The Birth
of a Powerful Indian Lobby
By Riaz Haq
President
NED Alumni Association of Silicon Valley
CA
Last Saturday on October 6,
2007, I was invited to attend the inaugural conference
of Indo-American Council (IAC) by my Indian friend,
Dr. Hasan Kamil, a Silicon Valley venture investor
and a graduate of Aligarh Muslim University, MIT
and Berkeley. Dr. Hasan Kamil's wife, Talat, an
accomplished entrepreneur in her own right, was
a co-chair of the conference along with Vinod
Dham who I have known as a highly accomplished
individual and as a former colleague at Intel.
Kamil ,Vinod and I are also charter members of
TIE, the Indus entrepreneurs organization. The
event was held at the Indian Cultural Center (ICC),
Silicon Valley, CA. The ICC is housed in a very
impressive new building with excellent facilities
including a large well-equipped auditorium, classrooms,
conference rooms, a fitness center, a snack bar
with an ample lobby for schmoozing, politicking
and deal-making . The agenda, the speakers and
the turn-out was even more impressive than the
venue. A lot of the work in organizing this event
was done by Saima, daughter of Kamil and Talat
and a senior at Stanford along with other young,
rising Indians.
The first keynote was by Steve Westley, a wealthy
former EBay executive and the former controller
of California state with ambitions to become governor
or senator. It was obvious that he has had close
connections with the Indian community during his
election campaigns. He talked about the success
of the IIT system which has produced a large number
of very successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
These IIT alumni have produced a lot of wealth
and now ready to turn the financial strength into
political clout for the Indo-American community.
He described India as sharing the values of embracing
diversity and democracy with the United States.
In addition to the normal pandering, he advised
the audience to follow the example of the Jewish
community and their tremendous success in the
United States. He compared the ICC to the JCC
(Jewish Community Center) in Palo Alto and other
parts of the United States. ICCs combined with
IAC will serve as a vehicle for the Indian community
to get involved in public service and the political
process in the same way that JCCs have done by
joining forces with AIPAC, the Isareli lobby.
Then he went on to elaborate on the political
"clout" of AIPAC in the United States
and talked about how Indians can take "a
leaf from AIPAC's playbook".
The next speaker was Gavin Newsom, the mayor of
San Francisco. Newsom also talked about India's
embrace of broad religious and ethnic diversity
and spoke of Gandhi as one of his heroes. He said"
Tolerating diversity is not enough. We must embrace
and celebrate it" as is done in San Francisco
and preached and practiced by Gandhi.
Then there was a panel discussions including elected
officials of Indian origin in various cities and
states of the United States. They were quite inspirational
in their description of how they succeeded in
various parts of the United States including the
heartland such as the mid-western
states of Kansas and Missouri where very few Indians
or minorities live. I heard interesting anecdotes
such as one by Swati Dandekar elected to the Iowa
legislature as a Democrat in a heavily Republican
district. She went knocking on doors to ask for
votes. As she knocked on one of the doors, a man
came out and told her he does not vote for women.
"Well, my opponent is also a woman."
She said in a heavy Indian accent. He responded,
"then I'll skip voting." Later on, he
had a problem and called Dandekar and asked "Do
you remember me." She did and then helped
him out by solving his problem and he became a
convert. She was re-elected for her seat.
I didn't stay after this session but the roster
of speakers in the afternoon was very impressive
as well. They had Barak Obama via video link,
US Representatives Lofgren and Honda in person.
As the Indians take a leaf from the Jewish playbook,
so should we as Pakistani-Americans. So far Pakistanis'
focus has been on building only mosques. We should
continue building mosques but we need to expand
our focus to include building Pakistani-American
community centers and participating in the political
process as Pakistani-Americans. A modest beginning
has been made by the efforts of NEDian Asghar
Aboobaker to inaugurate Pakistani-American Cultural
Center in Sunnyvale, CA. I think our second generation
of Pakistani-Americans need to be inspired to
go beyond the work done by the first generation
in the public service arena. I signed up and had
my daughters Amber and Michelle participate to
be inspired by the attendees at this conference.
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