Sam Singh

The Unlikely Place Where Diversity Thrives

2013-05-15T17:46:15-04:00

There is a new beer commercial floating around that's particularly insipid, even for a beer commercial. Over splices of generic bar, beer and hockey footage, resolute Canadiana all of it, a narrator asks "What does hockey need?" Pause for a beat and then: "Even more hockey!" Intelligence-insulting rhetoric aside, I think a more appropriate question based on last week's release of the National Household Survey might be what does Canada need? To which I would also answer, more hockey. Not as a paean to commercially-endorsed alcoholism but rather as a tool for building Canadian unity.

The self-declared survey reveals that 6.8 million Canadians, or just over 20 per cent of the population, were born outside of the country. Aside from Australia (at 26 per cent), this is the highest proportion of any nation in the Western World, yet an even higher proportion of the Canadian population was foreign born -- almost entirely from Europe -- during much of the early 20th Century. More interestingly, the Survey states that one in five Canadians is a visible minority (i.e. non-white), the result of a wave of liberalizing immigration reforms in the 1960's and 1970's that also echoed in the three other so-called "settler colonies" of the old British Empire: Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

These changes saw the institution of a meritocratic point system as the basis for conventional migration (as well as allowances for economic, student, refugee, and family reunification categories) replace quotas and racial/ethnic preferences, opening Canada to immigration from Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. Today the largest of these populations are South Asians, Chinese, Black and Filipino respectively. Approximately eight million people entered the country over this time, most building lives as citizens and permanent residents.

Source: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

What's notable in this grim age of austerity and public-minded stinginess is how less-than-enthused some Canadians appear to be about where their new neighbours are coming from. Comments on newspaper stories and message boards often reveal an outright hostility directed at these populations of non-European descent and their supposed inability to integrate into broader society, with particular hostility leveled at the Muslim and Middle Eastern community. No doubt these perspectives are influenced by a string of very real events, but the usual criticisms -- that our current immigration policy has led to deleterious increases in crime, unemployment, '"enclaving" and welfare abuse -- are rehashed, though easily refuted, time and time again again. Still, an immigration system grown calcified and liable to abuse and deception on the one hand, and vagaries and bureaucratic snafus on the other is deserving of reform, as Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is currently undertaking.

It would be simplistic and wrong to dismiss anyone who questions the current system and its results as simply racist or discriminatory. However those who complain about "losing the country" should remember their history, particularly when these same hysterics were directed at the waves of Germans, Italians, Ukrainians and others who came before (strangely, many of these same voices become silent when the conversation turns to the one population that can be said to have truly 'lost' the country: aboriginals). Yet in an era of "post-national politics", notions of culture, identity, rights and responsibilities necessarily come under scrutiny in our framing of the conversation on immigration.

But there is one arena, literally, where questions of integration and assimilation melt in favour of the common bonds of citizenship and shared purpose: at the ice rink. We see this on our streets whenever a Canadian team chases the Stanley Cup or an Olympic medal. As husband-and-wife authors Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac point out in Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds, sports play an inestimable role in knitting together a collective culture. They criss-crossed the globe from Marseilles, France to Kerala, India and from Russian Tatarstan to Sydney, Australia and Queens, New York City looking at how diverse populations live together in domestic peace (other overlooked institutions that promote harmony? Rap music and public libraries).

That playing and watching hockey is a national passion -- one that most obviously unites our English and French divides -- is so cliché it doesn't bear repeating here. It does in the United States however; a glowing New York Times piece highlighted the CBC's decision to simulcast hockey games in Punjabi to appeal to the country's 300,000+ speakers of the language, most of whom follow the Sikh faith. It touched on a particular anecdote when Nail Yakupov, the first choice in the 2012 NHL entry draft by my Edmonton Oilers (and the team's first Tatar Muslim player), tweeted his surprise at seeing the turbans and thick beards of Harnarayan Singh and Bhola Chauhan, the play-by-play announcer and colour commentator of Hockey Night in Canada in Punjabi.

The piece hints at the rabid loyalty of first and second generation Canadians to a game they never encountered "back home." I felt this passion firsthand during the Gretzky years of the 1980s and during the '90s playoff battles between the Oilers and Dallas Stars with my friends Rahul, a Punjabi Hindu, Aaron, an Indo-Canadian by way of Tanzania and my Ukrainian-German pal Levi (and I griped with them as our team's fortunes have plummeted since). It still amazes me how those not born and raised with such an exclusive game can find it such an inclusive experience; at a recent house party my brother hosted in Calgary, I was surprised to see the two fans paying rapt attention to an otherwise inconsequential "Battle of Alberta" and gently razzing each other were a Scotsman and an Ethiopian.

If that still doesn't convince you of hockey's appeal to new Canadians, nor the performances of some of the most popular young players in the NHL like the Montreal Canadien's Norris Trophy candidate P.K. Subban (of Jamaican descent) or the Toronto Maple Leafs Nazem Kadri (of Lebanese ancestry and the president of his high school's Muslim Student Association) or the premise of Breakaway, one of the first big budget Indo-Canadian films about a team nicknamed the Speedy Singhs, then this maudlin yet admittedly effective Tim Horton's commercial should:

That this popular ad strikes such an emotional chord shows that however diffuse our bloodline may be, hockey clearly runs in it.

So let's take another step in building the collective passion by first making it accessible to all. With its equipment and ice time costs, hockey is a prohibitively expensive game, annually costing the average family about $1,500 per player. For low-income families, including immigrants busy establishing themselves in their new homeland, cost is by far the biggest barrier to participation. A recent report found 82 per cent of those surveyed believe corporate Canada should do more to help hockey families so lets encourage the one community that seems to be doing pretty well these days to step up and make the game more affordable for everyone, newcomers and native-born alike.

Looking at Canada as well as Australia and the United States, Meyer and Brysac found "reassuring evidence that diversity works on many levels: economic, educational, political and cultural." In all three countries, "the benefits of immigration are tangible but diffuse, cumulative rather than short term. Aggregate gains arising from pluralism tend to pass unnoticed whereas every bump in the road is promptly trumpeted." Inclusive nation-building isn't automatic, nor a foregone conclusion. It takes dedication and work but who says it can't be fun as well?

It would be wrong to suggest that sport is a comparable answer to the broad questions of integration and community that we face today. It won't solve ethnocultural discord but it certainly can ease it. These issues are fundamental to our national identity and should be debated openly, honestly and empathetically. Nor am I arguing in favour of the corporatized game represented by the National Hockey League where working-class families spend hundreds of the dollars to support millionaire players working for billionaire owners (or, obviously, that hockey as a particular activity should be blithely trumpeted at the expense of other sports). But if we accept that in an increasingly globalized world, where the concept of citizenship is ever more fluid than ever, organized sports could serve as a valuable pivot from which to wave the flag of national unity -- however contentious and incomplete that notion may be.

So before the Stanley Cup is awarded next month and our thoughts turn to enjoying an all-too short summer, lets remember that hockey is indeed living out the promise of beer commercials and making us all Canadian.

Why Universities Are Teaching "Indovation"

2012-12-17T08:01:01-05:00

As the economic reforms of the last two decades start to bear fruit in India, a few notable ideas around innovation inside the country are also beginning to bloom.

First came "Indovation," the idea that if innovation could ever have a national flavor, then a
distinctly Indian one would soon emerge in the global marketplace. Then the "Bottom of the
Pyramid" followed. Advanced by the "world's most influential management thinker" University
of Michigan professor C.K. Prahalad's exploration of the poorest of the poor as customers to be
courted highlighted India's potential as a major consumer market for innovative products and
services. Now Jugaad (roughly translated from Hindi as "frugal innovation") is weaving its way through business, design, academic & policy circles. In doing so, will Jugaad -- the traditional (and highly unconventional in Western eyes) idea of improvising raw solutions through scarce resources under imperfect conditions -- emerge as the next frontier of innovation science?

The University of Toronto is going to find out. A new interdisciplinary research initiative, simply
titled the "India Innovation Institute", was launched in October 2011 to explore the parameters
around innovation in India, with the role played by the diaspora central to its scope of research.
The Institute will ask questions about the very nature of innovation and will attempt to explain why it works when it does and understand when it doesn't.

Take Jugaad, which represents a completely new way to frame innovation according to the Institute's inaugural director and Rotman School of Management professor, Dilip Soman: "In the western world there is a belief that in order to create good innovations (such as Apple's line of shiny and much-beloved gadgets) you need to have people free of constraints and the cost of failure shouldn't be too high..." he explains. "We think in India that we see the opposite story." He says it starts with how people view obstacles in front of them: problems to complain about or opportunities to fix?

"Imagine you wake up in the morning in Bombay and you turn on the taps and there's no water. Now if this happened in Toronto somebody would have protested, there would be 600 wall posts on somebody's Facebook page saying there's no water, complaints about the mayor etc. None of that happens in India. What happens in India is that some enterprising fellow will hire 6 local boys who will go to the municipality tap and bring you a bucket of water for 5 Rupees. This highlights the fact that the average Indian sees an opportunity in an inefficient system. The average Canadian doesn't."

In a land of constraints (is there a better euphemism for India?) people are forced to come up
with ingenious solutions to their problems, often by relying on the barest of essentials. MP and former UN Undersecretary General Sashi Tharoor explained at the Institute's launch in Toronto, this method of innovating on the cheap has resulted in a number of success: from the manufacture of the world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano, to an $800 electrocardiogram by General Electric to bite-sized shampoo packages for those same Bottom of the Pyramid dwellers. "Indians have become natural innovators in frugal innovation without anyone telling them about the concept."

It has certainly caught the eye of major multinational businesses at the same event: Indian
ambassador to Canada Consul General Preeti Saran noted that 60 per cent of Fortune 500 companies are now examining frugal innovation and its role in the knowledge economy. As University of Toronto President and frequent visitor to India David Naylor said, the III will join the conversation and "advance our understanding of the traffic between India and Canada in every way." The particular focus on Jugaad highlights innovation as more than just simply the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) branch on the tree of knowledge. "Innovation is embedded in the way a culture does things" says Soman.

Practiced in a civic sense, such as the tested-and-true techniques used to navigate the country's notorious bureaucracy, he admits that Jugaad has evolved in part as a rebuke to the country's sclerotic institutions. Citing the missed-call phenomenon (where users communicate with other for free by deliberately not answering their mobile telephones) Soman, who was named as one of the Financial Times "Professors to Watch", says the Institute will explore the impact socio-cultural background has in innovation, an element that often goes overlooked. He is particularly interested in the behavioral economics that undergird these scenarios: "We are trying to understand what the role of constraints are, what the role of poverty is, what the role of family upbringing has--all of those things are present in the ability to become an innovator. Our thesis is that frugal innovation is a mindset--once you get people to think of objects as resources instead of objects simply as objects, you can change the way they start combining objects into meaningful solutions."

The Institute will also look at when innovative practices in India fail to catch on, particularly when solutions fail to extend and scale across the nation. Why, for example, can a small army of Dabbawallas feed hundreds of thousands of hungry Mumbaikers home-cooked lunches every day--at a Six Sigma accuracy rate of delivery (1 error in 16 million deliveries)--but not do so in Delhi? (The answer, Soman suspects, is due to Mumbai's unique geographic layout and north-south infrastructure axis). Similarly, if the Aravind Eye hospital can treat millions of patients efficiently and cheaply, "Why are there not a thousand Aravind Eye hospitals across India?"

The Institute will attempt to identify the "core efficiency drivers" that make these phenomenon
successful in the first place and understand how they can be replicated elsewhere. The third platform of the research agenda will look at the role the diaspora is playing in Indian innovation. According to Matt Mendehlson, the executive director of the University of Toronto's Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, most conventional attention to diasporas comes down to either political pandering (when politicians routinely court "the ethnic vote" during election campaigns) or influencing policy on the host country's relations with the home country (i.e. the vigorous lobbying Indian communities in Canada and the US made to remove India from official government sanction after its nuclear tests in 1998). "Diaspora networks have been an afterthought on public policy even in areas they are relevant such as trade, exports and remittances." Furthermore, traditional diaspora research tends to examine the impact overlapping identities have on the host country (i.e. Canada). So instead, the Institute will examine the impact of diaspora networks have on the home country: India. Soman asks "How important is the diaspora to India and what are the economic impacts of that? How involved should the (consular) missions be in seeding and collecting and organizing the diaspora?" He says that at a minimum, diasporas can transmit best practices wherever they occur: "People across the world can act as your eyes and ears and say 'Here's an idea for how things are done in Toronto and could work in Delhi'."

Though universities across the West are looking at Indian innovation, including Harvard
University's India Research Centre and the Aditya Birla India Centre at the London School of
Business, Soman says this is the first time that a distinctively multidisciplinary approach, led by
the Rotman School and the Munk School of Global Affairs across the street at the University of
Toronto will be used. Other initiatives include the creation of the Prosperity Institute of India, a
joint collaboration between the Martin Prosperity Institute (led by urban guru Richard Florida),
the Rotman School and Harvard to investigate India's creative economy, centered around
Florida's "Three T's of Innovation Theory": technology, talent and tolerance. Some are geared to
have immediate on-the-ground impacts: the Indo-Canadian Chamber of Commerce is planning to work with the Institute to connect Indian students with small and medium-sized businesses in the Toronto area. All of this collaboration takes place against the backdrop of an increasingly vibrant relationship between the two Commonwealth countries: 2011 was the "Year of India in Canada", marked by conferences, gala exhibits and the International Indian Film Academy Awards in Toronto and overall trade is expected to triple to $15 billion by 2015 with a free-trade pact under negotiation.

Ultimately, Soman hopes the findings of the III will go beyond India's particular circumstances to address problems in emerging economies around the world: "Our story is more about what
succeeds and what fails and what are the abstract principles that you can draw from it--not just in the Global South but in Western markets as well."

Immortalizing India's Master Storyteller

2012-02-27T18:50:44-05:00

How do you immortalize a master in his own art?

That was the question facing Vijay Sampath, the new CEO of ACK Media and editor Reena Puri over commemorating Anant Pai, the creator of India's Amar Chitra Katha comic book series. "Uncle" Pai passed away one year ago today at the age of 81 in Mumbai.

The answer seemed obvious: a comic book for the godfather of India's comic book industry. "Everyone felt that's what Uncle Pai would have liked, even if he never would have suggested it," Sampath says about Pai's trademark humility. It's a trait common throughout Amar Chitra Kathas and the one about its founder is no different. "The beauty of this comic is that it's designed the way Uncle Pai would have liked it. Its inspirational, it talks of a struggle and how the struggle is overcome and how the protagonist went on to do good things in the world at large. Which is what Uncle Pai wanted -- his whole existential purpose was that children should be happy and contented and filled with joy."

Pai's cheerful demeanour was matched by the impact of his work. It began when he and artist Ram Waeerkar spent a year on the first and most successful issue, "Krishna", a simple three-colour pallet of everybody's favourite blue-skinned deity on low-grade paper. The stories focused on Indian history, Hindu mythology, famous personalities, parables and folktales; the two-part Gandhi issue marking the peak of the series came out in 1989. Alongside Tinkle, Suppandi and other fictional titles produced by its parent company, India Book House, Amar Chitra Katha became a juggernaut in the world of children's' publishing: the comic books have been translated into 38 languages including Serbo-Croat, Swahili & Bahasa Indonesian and -- by sheer virtue of being Indian -- as many as 700 million people have held an Amar Chitra Katha in their hands, even if they couldn't actually read it.

Here he explains one of the inspirations for creating Amar Chitra Katha:

Another inspiration for change:

However it wasn't just in scale that Pai mattered. As Karline McLain, a professor of South Asian Studies at Bucknell University notes in her book "India's Immortal Comic Books", Pai's dedicated work in sifting through, and then writing stories about Hinduism's enormous pantheon of gods (in the millions by most counts) helped solidify the modern canon around them. Its impact on the Indian diaspora was especially pronounced when in the pre-Internet days issues traveled by suitcases of relatives.

Born to a high caste Brahmin family in the state of Karnataka, Uncle Pai was not a political person. Yet he was subject to both effigy burning and political pandering over the years. He also came under fire for the sin of omission: glossing over character faults and violence in his stories. It made for powerful, if finite, storytelling. By the turn of the century, Sampath suggests the creative well of Amar Chitra Katha had run dry -- all the stories had been told and comic books as a whole had the imprimatur of a cottage-industry product.

In 2005, ACK Media, a new startup, took up the torch lit by Uncle Pai. Inaugural CEO Samir Patil sensed the growing purchasing power of consumers as well as seismic shifts in online activity with new retailing, and distribution models gaining traction.

During the first years, he and his partner had reliable growth overseas as they navigated the growing Indian market. ACK threw itself into the children's entertainment industry and today offers a catalogue of products across multiple platforms, including apps, home video, film and television, mobile, gaming, and online services.

The Anant Pai issue was launched just ahead of India's second annual Indian Comic Con last week (Uncle Pai was honored at the first event). Now, a plethora of competitors such as Campfire, Giddoo, Fenil and Vimanika are poised to give ACK Media a run for its money according to Sampath.

"The comic industry has seen a fairly significant revival by lots of new people coming on board with new products, new competitors, new genres -- everything! It also coincides with the revival of the superhero franchise from Marvel & DC in the film format, so a continuous slew of caped heroes and masked avengers which have had a good run in television and film these past 7-8 years has helped to increase the demand for comics."

Uncle Pai earned a chemical engineering degree before going into publishing in the 1950's. He firmly believed in science over faith, and once wrestled with an early story about Krishna holding up a mountain by a single finger. Whereas he initially depicted these scenes in an ambiguous fashion, neither endorsing nor excoriating them, he later decided to portray them as stupendous miracles, even if they stretched 20th Century credulity. It accorded to the belief animating his professional life: "One must tell the truth, one must tell what is pleasant, but don't tell what is unpleasant just because it is true."

Some of the values that motivated Uncle Pai

His stories earned him recognition in the global comics industry and seriously large piles of fan-mail. Immediately following his death, Indians at home and abroad mourned the death of the "Master Storyteller". Some even suggested him for the Bharat Ratna, the Jewel of India, the country's highest civilian honour. Uncle Pai left behind an enormous legacy in many ways... except one. He and his wife Lalita never had any children of their own.

The Anant Pai comic is available at the iTunes store here.

The Humble "Art" Of The Indo-Canadian 99%

2011-12-13T13:52:20-05:00

Picture a museum of all things Indian and you might envision something like Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts, which featured prominently at the Art Gallery of Ontario for much of the past year. It was a display of historic Indian regalia at its finest: jewelry, clothing, artwork, chandeliers and even an exquisitely preserved Rolls-Royce were present, much of it on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The exhibit was a reminder that even during the height (or depth, depending on your perspective) of the British Raj, a relative handful of rajas, nawabs, and princes -- the country's original one per cent -- enjoyed a lifestyle far removed from the disease, starvation and penury that characterized most of the period.

However inside the Young Gallery, a pocket-sized corner of the AGO, you'd have a starkly different vision of the contemporary Indian experience: plastic toilet brushes, "smelly" cotton sweatpants, a box of "Fair and Handsome" skin whitening cream and what seems like a metric ton of tin (mostly in dinner plate and foil form). At first the items appear to be nothing more than the cultural detritus of suburban life. But upon closer inspection the collection is perhaps one of the more honest -- and humorous -- depictions of South Asian culture in Canada, a rare look at the everyday life of Indo-Canada's 99 per cent.

Described as the place "where culture, tradition and objects intersect" and part of the Toronto Now series, The Museum of Found Objects is the latest collaboration by Toronto-based artists Sameer Farooq and Mirjam Linschooten. The Museum started as an art exhibit running concurrently to the Maharaja show and through the support of SAVAC, the South Asian Visual Arts Centre, it is now available as a collectors book of the same name.

If there was ever a catalogue of the generic South Asian experience in Canada, this would be it. Collated in a manner faithful to the exhibit and culled from Gerard Street East, Toronto's so-called "Little India" neighbourhood as well as the strip mall bazaars and suburban boutiques of neighbouring Brampton, Mississauga, Markham and Malton, the Museum is a delightfully self-aware display of banal utility; the rituals we encounter living inside a typical South Asian home. Photographed on a white carpet background, a plastic ruler handily gives these items a sense of scale and reinforces just how humble, cheap and disposable they all are.

SM set up a separate dining room in the garage to help with the overflow

Anonymous observational captions accompanying many of the items provide a sly sense of context. For example, "RM still has performance anxiety from his parents demanding that he play music in front of visiting guests at every occasion" lies underneath a plastic grade school recorder. These snippets serve as gentle hints that the South Asian story goes beyond frugal immigrant domesticity. It is, like so many others, built around family and the foibles that characterize them. An elaborate 16 piece set of plastic containers states that, "It has been ten years and JM's mother is still asking for her 'good Tupperware' back." A tin of Royal Dansk cookies has toured a subdivision: "RC re-gifted the tin to NF who re-gifted the tin to MP who re-gifted the tin to AP who re-gifted the tin back to RC. Full circle!" A pair of innocuous-seeming trousers indicts, declaring "NF said that the first thing she did when she got married was to throw away her husband's old smelly pants."

The Museum is actually a "museological critique" according to Haema Sivanesan, the former executive director of SAVAC. She commissioned Farooq and Linschooten to do the exhibit after seeing a similar project in Istanbul, Turkey during that city's year as a "European Cultural Capital" (Farooq splits his time between Toronto, Amsterdam and Istanbul). In stark contrast to the pomp and ceremony of the Maharaja show, the Museum of Found Objects "brought fresh air into the discussion" says Farooq. "When we try to represent specific cultures we can't only focus on the precious and the great -- we also have to focus on the everyday and the mundane in order to really give dignity to these cultures."

In his laconic, thinking-out-loud manner, Farooq says there's a danger in solely showing India in a particular light. "If we only represent Indian culture as opulent, then it pulls people out of everyday life and puts them into a place of study or a place of otherness." "But," he laughs "if we all use this sort of toilet brush it democratizes it and acknowledges that nobody is any more or any less special than anyone else."

Inspired by Cartier

While some items have an expendable quality to them, others are quietly ornate examples of design meeting tradition meeting mass production, such as an encased replica of Amritsar's Golden Temple that lights up when plugged in. These humble charms underscore Virginia Postrel's point in The Substance of Style that "not only monuments but the humblest of objects increasingly embody fine design." Postrel argues that since "the line between art and artifacts is not always so rigid," not everything has to have the imprint of Steve Jobs to be both graceful and functional at the same time.

On positioning the Museum adjacent to the Maharaja exhibit, Sivanesan acknowledges a "gold and lice" image that typically dogs depictions of India in the expositionist context; of narratives oscillating between highly localized majesty versus misery on a vast, almost stupefying, scale (almost perfectly epitomized by the first half of the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). "There is a tendency to historicize a culture like India's and there is a tendency to essentialize what South Asia is" according to Sivanesan. SAVAC itself emerged as an artist-run centre in 1997 in response to the traditional mandates of places like the AGO and the ROM, with a mission to "critically explore issues and ideas shaping South Asian identities and experiences." The latter two may have been slow to recognize and support artistic talent amongst Toronto's multicultural communities, but have since made strides "opening up to diverse communities" she says. Thus, to its credit, the exhibit wasn't in outright opposition to the showcased-nature of the AGO exhibit, but fully endorsed by the institution.

In contrast to the increasingly stylized, affluent and consumer-centric images of India as evinced by Toronto's hosting of the Indian International Film Academy Awards in June, Sivanesan suggests its now up to local artists like Farooq to carry this momentum forward in an increasingly sophisticated South Asian arts scene and truly reflect the lived experiences of the Indo-Canadian 99 per cent.

The Museum of Found Objects is available for sale at Art Metropole (788 King St. W) and SAVAC (401 Richmond St. W). SAVAC is encouraging individual South Asian artists in Toronto, Hamilton, Burlington, Oshawa and Whitby seeking to present works in an exhibition to apply for the Exhibition Assistance Programme through the Ontario Arts Council here.

Hare Krishna: The Rise in Krishna Consciousness

2011-09-20T11:40:04-04:00

The arrival of the Toronto International Film Festival neatly heralds the end of the summer festival season in the city and Canada as a whole. However glamorous the parade of celebrities on the red carpet may seem, nothing quite compares to the peculiar sight of the Ratha Yatra in Toronto and across the country. Mimicking the original Indian procession in the city of Puri, several devotional floats dedicated to the Hindu God Krishna, also known as Lord Jagannath, roll down the street, accompanied by exuberant crowds extolling a familiar chant:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

Credit: Rishi Kumar

More than four decades after appearing everywhere in popular culture from Dawn of the Dead and Airplane! to The Simpsons and the Grand Theft Auto video games, the followers of ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, known more affectionately as Hare Krishnas, are not only alive, they're doing surprisingly well as a colourful procession down the city's Yonge Street demonstrated. Traversing over to Centre Island, as many as 40,000 people took part in lectures, yoga exercises, vegetarian feasts and kirtans (musical chanting) over a July weekend. Rinse and repeat in Montreal, Thunder Bay, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton and you know what the "Festival of India" is all about.

Credit: Rishi Kumar

Juxtaposed against the bustle of industry delegations, diaspora conferences and of course the glitz and glamour of June's International Indian Film Academy Awards as well as long-running local celebrations such as the Mosaic Festival and Masala! Mehndi! Masti!, this event didn't garner the same headlines in Toronto. Ironically the Festival of India handily predates all of the above -- exposing North Americans to contemporary Hinduism since 1979.

In actuality, the Festival of India is a bit of a misnomer as it is organized and managed around propagating the teachings of a single man: A.C. Bhaktivedanta, also known as Srila Prabhupada. Bhaktivedanta introduced the Hare Krishnas to the Western World starting in New York City in 1965. The credit for introducing Hinduism to North America dates further back, perhaps to Swami Vivekananda and his 1893 address to the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, or even to Indophilic 19th Century writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Whereas other Indian festivals maintain a decidedly secular air (such as the "Festival of South Asia," which occurred on exactly the same weekend on Toronto's Gerard Street), this one is not only a Hindu festival but specifically a Vaishnavist one -- worshiping the god Krishna. And by criss-crossing North America in a long bright yellow rig, its devote acolytes certainly win points for presentation as well as longevity. Even the roadies talk in terms of "personal validation" and "spiritual evolutions."

Credit: Sam Singh

Bhaktivedanta came to the West on a mission to spread his message, according to Graham Dwyer and Richard Cole, authors of The Hare Krishna Movement: Forty Years of Chant and Change. Despite his advanced age and humble start alone in a Brooklyn flophouse, Bhaktivedanta got busy. By 1969 he had established ISKCON centres in New York City, San Francisco, Montreal and London. Emerging around the same time as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (a spiritual celebrity in his own right who pioneered transcendental meditation and "yogic flying"), Bhaktivedanta rode a wave of Western fascination with Eastern thought. He quickly became one of the central figures in the "Flower Power" era of the 1960s, befriending cultural icons like beatnik poet Allen Ginsburg and the Beatles' George Harrison, who would personally fund the movement in the UK in the 1970s. Bhativedanta was staggeringly successful in spreading his message, particularly to non-Indians: by the time of his death in 1977, he had spread ISKCON to 108 temples on six continents.

Credit: Rishi Kumar

His teachings revolved around Vedic Scriptures, the oldest texts in Hinduism and the parables of Krishna as recounted in tomes like the Bhagavad Gita (The Song of the Lord), which details the climax of the Mahabharata epic when the warrior Arjuna questions Krishna on the meaning of duty and action on the eve of great battle. Starting with his original translations, Bhaktivedanta's followers strove to make his teachings widely accessible in multiple languages.

However the chairperson of Toronto's Festival, Krishna Sharma, is careful to draw a distinction between being a Hare Krishna and a Hindu. He says the Hare Krishna movement (also known as "Gaudiya-Vaisnavism") is "a spiritual science, not a dogmatic faith. It's about seeing spirituality in everyone and everything and having a relationship with the divine -- be it Krishna, Jehova, Allah, Buddha or Yaweh; however you choose to perceive it."

Credit: Rishi Kumar

Sharma, who's father met Bhaktivedanta in 1976, says the movement appeals to those looking for spiritual growth. The "shaven-headed robed guys in the airports or on the streets with their drums handing out leaflets... who may have been innocently overzealous in their devotion" have matured from the faddish fascination of the '60s to the point that the "guy sitting in the cubicle next to you" could be a Hare Krishna. Like other followings, the Hare Krishna movement splintered after the death of its charismatic leader but seems to have recovered from the accusations of cultism and misconduct that dogged some of its chapters in the 1980s.

One constant about the movement is the almost rapturous chanting that accompanies an otherwise austere lifestyle, a practice that attracts both curiosity and derision. Comparing it to a piece of Swiss chocolate, Sharma says, "When you're with someone you care about and you share with them something that you have you almost get more pleasure out if it than you got before. This is the essence of the Hare Krishna culture. It comes down to wanting to share that great piece of candy. If you're not doing that its almost like 'why be so selfish'?"

Credit: Rishi Kumar

Indeed if there's any question about Hare Krishnas that could elicit a sigh of exasperation from Sharma its the connection to yoga, which he calls a "double edged sword." Though Bhakti Yoga ("the yoga of devotion, of the heart, of love") was on display at the festival as part of the "Yoga Meltdown," Sharma is frustrated with discipline's dilution and commercialization, citing for example a Hindu movement in the United States that wants to "take back" yoga:

"If I could snap my fingers and have everyone connect mainstream yoga practices... with the original spiritual practices of yoga, I would. What I hope others see is that like the Hare Krishna practice itself, it is a movement from the physical side to the spiritual side to the Mantra side... you're only at the tip of the iceberg when you're just at the physical side of the yoga."

The Festival of India continues through the United States in September and October, before ending the year in New Orleans in mid-November.

IIFAs Dazzle in Toronto

2011-06-28T12:33:03-04:00

Time is a funny concept for Indians. Sometimes its as fluid and expansive as the country itself; other times its short and harshly abrupt. And sometimes its just painfully long. Depending on who you ask, this weekend's International Indian Film Academy awards (the "IIFAs") in Toronto shows why the expression "Indian Standard Time" is both common parlance for Desis... and a bewildering notion for everyone else.

For Ontario Premiere Dalton McGuinty and provincial officials, bringing the 12th version of the IIFAs to North America for the first time was a four-year marathon of trade missions shuttling back and forth, a 12 million dollar subsidy and a concerted effort to boost the province's status in India.

As is conventional for a festival that's been on the road since 2000, travelling from London to Johannesburg and Dubai to Singapore, the IIFAs began by showcasing this year's home region with an introductory video and live performance. Given that Canada's overall trade with the country stands at a paltry $4.5 billion -- less than that of India's trade with Belgium or Finland despite a proportionately large and affluent diaspora community -- the IIFAs showed its 700 million viewers around the globe "the Indian summer's warmth in Canada" according to affable star Anil Kapoor, who kicked off the show.

Anil Kapoor and Hillary Swank © Kian Mirshahi

For the audience of 24,000 who attended the show at the Rogers Centre, after snapping up every single ticket in less than 10 minutes, the wait must have felt like an eternity but one well worth it judging by their boisterous reactions throughout the night.

The stars responded in kind, with virtually every one of them acknowledging the immense reception they received in Toronto and Arshad Warsi telling the adoring crowd, "You have given us so much love, I want to come back and live here!"

Those who couldn't make it to Saturday's awards had the option of "IIFA Rocks" on Friday, a hybrid evening of technical awards, electric musical performances by bands like Punjabi Bhangra trio RDB and a fashion show, with the latest in Indian haute couture by Rajesh Pratap Singh and Vikram Phadnis on display.

RDB and Nindi Kaur © Kian Mirshahi

For the fans without tickets to either show and spent hours camped out at the opulent Royal York Hotel downtown, outside a theatre in suburban Brampton or points in between waiting for a glimpse -- and shrieking when they did -- of Anupam Kher, Bipasha Basu, Dia Mirza and other stars on the green carpet (in tune with IIFAs growing theme), moments of intimacy were all too fleeting, often cut short by handlers and beefy unsmiling security guards.

Asha Bhosle © Kian Mirshahi

For newcomers and those in Toronto perplexed by the power of this industry, the three-day event was the culmination of six months of buzz. It was also instructional on how to have a career in Bollywood: either be progeny of an established Bollywood family such as the legendary Kapoor clan (in addition to being subject to an elaborate retrospective at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, Golden Age director Raj Kapoor's name now adorns a street in Brampton), win (or at least be a runner-up) in a major modeling competition (naturally Miss World, Miss Universe or Miss India for sure but Miss Asia Pacific, Miss Intercontinental or Miss Margo Beautiful Skin will do) and if you can't be a Kapoor, at least be a Khan: it worked for Aamir, Arbaaz, Fardeen, Imran, Irrfan, Saif Ali, Salman, Soha Ali, Sohail, Zayed and of course "King Khan" himself: Shahrukh, or simply SRK who was appearing in his first IIFA in seven years despite a lingering knee injury.

Zayed Khan © Kian Mirshahi

Whatever the hype was going in to the show after more than 30 events played out in the build up to it, India's movie royalty wasted little opportunity during their biggest night of the year.

For actor Dharmendra Singh Deol, the patriarch of one Bollywood family, it took 50 years of working in the Indian film industry to be feted with the lifetime achievement award while playback singer Asha Bhosle and actress Sharmila Tagore were feted for careers of equal longevity. The perpetually laconic Irrfan Khan was honored with the "Outstanding Achievement for an Indian in International Cinema."

Shahrukh Khan salutes Dharmendra Singh Deol

For Ranveer Singh, the journey to superstardom was a lot quicker. The ebullient actor won the best debut male award for his first film Band Baaja Baaraat, was one half of the "Hottest Pair" alongside co-star Anushka Sharma and during a night of sensational dance numbers on a spectacular light and sound backdrop including ones by Basu and a tribute to Bhosle by Priyanka Chopra, he stole the show with arguably the most energetic performance of the evening. Singh, who has relatives in Toronto, seemed taken aback by the rapturous reaction: "There's so much love, such a great reception here -- its awesome!"

Bipasha Basu performs during the 2011 IIFAs

For SRK, seconds must have crawled at a glacial pace during one bizarre moment early on in the show when an enthusiastic middle-aged fan rushed the stage and prostrated himself before arguably the world's biggest star. The audience, security staff and SRK's co-hosts might have thought this was one of the evenings many stunts and set pieces but when Khan started telling the man to ease up the pressure on his already wounded knee, fans had their certifiable moment of award show spontaneity.

SRK had much of the evening to himself, opening and closing the show despite the leg, and seeing his film My Name is Khan, an exploration of post-9/11 Indian experience in America, win awards for best story, direction and for his own role as leading male actor. Yet the overall winner was the Salman Khan vehicle Dabangg which cleaned up with 10 awards including best film.

Ranveer Singh, Anushka Sharma and Shahrukh Khan in the finale

For the latter Khan, Amitabh Bachchan -- the original face of global Bollywood -- his daughter-in-law, Aishwarya Rai (oft-called the most beautiful woman in the world), and the other stars who couldn't make it, their absence from Toronto was their loss. Despite a few disjointed moments during the weekend, the 2011 IIFAs were an enormous success by any measure of cost, exposure and excitement for both fans and stars, the city of Toronto and the industry of Bollywood.

Kangana Ranaut performs

The painfully long Indian Standard Time part? The show itself was an epic of Bollywood proportions, starting 90 minutes late and clocking in at a staggering five hours. Yet that didn't seem to faze too many in the audience as they filed out at two in the morning, stars still in their eyes.

Stars thank the audience at the end of the gala

2011 IIFA Award Winners
Best Film: Dabangg
Best Director: Karan Johar, My Name Is Khan
Best Actor: Shah Rukh Khan, My Name Is Khan
Best Actress: Anushka Sharma, Band Baaja Baaraat
Best Supporting Actor: Arjun Rampal, Raajneeti
Best Supporting Actress: Prachi Desai, Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai
Best Actor In A Comic Role: Riteish Deshmukh, Housefull
Best Performance In A Negative Role: Sonu Sood, Dabangg
Achievement In International Cinema: Irrfan Khan
Best Female Debut: Sonakshi Sinha, Dabangg
Best Male Debut: Ranveer Singh, Band Baaja Baaraat
Hottest Pair 2011: Anushka Sharma and Ranveer Singh
Outstanding Achievement in Indian Cinema: Sharmila Tagore
Best Screenplay Award: Abhinav Kashyap, Dilip Shukla, Dabangg
Best Female Playback Singer: Mamta Sharma, Munni Badnaam Hui in Dabangg
Best Male Playback Singer: Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Tere Mast Mast Do Nain, Dabangg
Best Music Direction: Sajid-Wajid and Lalit Pandit, Dabangg
Best Lyrics: Niranjan Iyengar for Saajda, My Name is Khan
Best Story Award: Shivani Bhatija, My Name is Khan
Best Costume Designing: Niharika Khan, Band Baaja Baaraat
Best Action: S Vijayan, Dabangg
Best Makeup: Banu (for actor Rajinikanth), Robot
Best Background Score: Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy, My Name Is Khan
Best Song Recording: Vijay Dayal, Ainvayi Ainvayi, Band Baaja Baaraat
Best Choreography Award: Farah Khan, Munni Badnaam, Dabangg
Best Editing: Namrata Rao, Band Baaja Baaraat
Best Sound Recording: Pritam Das, Love, Sex Aur Dhokha
Best Sound Re-recording: Leslie Fernandes, Dabangg
Best Cinematography: Sudeep Chatterjee, Guzaarish
Best Art Direction: Sabu Cyril, Robot
Best Special Effects: Indian Artists, Robot

Rise of Non-Resident Indians in Canada

2011-06-15T13:45:19-04:00

When US President Barack Obama visited India last November, he remarked, "India is not simply emerging; India has already emerged." He could have just as easily been speaking about another compelling aspect of the country: the growing profile of the "global Indian" diaspora.

Late last week, close to 1,000 delegates attended the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) or "Day of Overseas Indians" in Toronto. Jointly hosted by the Government of India and the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce, the PBD centered around the theme of "Building Bridges: Positioning Strategies for the Indian Diaspora". The two-day event brought together a raft of government ministers, officials, entrepreneurs, academics, business people and others to advance ties between the two countries.

Ostensibly focused on trade, investment and youth engagement, the event was just the latest in the rising narrative of India recognizing the latent value of having 27 million of its descendants scattered around the globe. From North America and the Caribbean to the United Kingdom, South Africa up the Great Lakes region to the Arabian Peninsula, and across the Pacific Rim, from Malaysia to Fiji, it is the largest diaspora in the world after China's (which was mock hissed by one wag during the introductory remarks). Its also grown steadily in stature as well as size: Aditya Jha, convener of the Canada-India Foundation and a major part of this year's organization noted that today's "Non-Resident Indian" or NRI community includes the President of Singapore, Prime Ministers of both Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago as well as the Governor General of New Zealand.

Despite traditional prohibitions against traversing the "kala pani", the dark waters of the open ocean, India has exported people for centuries, first as traders and merchants then indentured laborers and today as immigrants, students and professionals. Even the country's most famous citizen, Gandhi spent two decades living in South Africa. Yet for decades the government barely acknowledged those who left for better lives abroad.

Characteristic of its newfound "future superpower" status however, India has belatedly thrown the doors open with gusto, becoming one of a handful of nations to establish a ministry for the diaspora, granting citizenship privileges in a confusing alphabet soup of acronyms (NRIs, PIOs and OCIs), and in a recent nod to the youth component, launching the "Know India" programme. Akin to Birthright Israel, Know India is a three-week tour of the country for second and third-generation youth subsidized by the Indian government... despite the fact the country still accounts for 40 per cent of the world's poorest people.

In 2003, the government held the first PBD on Jan. 9 -- the day Gandhi returned from South Africa -- yet only started having them actually overseas a few years ago, starting with New York City in 2007 followed by Singapore, the Hague and most recently Durban, South Africa in a nod to that country's one million strong "Asians."

This year's PBD was part of the "Year of India in Canada", a series of exhibitions and events that started innocuously enough with slick airport bus ads in January then morphed into high level economic and political discussions over the spring leading up to the crown jewel of it all, the International Indian Film Academy Awards (the IIFAs, or the closest thing to Bollywood's Oscars).

Interestingly it was the Indian film industry as a whole that first ventured outside the country with the London premier of the IIFAs in 2000. This year's extravaganza will be held at Toronto's Rogers Centre in front of 60,000 live fans and up to 700 million worldwide on June 25.

Locally, the PBD means the emergence of Toronto on the "Indian global circuit" alongside traditional heavyweights like London, Singapore and especially New York according to Rana Sarkar, president of the Canada-India Business Council.

Though the diasporic communities of Canada and the United States emerged en masse following immigration reform in both countries in the 1960's, and the communities have made similar headway in medicine, law, engineering, IT and other industries, there are subtle differences between them, according to Dr. Alwyn Didar Singh, the Secretary for the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs: "In many ways the Indo-Canadian brand is stronger than the Indo-American brand for the simple reason that the Indo-Canadians moved into the political arena much quicker." (Indo-Canadians have been regularly elected to provincial and federal legislatures since the 1980's, with Ujjal Dosanjh becoming premier of British Columbia in 2000, five years before Bobby Jindal became governor of the state of Louisiana and later, Nikki Haley in South Carolina).

Singh continued:

"Because the majority of them are from Punjab you will see Indo-Canadians have a very strong connect and a very strong influence with the northern states of India. So a brand within that context is much stronger than the Indo-American brand in the same area. However If you look at the professional level, at the level of connect for IT, software and financial services you see the Indo-American brand has a slight edge because they came from Silicon Valley and invested back in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai so you have a much stronger Indo-American connect."

Wrapping it up on Friday, Singh called the Toronto PBD "probably the most successful one of all." And while it made some waves in the Indo-Canadian media, everyone knew it was just a warm up for next weekend's IIFAs, the biggest event in the Bollyverse.