Bobby & Jerry : Rise of a Coloured ‘son’ Retold

Exultant front page headlines and images leaped out of the Indian newspapers to announce the arrival on the scene of one 'Bobby' Jindal, the first non-white governor of a Southern state and the youngest in US. It would have made an interesting reading, had the story stayed there and kept the course. Alas, it was not to be. Looking at the ‘media-take’ in such cases it would appear that most Indians have little to celebrate in their own land apart from the intermittent jubilation over cricket. Have we got no local heroes to emulate and follow? Or so it would seem if the media were to be believed. For a media dazzled by stock market indices and the roll of worlds richest or mightiest – such as Forbes list, there is punditry in aping the US values.

Bobby’s story is indeed remarkable. Born on 10 June 1971 to Hindu parents, who had immigrated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana just 6 months earlier, he converted to Catholic faith early in life in the most Catholic state in the whole of USA and changed his name to anglicized ‘Bobby’ from the given name ‘Piyush’ at age four. After obtaining impressive academic qualifications and a stint with consultants McKinsey & company, he became the state health secretary of Louisiana at the age of 24. It was the largest department of the state and it was in dire financial trouble. Bobby carried out aggressive cutting and pruning exercise and restored the department to financial health. More high level jobs followed in quick succession: chairman of a bipartisan Medicare reform commission in Washington, head of the statewide University of Louisiana system, and assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services under Mr. Bush. He and his wife, Supriya, returned to Louisiana so he could run for governor in 2003. He lost his first bid at governorship to the current governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who had chosen not to run again. He was elected to Congress from the New Orleans suburbs in 2004, and it was common knowledge that he was biding his time for another run at the governor’s mansion. He has succeeded in 2007 in realizing his ambition.

Bobby has succeeded in a politically and culturally conservative Louisiana that is still struggling with the racial demons of its past. Louisiana has figured in the news recently as the home of Jena, the town where nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree, a throwback to punishment meted out to insolent niggers, triggered school fights that resulted in six black students being charged with attempted murder — an apparent miscarriage of justice that received wide attention in US through the efforts of civil activists. Louisiana also has the distinction of being the poorest and least educated state having the worst healthcare system – ‘BEEMARU state’ in Indian parlance. When Bobby succeeded in restoring the department to health, whether he succeeded too in turning healthcare sick one does not know. What are then the ingredients of success in Bobby’s rise?

If we are to follow Mr. Jaithirath Rao in his column Arnie to Bobby, we couldn’t be too careful in pursuing author’s threads.

“To convince voters that a person who till recently would have been considered genetically 'inferior' on account of his race, can actually be their leader and help solve the problems of the unhappy hurricane-ridden state is quite an extraordinary, even positively brilliant achievement in the sphere of communications, if nothing else�.

Simply to ascribe the victory to brilliant communication skills without finding out the message and the target audience would be utterly simplistic. One post-election analysis estimated that Bobby won 63 per cent of the white vote but only about 10 per cent of the black vote. He also carried many of the deeply conservative portions of the state that, not long ago, supported the gubernatorial campaign of the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. He was ready to wear his faith on his shirt sleeve during the election campaign.

“I draw my definition of integrity from my Christian faith,� Mr. Jindal said during the campaign. “In my faith, you give 100 percent of yourself to God.�

Obviously Bobby’s political and economic conservatism places him squarely within the political mainstream of a state that gave George W. Bush 57 per cent of its vote in the 2004 presidential election. His elected religious affiliation and his anglicized name have definitely helped him look less ‘alien’ to most voters. The first words from Bobby to his supporters after he won the Louisiana governor’s race on Saturday night were not about his victory, but Louisiana State University’s triumph over Auburn the same day. His clever message subtly rang out,

“I am one of you, a normal, red-blooded football-loving Louisiana guy�.

It is a theme that seems to have informed the youthful Republican congressman’s every step. It is also probable that his victory represents a vote for change, a hope for competence in a state beleaguered by corruption and ineffectual administration of Kathleen Blanco in responding to the still unmitigated disaster caused by hurricane Katrina. It helped Bobby to have an impressive resume that lent credibility to his claims that he could provide good governance to a state that has known very little of it over the years.

However, there are unmistakable profound causes, which many would deem reactionary, that Bobby has made his own. These ‘deep felt personal choices’ have made the conservative white Caucasians colour blind and sealed Bobby’s place in their hearts. Bobby,

1. Opposes both abortion and state support of birth control.
2. Opposes ‘Hate-Crimes legislation’ favoured by many minorities as a necessary legal protection.
3. Strongly supports the inclusion of ‘Intelligent Design’ in science courses of the school system of the state.

It is no enigma that these positions have endeared him to his core constituency. Mr. Robert Hathway has interpreted this as:

“Jindal’s election comes at a time of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. One contender for the Republican presidential nomination has based his candidacy almost entirely on a ‘get tough’ approach to illegal immigration. More broadly, many Americans worry that the United States is somehow losing its ‘American’ character because of the influx of newcomers, many of them from Latin America. In this context, Jindal’s triumph seems a vote for tolerance and pluralism (emphasis added)�.

In fact any alert observer would be inclined to take exactly the opposite view. Bobby has proved by the positions he has taken that he is more Christian than the Christians, more conservative than the conservatives, and as or more embedded in the Bush-Cheney establishment than the others. His ascent as the governor is no threat to ‘American’ character. His ascent shows the faith reposed by the conservative voters and establishment that he is a defender of the ‘American’ character. Ironically, for the very same reasons Jaithirath Rao sees him as the true inheritor of ‘Indian’ character.

“Bobby’s PR folks could do no better than point out to critics that Mahatma Gandhi was an inveterate and firm opponent of artificial birth control and abortion was anathema to him. In this regard and in others too, Bobby Jindal can proudly claim to be upholding the principles of the greatest Indian leaders of recent times and thus giving evidence of his pride in his Indian origins!�

This is strange, though not innocent, that Gandhi should draw mention for some of his most idiosyncratic notions and not for his championing of ‘non-violence’ as an effective instrument of resistance by the oppressed. It would be truly interesting to speculate what would happen, if Bobby were to advocate to his supporters ‘abstinence’ from carnal desires as Gandhi did and succeeded with Jai Prakash Narain. Unlike Gandhi, Bobby would most likely be left alone to walk his talk.

Returning to our original point, Bobby’s story is quintessentially about the triumph of conservative American values in a conservative heartland. It is about the life journey so far of an enterprising and clever conservative American man. Only thing Indian about it may be is the gene that traveled from Malerkotla using his mother as an unsuspecting carrier to Baton Rouge. By that token we are all Africans, because the established evolutionary theory firmly places the cradle of Human civilization in that portion of Rift Valley which lies in Africa.

Africa takes us to the core of what ‘Indian values’ should mean. Baba Amate, Arvind Kejariwal, Verghese Kurien, Aruna Roy, Rajendra Singh, Mabelle Arole are, to name just a few, outstanding heroes who have shown great fortitude, entrepreneurship & resourcefulness in their respective areas of work to create self supporting & self reliant community structures. They have created real wealth, the wealth of dignity & happiness for all. An inclusive growth not just limited to ‘High Achievers’ Rao talks about. The replication of their work would aid generously in taking India to the number one position in GNH - gross national happiness. GNH is based on the concept of ‘Ubuntu’. Ubuntu is a word that symbolizes the philosophy originating in Southern Africa. Ubuntu means ‘I am because you are’.