Sikh Book Club – Uncle Swami – Part 1

Co-blogged by Jodha and Mewa.

See introduction here.

In order to give some format to this, I’ll attempt to summarize major points of each chapter and then conclude the post with a bit of my own thoughts, analysis, questions, and/or comments.  Looking forward to your comments and thoughts!  We’ll see how it goes for this first time and can revisit the format, if need be.

Chapter 1 – Letter to Uncle Swami

Professor Vijay Prasad opens his Uncle Swami with a provoking letter to the Uncle.  Uncle Swami may be the same as Uncle Sam or there may be some differences too.  Prasad takes stock of the past 10 years since the “planes crashed into your buildings.”

Written in an anti-imperialist vein, he writes “planes crash; people are smashed.”  The effects of that fateful September day were not limited to New York or Washington, to those nearly 3,000 people that died, or even their families.  No, Prasad writes “your feet stomped on your own ground, crushing Balbir Singh Sodhi and Gurcharanjeet Singh Anand, Imran Tahir and Ahmed Abualeinen.”  Nor were these feet only stomping on “your own ground” – they stomped “far-off Kabul and Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, and Herat, later Baghdad and Basra.”

But that “obedient servant” knows that Uncle Swami isn’t just stomping feet and whipping tails, he acknowledges “You have been good to me.  You have been good to many of us.”  Still he suffers – “I have heartburn, Uncle.  I will take to drink.  I will take to drugs.  I will take to watching TV, eating fast food, going into debt.”

Contradictions and all – this is Uncle Swami.