by Shakti Bhatt
Last week Payal Loungani of Massachusetts wrote something that stirred the online community of Sawnet (South Asian Women's Network). "[President George] Bush is right," she said in the daily mail that reaches the inboxes of more than 700 women around the country and elsewhere. "Wait longer for what? So Saddam Hussein is more prepared to unleash his terror and instill fear on all of us while continuing to inflict misery on the Iraqi people."
By next week Loungani message, anomalous to the stoutly anti-war group, had invited dozens of mail that offered often long, sometimes reprimanding and almost always patronizing responses.
Loungani describes herself as a `Sawnet lurker,' someone who has never posted a message before. She was provoked to write in defense of her opinion when a number of mails denounced Indian Americans in support of the war as `incredibly wealthy,' `male,' `Hindu,' `entrepreneurs,' `Republicans' indulging in `mindless, spineless kissing-up-to-the-man-in-the-White-House.'
"I don't fit any of these descriptions,"said Loungani, pointing that she is Hindu but non-practicing. "I think sometimes when you express an opinion when the majority don't agree with, you can be mercilessly attacked for having an independent thought even by the most liberal of individuals."
Loungani and others like her are no Bushies. Nor do they belong to the rabid right that cusses at the `lily-livered bleeding heart liberals' -- to borrow a Salman Rushdie argot. These are South Asians that support the war regardless of their political affiliations. They appreciate the protests as part of a necessary democratic process, but are not discouraged by the prompt labels of `bloodthirsty,' and `warmongers,' to voice their views.
"The war was something that needed to be done,"said Koshy George, a scientist with the leading pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough. "Even though I would have preferred diplomacy, how do you resolve an issue with a dictator?"
Even though George thinks that the Bush administration could have waited longer, he is willing to give them the benefit of his doubt. "Why not?"he said. "I am sure they had their own reasons."
Being pro-war does not mean condoning the murder of innocent civilians, argue people on the other side of line. For most of them it is an ambivalent answer to a difficult question.
"Right now we know that Iraq's property is being destroyed and there are some civilian casualties,"said Tayeb Poonawala, a civil engineer with Washington Group International and a registered Democrat. "We know that no American wants that. But we also know that [Iraq's] regime is brutal. I am in favor of a change of this regime."
Poonawala, also an activist in New York's Bohra community, also added that US should not have taken a unilateral approach by ignoring UN's repeated requests for giving Hussain more time.
Vaswati Sinha disagrees, saying that the US did the right thing by going ahead, even if unilaterally to attack Iraq. A librarian at the Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, Sinha has `interacted over the years with many Egyptians, Iranians, and Iraqis who have suffered from political repression in their homelands."
"Unlike Indians, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis or Pakistanis, these people did not leave a democratic but poor homeland for a more prosperous life,"she said. "They left their homelands in perpetual turmoil of a sort that could spawn menacing models for governance, of which Saddam represents an appalling extreme."
Americans should remember, Sinha added, that they can express dismay at the government without the risk of being jailed, unlike the Iraqis `with no recourse.'
For many other Indians it is more than just a strong desire to liberate the Iraqis of their oppressor.
"The reason we see so many Indian Americans supporting this is the common threat of terrorism faced in India and Kashmir,"said Subhash Razdan, an Atlanta-based community leader. "Most of them are for it because they have had enough of it in India."
Razdan is unconvinced by the linkage made by the US government between Iraq and September 11 but is for the war if `Bush has a clear cut idea of how he plans to deal with terrorism in other countries.'
Razdan, who was part of former President Bill Clinton's entourage on his famous India visit, is a Kashmiri Hindu. Expressing sadness at the recent killing of 24 Hindus by terrorists in the Kashmir Valley, he said, "When you hear of something like that, you hope that President Bush succeeds in his war against terror."
Nadadur Vardhan, secretary of California's Malibu Hindu Temple, supports any action to curb terrorism but said that US' move, in disregard of the international opinion, `has fractured the possibility of a strong and global coalition against terrorism.'
"What after Iraq?"said Vardhan, also the founder of the think tank Indo-American Vision Foundation, "Will the US go to other countries that aid terrorists? We know that the money is provided by Saudi Arabia and the brain by Pakistan? I am in full support of this war only if the US goes beyond Iraq."
Vardhan added that first generation Indians are more likely to support the war -- since they may have experienced in one way or the other in their native country -- than their children. His daughter Malini who is a junior at University of California Berkeley, attends every protest on her campus or near their neighborhood.
"Our loyalties and our emotional bonds are still with India,"he said. "I have baggage from back home."