Bobby Jindal impact on South Asian Americans.

[Brittain33]

I know it was a bit baffling at first considering the amount of prominent Indian Republicans. Bobby Jindal, Ramesh Ponnuru, Dinesh D'Souza.

Interesting that all three of them are Christians, which makes them unrepresentative of the South Asian community in the U.S.

[Brittain33]

Absolutely right. Indians are pretty anti-war but because a lot of them tend to have money, they are also pretty conservative on economic issues. I think if the war was not going on and Jindal was selected on the ticket, the republicans could get upto 2/3 of the Indian vote. That will not happen this year though.

Sounds a lot like the Jewish community. I have no idea how South Asians in N.J. vote, it would be interesting to see how the elected officals break down by party, in my memory most of the Indian-Americans I can think of are Democratic but data this is not.

[Brittain33]

It seems like a sort of neutral religion. A Muslim would probably lose Hindu votes and vice-versa, but a Christian can transcend the conflict more easily.

Christian proselytizing in India is very controversial, in particular because they target the dalits and scheduled castes who have an unfavorable position in Hindu society. Some states have banned or persecuted Christian missionaries and churches have been burned.

I do not know how this issue plays among Indian-Americans, but at least in India Hindus have created a strong religious identity and act in its defense as much as people of other faiths do. There's a dynamic among immigrant communities of certain people "selling out," in the Jewish community it was people anglicizing their names and putting up Christmas trees and Christmas lights*, and it causes a lot of tension.

This is a long way of saying that I think converting to Christianity AND changing your name from Piyush to Bobby is not going to play well among Indian-Americans.

*I recognize that Christmas is not an exclusively Christian holiday and many non-Christians celebrate it, however, to many Jews it is a sensitive issue when other Jews do it. This is not the place for that debate.