. Most refer to gift exchange between colleagues, boss – employee, janitorial and other service staff. None of them lays out the ground rules for gifts that students may give to their teachers.

In India as far as I know, there is no custom of students giving any significant gifts to their teachers. The school I attended had strict rules against it. We were permitted to give Christmas and New Year cards, personal art work and sometimes a book to our teachers. At the end of the year some students would bring the coming year’s calendar. Occasionally a bouquet of gladioli, roses or other seasonal flowers would appear in the class room – always from the backyard of someone’s home and never professional floral arrangements. Those offerings remained in the classroom – the flowers in vases and the calendars on the wall. The teachers never took them home. The schools on the other hand, would periodically distribute food and prizes among the student body on special occasions like annual Sports Day or Founder’s Day. When I became a teacher, the same rules applied.

When my kids began attending school in the US, I learned that it was customary, though not required, to present one’s homeroom teacher with a small gift around Christmas time, especially during the elementary school years. I consulted the parents of my children’s friends for guidelines regarding the price tag and nature of the gifts that were deemed acceptable. It wasn’t terribly difficult but it still made me a little uncomfortable to go shopping for a "teacher’s gift" which usually amounted to a cute trifle. (I later started the practice of loading up on pretty Indian handicraft items during my trips to India to give as Christmas gifts to teachers. They looked much nicer than the items I found in area discount stores). I felt a bit sorry for the teachers who would have to find a place in their homes every December for a small hill of junk given lovingly by a classroom full of eager-to-please kids and then have to write Thank You notes to each. But all said and done, it was not such a bad thing as a gesture of appreciation. So, when I read the following article in Tuesday’s Houston Chronicle about the escalating level of gift giving in area schools, it made me cringe. As expected, the affluent districts are outdoing each other in the lavishness of the gifts while teachers in inner city schools and other less prosperous districts continue to collect Christmas coffee mugs.

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Hillary’s Campaign Tactics In A Nutshell

December 19, 2007

Nick Anderson, the editorial cartoonist of the Houston Chronicle sums up nicely what I described in a recent post regarding the attack on Barack Obama by Hillary Clinton’s campaign machine.
Cleaning Quandaries (Sujatha)

December 18, 2007

(Cross posted from Fluff ‘n’ Stuff)

Of late, I have been assiduously adopting a laissez-faire attitude to the dust bunnies breeding in the corners, ceiling cobwebs, pasta sauce and chocolate stains on the floor.
What
is life, but a giant round of cleanup, followed within minutes by dirt
from the muddy outdoors, spilt milk and cookie crumbs? Cleanliness may
be next to godliness, as my mother likes to say, but it also is even
more ephemeral than a passing cloud.
The law of Housecleaning Entropy states that
"Anything that was just cleaned will get dirty in a time duration in inverse proportion to the effort required to clean it" Copyright- Sujatha 2007

(if that hasn’t yet been copyrighted, I claim first dibs on it!)

I’m sure that the law of Housecleaning Entropy will prevail, no matter how much we try to order things by tidying up. Dirt and Chaos Reign Supreme!

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Senator Bob Kerrey: Maverick or Calculating?

December 18, 2007

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is currently in the sliming mode even though her mother, daughter and other well wishers continue to appear at campaign events with stories of the soft and compassionate side of her nature. Ever since Barack Obama overtook her in the polls in Iowa and closed the gap in New Hampshire, the Clintonites have turned nasty. They have delved into Obama’s kintergarten essay to prove that he is unappetizingly ambitious, brought up the matter of his adolescent drug use to speculate that he may have also been a dealer and hubby Bill went on Charlie Rose to slyly imply that Obama is a political neophyte voting for whom will amount to rolling the dice (whereas his wife has been tried, tested and fire-proofed by the vast Republican attack machine). I expected nothing else from the well oiled Clinton machine which is given to knee-capping any one it perceives as an obstacle in its path.

I am however quite surprised that Bob Kerrey, the charismatic erstwhile governor and senator from Nebraska for whom I have voted and my kids have campaigned, said something very strange while officially endorsing Hillary Clinton in Iowa. He brought up Obama’s middle name (Hussein) and his Muslim father and grandmother. The comment, an apparent non-sequitur, seems to make little sense unless one sees it as either a genuine admiration for Obama’s unorthodox upbringing or more likely, yet another careless seeming calculated ploy to remind voters of his "questionable" background and make them nervous about his electability. A few weeks ago, Hillary had fired an Iowa campaign coordinator for making similar insinuations. Yesterday Kerrey, her high profile supporter did the same. So what’s going on?

Now president of the New School in New York City, Kerry previously served as senator and governor of Nebraska. A Navy SEAL in Vietnam, he was wounded in combat, losing the lower portion of one leg. During his years in public office, Kerrey earned a reputation as an independent operator who followed his own script.

At the podium this morning, Kerrey touted Clinton’s long years of experience in public life and asserted she would become "a strong, reliable and compassionate commander-in-chief."

After the event, he mused about her chief competitor, Sen. Barack Obama.

"The fact that he’s African American is a big deal. I do expect and hope that Hillary is the nominee of the party. But I hope he’s used in some way. If he happens to be the nominee of the party and ends up being president, I think his capacity to influence in a positive way without spending a penny the behavior of a lot of underperforming black youth today is very important, and he’s the only one who can reach them."

Kerrey continued, "It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims and I think that experience is a big deal." He added, "He’s got a whale of a lot more intellectual talent than I’ve got as well."

Earlier a beaming Hillary stood on the stage and said this about Kerrey:

"I am absolutely overwhelmed personally to have my friend of 25 years, Bob Kerrey, endorse me with such a vote of confidence,"

A friend of 25 years? Didn’t Senator Kerry say a couple of things about her husband in 1992 and 1996? Then again, given the mysterious relationship between Hill and Bill, perhaps that DOES make Kerrey her friend.
X-treme PC

December 17, 2007

Here is a Goodness Gracious Me Christmas Special illustrating among other things the dangers of cultural relativism and political correctness gone haywire. The video is quite long. Watch the whole thing or fast forward to the last clip where a woman being chased by her knife wielding husband seeks shelter. (via Sepia Mutiny)
Krauthammer Hammers It Home

December 17, 2007

I rarely find myself on the same page with Charles Krauthammer’s positions regarding politics. But his recent editorials sounding the alarm bell about an "Overdose of Public Piety" (another one here) had me nodding my head enthusiastically in agreement. In fact Krauthammer’s no-nonsense summary reflects much more closely my own stance on the distinction between public and private declarations of faith than the intellectual debate over atheism and religion that is currently unfolding within the ivory towers among intellectuals of all stripes – atheists, religionists and the rational apologists for religion.

Some relevant passages from the article (do read the whole thing):

Mitt Romney declares, "Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone." Barack Obama opens his speech at his South Carolina Oprah rally with "Giving all praise and honor to God. Look at the day that the Lord has made." Mike Huckabee explains his surge in the polls thus: "There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people."

This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it’s only going to get worse. I’d thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN–YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?" — and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.

Instead, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee bent a knee and tried appeasement with various interpretations of scriptural literalism. The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office. And while that proscribes only government action, the law is also meant to be a teacher. In the same way that civil rights laws established not just the legal but also the moral norm that one simply does not discriminate on the basis of race — changing the practice of one generation and the consciousness of the next — so the constitutional injunction against religious tests is meant to make citizens understand that such tests are profoundly un-American. …

A certain kind of liberal argues that having a religious underpinning for any public policy is disqualifying because it is an imposition of religion on others. Thus, if your opposition to embryonic stem cell research comes from a religious belief in the ensoulment of life at conception, you’re somehow violating the separation of church and state by making other people bend to your religion.

This is absurd. Abolitionism, civil rights, temperance, opposition to the death penalty — a host of policies, even political movements, have been rooted for many people in religious teaching or interpretation. It’s ridiculous to say that therefore abolitionism, civil rights, etc., constitute an imposition of religion on others.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with having a spirited debate on the place of religion in politics. But the candidates are confusing two arguments. The first, which conservatives are winning, is defending the legitimacy of religion in the public square. The second, which conservatives are bound to lose, is proclaiming the privileged status of religion in political life.

But a certain kind of conservative is not content to argue that a religious underpinning for a policy is not disqualifying. He insists that it is uniquely qualifying, indeed, that it confers some special status. (emphasis mine)

Krauthammer’s article takes a common sense position regarding religion and public life to which most reasonable religious and non-religious citizens can relate. Most of us do not care where others sense of morality and ethics come from as long as we can agree on a shared view for our society. The problem always lies in chauvinism, persecution and display of exclusionary and intrusive moral superiority. While there are unaccommodating chauvinists on both sides of the religious divide, it is foolish to argue that an even playing field currently exists regarding their numbers or spheres of influence. As society stands today in most parts of the world, the danger of religious high handedness in the civic and personal lives of others is far more significant than the much feared "science driven, cold hearted rational amorality" of the non-believers which many argue will inevitably lead to nihilistic warfare and death of all art, music and finer things of life (gasp!). Just as for most god fearing people going about their lives, the musings of Thomas Aquinas, the Sufis and the Vedic philosophers are of little consequence, similarly all atheists and agnostics are not breathlessly hanging on to every pearl of wisdom that Richard Dawkins lets fall from time to time. Tearing hairs over the minutiae of theological debates between The God Delusion or Godless Delusion are of interest only to a very few among the smart set. Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens will become politically relevant only when our politicians take their views seriously in formulating policy. Until then we have to watch out for the holy rollers in elected office with power to legislate and discriminate. And lest anyone thinks that I only bellyache about superstitions and aggression of main stream religions, please be assured that I also strictly adhere to the principle of the Separation of State and Witchcraft. (the relevant passages on page 3 of the article)
The Podium As A Pulpit

December 13, 2007

Many religious people make the mistake of conflating morality with religion when in reality the two are separate things. While religion needs morality as a selling point for its propagation and raison d’être, the converse is not true. (Think Mother Teresa and her tortured life and death) The current crop of holy rollers running for president on the GOP ticket either do not understand the distinction or they cynically exploit the confused prejudices of their devout electorate. Either way, the discourse on the campaign trail has been vitiated by divisive religious pandering and posturing. Candidates must now publicly defend and explain what should be their privately held beliefs. A wholly gratuitous and cloying religious test. See this Newsweek article which rightly describes it as a "holy war" where there seems to be no place for conscientious and morally upright non-believers. But Huckabee and Mitt Romney are hardly the first politicians to espouse this exclusionary and un-constitutional view.

For example, here is what senior Bush said during his 1988 presidential campaign.

Sherman: What will you do to win the votes of the Americans who are atheists?

Bush: I guess I’m pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me.

Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?

Bush: No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Sherman: Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?

Bush: Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I’m just not very high on atheists.

Romney had to come all the way to Texas to deliver his "faith" speech. Not a bad choice. While the US Constitution prohibits a "religious test" as a requirement for public office, the Texas Constitution adds:
"nor shall anyone be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledges the existence of a Supreme Being."

But Texas too has its share of non-believers and those who believe in a strict separation of church and state. 3 out of the 4 letters to the editor that appeared in the Houston Chronicle after Romney’s speech were critical of elected officials dragging their personal faith into politics. (The fourth letter was from a local Methodist minister. It too was critical of Romney but for different reasons. The minister didn’t trust the Mormon faith!) I am copying the letters from the three Texas citizens who see danger in mixing religion and public policy.

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Attack Ad

December 13, 2007

Very funny ! (via Crooked Timber)
When They Speak ….

December 13, 2007

1. When Bill Clinton speaks smarmily about his wife, it probably means Hillary’s campaign is floundering:

"Mr. Clinton said that, early on in their relationship, he told Hillary that she should “dump” him and take a job at a big law firm and run for public office, because those were perches more often held by change-makers.

“And she laughed at me and said, first ‘I love you, and second, I’m never going to run for anything because I’m too hard-headed,’” Mr. Clinton said.

2. When a good friend praises Bill Clinton’s prowess at a campaign rally for Hillary, it is bad news for Hillary:

"Bill is every bit as black as Barack," he said. "He has probably gone out with more black women than Barack."

3. When Gennifer Flowers considers voting for Hillary and says so publicly, it is worse news for Hillary (will she get Monica Lewinsky’s endorsement too?).

The one-time other woman in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s life says she’s considering casting her vote for the former first lady. "I can’t help but want to support my own gender, and she’s as experienced as any of the others except maybe Joe Biden,"

4. Even when the polls say that he helps her candidacy, Bill Clinton himself may be the worst news for Hillary.

5. When Mike Huckabee says he is the Christian candidate, what he means is that Mitt Romney is not.

6. When Mitt Romney says that he loves Jesus Christ, it means that he doesn’t want to talk about Mormonism. Also, when he says that there should be a separation of church and state and then hastily takes cover behind the words of John Adams, the message to the non-religious is: "You are screwed."

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

7.When Muslim converts to Christianity in Britain (or elsewhere) are harangued, abused and threatened with death and a Muslim spokesperson says the following, does it mean that the behavior is only "disgraceful" if it happens in Britain but not elsewhere?

Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), says that it is "absolutely disgraceful behaviour… In Britain, no Muslim has the right to harm one hair of someone who decides to leave Islam."

8. Whenever an ex-CIA agent opens his or her mouth, it is bad news for Bush-Cheney and when Bush says that he doesn’t know the details of what is being alleged, it means that Cheney gave the orders.

9. When Rudy Giuliani defiantly claims that in his administration, a presidential mistress will get Secret Service protection if it was deemed necessary, he means that his 9/11 goose will be cooked if the story about the mayoral mistress plays out for a while longer in the media.

10. When public figures speak to deceive, they pretend that the relationship with their audience is based on one long, unbroken continuum of trust.
Genetics: A Cutting Edge Scientific Tool (Or Wield The Tar Brush With Care)

December 9, 2007

The world of biology is throbbing with the excitement of ever new genetic discoveries – it is fast becoming a DNA driven world. Fine with me as long as we accept the findings as physiological facts and don’t make wild leaps of socio- anthropological faith from there. We cannot be sure which way the sharp tool of DNA science will cut and smugness may be one trait that it shreds.

Three A.B. bloggers have recently addressed the "slippery slope" of genetics, IQ and race (here, here and here). So I didn’t expect to write on this issue again, at least not so soon. But this article in Times Online is hard to ignore.

JAMES WATSON, the DNA pioneer who claimed Africans are less intelligent than whites, has been found to have 16 times more genes of black origin than the average white European.

An analysis of his genome shows that 16% of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than 1%.

The study was made possible when he allowed his genome – the map of all his genes – to be published on the internet in the interests of science….

“This level is what you would expect in someone who had a great-grandparent who was African,” said Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics, whose company carried out the analysis. “It was very surprising to get this result for Jim.”

This weekend his critics savoured the wry twist of fate. Sir John Sulston, the Nobel laureate who helped lead the consortium that decoded the human genome, said the discovery was ironic in view of Watson’s opinions on race. “I never did agree with Watson’s remarks,” he said. “We do not understand enough about intelligence to generalise about race.”

Charles Murray, Jon Entine, William Saletan, please take note.

I lean to the left in most matters political and social. But I am definitely not a liberal creationist. There are many pills I can chew, swallow and digest, however bitter. But I believe that some pills, bitter or sweet, are unnecessary for the overall good health of our world and need not be sold carelessly over the counter for feel good anthropological studies, however objective one thinks the outcomes are.

Something that people often forget when they bash liberal social egalitarianism is the fact that the most significant interference with our "innate" abilities has come in the field of medicine, not the social/ cultural realm. We serenely take for granted (no, demand) in vivo/in vitro/pre-natal/ post natal tinkering to correct defects and enable life. Organ transplants, hip replacements, plastic surgery, designer target drugs and yes, the biggest daddies of all, antibiotics and childhood vaccinations, comprise the smorgasbord of medical advances that we have routine access to. We rarely question their benefits or grouse about "health engineering." How many of the so called "superior" humans with higher worth (IQ?) to society may have become toast early or later in life if such heroic measures were not available to buck mother nature in matters of life and death?

Yet as soon as anyone tries to raise the bar for similar intervention on behalf of a "backward" individual or group to give them a leg up for survival in the educational and economic world, howls of protest erupt from many quarters with accusations of "unnatural" meddlesome do-goodery flying left and right.

That as a scientist, Watson could not fathom that simple (and dangerous) fact about "sweeping generalizations" is the cause of his deserved downfall. What he smugly said about Africa and his black employees left no doubt about his ignorance.

There are many areas of genetics which indeed are group related. I think it is better to leave those studies to the "good" uses such as calculating the risk of heritable disease rather than trying to predict "desirable" qualities. (Why not look for compassion and common sense too while we are at it?) The pernicious effects of the latter, even when it reveals "objective truths", are so scary (think caste system, eugenics, Dr. Mengele, apartheid) that it is best to not make too much of it. Especially when we ostensibly strive to become a fair society and because such studies can be very unfair to "individuals" within a "group." If we don’t agree, then let’s measure away …. head sizes, IQ, finger lengths, ability to survive in the desert without water, stamina for long distance running and any other quality we think warrants measuring. Extrapolate from there to determine which tasks and duties we want each group to fulfill for the best division of labor and the most efficient society. The Brahminical caste system had its roots exactly in such value assignments to human life. Nothing wrong with it – if we can live with it.
A Reign of Witches Ended (Sujatha)

December 7, 2007

A School District Saga ( Concluded for now)

A little
patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore
their government to it’s true principles.
–Thomas Jefferson

Following Ruchira’s post where she discusses the removal/forced resignation of the Texas Education Agency’s science director Chris Comer, I thought this might be a good time to provide an update on the school district shenanigans in my corner of the woods. I had already indicated that positive changes were afoot, with the restoration of the removed International Baccalaureate program by an embattled board of directors, followed by a contentious primary battle for seats in the board of school directors. At stake were five openings, which would tip the majority from its infamously theocratic and xenophobic "Gang of Five" to a more moderate group concerned with bettering the schools without deviating hugely from fiscal conservatism.

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Barbara Forrest Addresses The Texas Education Agency

December 6, 2007

Barbara Forrest has issued a public statement regarding the firing of Chris Comer, the director of Science Education for the Texas Education Agency. Her full statement published by the National Center for Science Euducation can be seen here. I am copying the first few paragraphs from there which address the TEA’s motivation and stand regarding the theory of evolution and religion.

In forcing Chris Comer to resign as Texas Director of Science, the Texas Education Agency has confirmed in a most public, unfortunate way the central point of my Austin presentation, "Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse," the mere announcement of which TEA used as an excuse to terminate her: the intelligent design (ID) creationist movement is about politics, religion, and power. If anyone had any doubts about how mean-spirited ID politics is, this episode should erase them. Texas school children depend on the adults at the TEA to protect the quality of their education. For the last nine years at the TEA, after twenty-seven years as a science teacher, Ms. Comer was doing her part, and she got fired for doing it. The children are ultimately the losers.

The fact that this current episode has happened in Texas is not at all surprising given Texas Board of Education chair and ID supporter Dr. Don McLeroy’s statements in a 2005 pro-ID lecture at Grace Bible Church:

Creationists have been making these design arguments, but the birth of the intelligent design movement probably did start at SMU [Southern Methodist University, site of the ID movement’s first conference], [in] 1992. It was here that [Phillip Johnson] and Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and William Dembski, debated with . . . influential Darwinists the proposition that neo-Darwinism [depends] on a prior commitment to naturalism. Johnson . . . states, ‘Once it becomes clear that Darwinism rests on a dogmatic philosophy rather than on the weight of the evidence, the way will be opened for dissenting opinions [i.e., intelligent design creationism] to get a fair hearing.’ They hadn’t got there yet. We don’t have a fair hearing yet. But, we gotta keep working on it. This is not something that happens overnight. (The transcript and the audio recording of McLeroy’s speech are available here: http://www.tfn.org/publiceducation/textbooks/mcleroy/index.php)

With Ms. Comer’s termination, the process of gaining that hearing appears to have advanced quite a bit.
The Lone Star Lunatics

December 5, 2007

The devout hang ’em high legislators of Texas have for long conducted a protracted battle with those who want to maintain a sense of balance, fairness and rationality in school curricula. They want to inject religion into schools every opportunity they see. The recent passing of Texas House Bill 3678 has fulfilled some of their fondest dreams. The Bill has been disingenuously touted as an Anti Discrimination Bill by Governor Rick Perry. Not everyone in Texas agrees.

Although the above bill has paved the way for allowing student led religious activities such as prayers at football games and graduation ceremonies, it does not address one of the most cherished dreams of Texas right wingers – the introduction of Creationism in science classes as a valid alternative to the Theory of Evolution. The fundamentalists in the state legislature and the state department of education would not only like to see Creationism taught to school children, some would like to forbid the discussion of evolution. Unsuccessful so far, the last attempt was to scare Christians by claiming that the theory of evolution is a Jewish conspiracy. But they haven’t given up. What the obscurantists cannot back up with facts, they wish to accomplish by intimidation. Texas Education Agency’s science director, Chris Comer resigned (was forced to resign?) after she was suspended for forwarding an email announcing an upcoming talk by philosopher Barbara Forrest who is a tireless opponent of Intelligent Design and the author of Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse. See Barbara Forrest’s profile here and the devious circumstances under which Comer was made to resign, here. Trojan Horse indeed!

I got in touch with Professor Forrest last night and asked her to elucidate further on the shameful Texas case. She wrote:

"I was wondering if you had been keeping up with this issue. Isn’t this something? I don’t have any inside knowledge. I know what I am reading in the paper. I did call Ms. Comer to tell her how sorry I am that this happened to her. She was very nice and glad that I called her. I will be releasing a statement, hopefully tomorrow. If you will e-mail me in a couple of days, I may have a place to which you can link to the statement."

We will wait to hear what Professor Forrest says in her statement. Meanwhile, most major national and Texas papers see the treatment of Ms Comer as a travesty. Opinions and editorials are running in her favor and against the high handedness of the religious right in the Texas Department of Education. An interesting commentary in today’s Houston Chronicle explains that to understand why there is a gentlemen’s agreement among Americans about the separation of Church and State, one needs to look at history. No, it was not intended to protect Christians from Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and the ACLU. I am copying the whole article here because Chronicle links have a habit of disappearing.

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Ethnic, Exotic : For And According To Whom?

December 4, 2007

I had a similar debate at another blog many months ago but was reminded of it recently after a casual encounter. Earlier last month, during Diwali I met an Indian American man I know slightly who was on his way to a festive party to celebrate the occasion. He was dressed in a very elegant silk kurta. I complimented him on the same and he said somewhat irrelevantly, "The email invitation asked guests to dress in ethnic clothes, so here I am." Now, I wasn’t invited to the same party so I hadn’t seen the language in the invitation. I don’t know if the e-mail said, "Indian dress or Ethnic dress required." But I was struck by the use of the word "ethnic" by an adult Indian born American to describe the kurta. For me and according to the dictionary, the word "ethnic" bears a connotation of "minority" culture outside the mainstream. I wear saris to most formal and semi-formal occasions both when I am in India as well as in the US. To me the sari is not an "ethnic" dress although to non-Indian observers, it may be – like a fancy costume. I was therefore a bit surprised by the choice of the adjective by a man who grew up in India where men of all classes (and from many regions) sport the kurta. Or was he just pointing to its uniqueness in the sartorial culture of mainstream America?

This brings me to another observation – the use of the words ethnic and exotic in India to characterize Indian traditional clothing, art, craft and beauty. Urban Indian men and women wear both Indian and western clothing without self-consciousness. While the majority of the men dress in shirts, jackets and trousers in the workplace, professional Indian women are more likely to be seen in traditional Indian clothing than in western garb. There are indeed modes of dresses within India which are ethnic in the Indian context – peculiar to a certain region or religion. When I lived in India, I had never heard the word "ethnic" to describe most traditional Indian clothing, handicrafts or jewelery. But in the last few years during my visits to India, I have occasionally seen it being used in shop signs and heard it in conversations to include plain old saris, shalwar kameez and kurta – pajamas. These all happen to be mainstream garments in India. When did these styles become ethnic ? Or are people using it like the word desi which incidentally means national or local.

I was too polite to point this out but the use of the word ethnic to describe home grown stuff made in India was rather bemusing. Perhaps the usage is not so different from the time in my youth when the same wrong headed choice of vocabulary was reflected in describing dark skinned women who comprise the overwhelming majority of Indian women. I don’t know how it is now, but twenty five years ago, popular film and fashion magazines could not bring themselves to describe a drop dead gorgeous but dark complected Indian woman simply as beautiful. The adjectives of choice were dusky, sultry and most gallingly, exotic. How’s that for a colonial hangover? But ethnic is new for me. Exotic, ethnic – for whom and where?

I understand that in certain circumstances words and expressions can be appropriated by a group to mean whatever it wishes them to mean. (I am of an age that I remember the time when "gay" meant plain "happy") Usually the underlying motive is to take control of how one wants something personal to be defined rather than let others do it. Sometimes the purpose is to take the sting out of an outsider’s derogatory epithet by making it one’s own; such as the appropriation of the n-word by African American rappers and "queer" by gay rights activists. Sometimes however, inappropriate use of language enters common parlance out of sloppiness – probably because the word sounds "smart" or because one is too lazy to look it up in the dictionary.

Note to readers and co-bloggers: Although all references here are to India and things Indian, this is not a desi or ethnic post. It is about language. There is no doubt in my mind that the word "ethnic" is clearly wrong when applied to Indian clothing in India. But was my acquaintance in Houston too somewhat mistaken in referring to the kurta as ethnic in a conversation with me? Please don’t hesitate to jump in with your informed opinions.

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