[Assam] SAT student on Heroism -thru media; Deepa Mehta & her daughter, Kaavya & Amartya Sen, Rushdie

[umesh sharma]

Hi,
   
  I just came after discussing last minute strategies with a AssamNet circle member who is taking the SAT test tomorrow ( www.collegeboard.com ) . I have been working with him for Grammar etc since Feb . 
   
  Today as part of the last minute practice he wrote an essay " Heroism is speaking out against injustice ."
   
  He wrote something which might make some of us think again. On the one hand he gave the example of Dr Martin Luther King Jr -who spoke and worked against injustice and got equal rights for Blacks and whites in USA -and that is heroism.On the other hand, he cauttioned that some might speak out against perceived injustice which only against themselves -and not the whole community --or that they might be saying wrong things - which might be totally opposite to truth or justice.
   
  While he was writing his tsuff, I was leafing thru Rediff India Abroad magazines lying in the room from April and May2006. They mainly carried lots of reader's comments and articles about Kaavay Viswanathan's alleged copying from another author (which Amrtya Sen defended as resulting from her photographic memory -while Salman Rushdie -called it copying --while thet discusses Sen's book -The argumentative Indian - in New York Public Library).
   
   Another set of letters and articles were about Deepa Mehta's new movie : "Water" -- and also about her private life - her alleged abandonment of her own daughter Devyani Saltzman -after a messy divorce with her Canadian film maker husband a while ago -and her new husband Hamilton . 
   
  And currently some of us are intrigued by Arun Dhati Roy's anti India commnets (that it is not a democracy and is murdering millions of Kashmiris etc).
   
  It seems all those who are in media in the west for last two or three decades -- hailing from India -- are all Anti India in their rhetoric . And that is changing now since the advent of the internet --where Indians sitting in India can easily present their opinions to the world. Also, those have been charting the globe are no longer isolated from their Indian loved ones --so cannot be brainwashed -atleat to the extent many of those who came long ago were. Salman Rushdie is also a case in point --he came from India in his late teens to UK as did VS Naipaul -again to UK.
   
  Any commnets.
   
  Umesh
   
  US: Recently US Senate okayed amendment --for allowing asylum to anyone who can give any documentary evidence that someone back home does not approve. Salman Rushdie, ArunDhati Roy, Deepa Mehta types --would such asylum with not much problem. That could be another angle.


Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park, MD 20740

 1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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