Passage to India

Greetings dear readers in cyberspace,

So over the next few weeks, this blog is going to acquire a theme (yes, gasp!). See, I’m flying out to India tomorrow as part of a medical volunteer mission. Our goal: to travel to New Delhi and Hyderabad, India to observe, learn, and inshallah (God willing) to do some good.

I’m going with a group called the IMRC (Indian Muslim Relief Charity). We’re a group of students from a diverse array of backgrounds, from all over the United States. Some are South Asian, others aren’t.

So the point is: I’m going to be blogging about my experiences in India. This trip means a lot to me on  personal, political, and academic levels. Personally, I’m going back to my family’s homeland–literally.  We’re from Hyderabad,  and that city is the center of my ancestral heritage. Politically, I’m going because I feel that Indian Muslims are disproportionately poor, uneducated, and have suffered grave injustice at the hands of Hindutva extremists. I am hoping that I will in some way be able to help. And academically: I just finished the first year of med school. I couldn’t wait to a)get out of the country, and b)use my skills to do some good and c)did I mention get out of the country?

I fly out to Singapore, and to New Delhi tomorrow. It’s gonna be a wild ride, ladies and gents. Stay tuned!

PS: the pic below is from San Francisco, where I’m leaving from. I thought it was too beautiful not to post.

gateway to the east

gateway to the east

Idiocracy

I just finished studying for a hellish week of final exams. Thank God that’s over, and I can get back to writing stuff I care about, aka this blog.

Ah, the Iranian elections. Ahmadinejad goes into the election with polls indicating a 30 point lead for his opponent, Mousavi. The result? The complete opposite outcome, with Ahmadinejad winning by a 30 point margin. Iiiiinteresting, no?

There is no doubt there was a great deal of hanky-panky around this particular election, and it seems all the more brazen on the international stage. More interesting to me at this point, however, is the media coverage surrounding the election, its aftermath and the protests. The Western media is usually loath to give a damn about internal mideast politics, unless it directly concerns its bosom buddy, Israel–or at a stretch, Saudi Arabia. Iran is rarely spoken about in multifaceted terms, Ahmadinejad’s persona is allowed to predominate, and usually under the umbrella of the opportunistic label of anti-Semitism.

So it is interesting to me that it takes something like massive voting fraud to finally get the NYTimes and the like to give a shit about the voice of the Iranian people. Pictures like the one below are being widely circulated in the media. But I wonder: why?

There are many countries that gain by toppling Ahmadinejad. The United States and Israel are perhaps the two most obvious ones. Both nations are not above using any means necessary to preserve their “national security”. What better way to delegitimize the President of Iran than to have him accused of electoral fraud, thus fanning the flames of revolution? I just find it hard to believe that given the attention the Iranian government (and its supposed nuclear capability) receives on the international political stage, that the entire situation in Iran doesn’t smack of interference from multiple external actors.

And on a last, somewhat unrelated note, I had interesting thought re. electoral fraud, protests, and reporting by the American media. When Bush stole the 2000 (and 2004) election by committing blatant, massive electoral fraud in Florida and Ohio, the media was all but pussy-whipped. Not to mention the majority of the American public, who sat on the asses at home and bemoaned the outcome. At least the Iranian people are out the streets demanding a change. We Americans couldn’t even get our butts off the couch!

But I digress.

As the situation in Iran develops, I will most surely update.

Badass iranian protestor.