Disney producer Gary Gero held auditions for the lead in South Asian population centers all over the world, including London, New York, LA, and SF. In the end we got a Chinese/Filipino actor under brown shoe polish and a mop of false hair. Disney had said in its casting call that no experience was necessary, just a "Mowgli face." Turns out that Gero was watching Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story when he found that "Mowgli face" in Jason Scott Lee. After all, one Asian's as good as another, right?

The irony here is tremendous. Losing Asian roles to white actors was Bruce Lee's lifelong bane. He was passed over in favor of David Carradine, an Irishman, for "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues." There are still legions of burly white men with badly pasted mustaches, shaved heads and pigtails playing the Mongolian Horde in films as recent as The Shadow. And today, Bruce Lee's reincarnation plays a South Asian caricature. It's interethnic poaching, just further down the food chain.

Make no mistake, films are a hotbed of racism. Just ask the half-desi actor who played South Asia's best known public figure. Ben Kingsley had to change his birthname, Krishna Banji, to land the role of Gandhi. Said the actor, "The producers were probably finding it difficult how to accommodate the name Krishna Banji in any role. [Changing my name] worked wonders. ... Yes, prejudice is the appropriate word, I think." Desi became white to play desi on celluloid.

But don't get me wrong. I'm quite glad that a South Asian didn't end up with the role. Karim in Hanif Kureishi's book The Buddha of Suburbia plays Mowgli as well. He describes his humiliation at having to dress up in a loincloth and brownface and run around a jungle speaking pidgin English. No, a desi Mowgli would have had a lot to live down.

Indeed, the theme of British civilization vs. Indian savagery wends its way throughout this film. Disney press releases describe Mowgli as "a young man raised since childhood by wild animals in the jungles of India." (Isn't that how you and I were brought up?) The film is about "the classic theme of jungle law versus the law of civilized man." Lee calls the film "a love story about the relationship between man and animals." Starched khakis vs. filthy loincloth: Disney swaddles its man and its savage in organic fibers.

This simple-mindedness is not limited to Disney's neocolonialist plot. It's a thespian shorthand, a preference for invoking stereotypes over reality. Directors cater to intellectual laziness. They show a caricature and the audience thinks, "Jungles, snakes -- ok, we're in India." Distortion? That's what films are all about.

Director Sommers described how he created his "authentic" Indian backdrops: "I wanted a romantic, beautiful and lush jungle with lots of cliffs and waterfalls and peaks and valleys,
and that was just not to be found in India. So we ended up creating our jungle by going to four different locations on two continents." He placed much of the action in the "Lost City of Hanuman," a creation that melds Atlantis, Mayan ziggurats and the Temple of Doom. Sommers' lead has played characters that are Vietnamese, Korean, Eskimo, and Polynesian. Ethnicity in Hollywood, it seems, is prét-a-portèr.

Perhaps the strangest example of The Jungle Book's legerdemain is its treatment of its animal stars. "One of the back-up bears, Casey, is actually a North American black bear," said animal supervisor Gary Gero, "so whenever he works we have to apply makeup on him because Baloo is established as a brown bear." I don't know whether this makeover is Chia Pets or Secret Hair, but woe unto they who dare spray-paint a bear.

The problem with these portrayals is that they are out of context. When "In Living Color" takes on Italians, it's a culture we're already familiar with. When Monty Python makes fun of the British, it's a culture we've heard more than enough of. But when South Asians are criticized, there is nothing to balance that image. There is no Anti-Defamation League for South Asians, and most Americans have had little personal interaction with us. Nothing tugs at the brain, nothing provokes disbelief.

In fact, when Americans dig into their brains for any reference to South Asians, they inevitably come up with three images: Krishna, ganja, and Calcutta -- myths, hippies, and poverty.

The worst of them reside in South Asian departments at leading universities, South Asia groupies who'd much rather teach their Defense Department-funded theses from the Cold War than tackle South Asia as it is today, who'd rather probe the psychosexual fringes of the Krishna myth than deal with cold, hard reality. These people are in love with the idea of cultural masala, not with the culture itself. They hot-tub together in mutual multicultural masturbation. They are intellectual tourists, a gaggle of gawkers with loud shirts, pasty legs and cheap cameras who stop off in "fabulous" places watching "exotic" dances and "quaint" traditions, having a "marvelous" time, all the while comprehending not a single damn thing. Look at them, know them, burn their faces into your memory -- they are the same professors getting tenure, while South Asians teaching South Asian topics are forever passed over for promotion.

Make no mistake. They appropriate our culture and reject our people.

A couple of months ago, I heard of a lecture on dowry and bride-burning to be held at a reputable local university. Several friends and I came and found a portly German visiting professor expounding on the theme of dowry in ancient Sanskrit literature. He was a visiting prof with a rich British accent, sterling credentials, and an endowment paying his expenses. However, his Sanskrit pronunciation was atrocious, his theme totally incomprehensible. He spent the entire lecture reading from a jargon-filled paper about old stories which tangentially mentioned dowry.

The restless South Asian audience endured his oration, then bombarded him with questions about the modern social problem of dowry demands. He answered every question with a helpless, "I'm not qualified to answer that, I really don't know." For someone who'd spent decades studying South Asia, he was surprisingly ill informed about current events in the region. A scholarly command of the Upanishads and deconstructionism does not by itself translate into a comprehension of South Asia or South Asians.

There had been a disconnect somewhere. The audience had expected a lecture on modern-day South Asia. After all, they'd come to see a professor whom the South Asian studies department held up as one of the best in their field. Taxpayer money and private donations had gone towards inviting this man to speak. The socially conscious among them relished the chance to hear an informed opinion about how to cure South Asian societies of this evil of bride-burning.

Instead, they sat through a paper on musty old stories by a professor who knew nothing of modern South Asia. Why? Because that's what sells. Ladies and gentlemen, South Asians are being swindled in a big way. At least three leading universities have established South Asian studies endowments across this country in the last couple of years. South Asian parents have donated large sums hoping that their kids will be able to study modern-day South Asia, her languages and dance forms, from distinguished South Asian historians, language teachers, and artists. Instead that money is going directly to support papers on the Rama's Oedipal tendencies. The South Asian studies establishment in the U.S. caters not to South Asians, but rather to predominantly white culture-sampling free spirits. It caters to itself.

He wanted my name and phone number.

When he started in on his lunch with the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, I bolted. His gastronomic encounters didn't sit easy on my stomach. My friend leaned over and whispered confidentially, "Indophile. Happens all the time." It wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last.

Geeta Mehta details the extent of the hippie infatuation with South Asia in her classic book, Karma Cola. Westerners seek instant salvation; Easterners the quick rupee. Gurus could pack entire astrodomes in the '60s, levitation was believed to signal salvation, and Western disciples believed above all else in moksha through easy sex and hard drugs. At one point there were over 100,000 hippies trekking all over South Asia searching for enlightenment in woolly-minded religious platitudes and a variety of uppers and downers. Religion and opium for the masses: no wonder Sherborn, Massachusetts, would have none of it.

Sherborn is the town where a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, peacemaker, spawned two death threats and a legal challenge in January this year. Residents of Sherborn were incensed that the statue of Gandhi had been erected next to a war memorial. Columnist Alex Beam of the Boston Globe called Gandhi a "simpering second-rate peacenik" and claimed his message of peace was an insult to the Revolutionary War town of Sherborn: "Sure, he freed 100 million people, but at the end of the day he was just another yellow-belly who never picked up a gun." A hippie, not a peacemaker -- this is how Gandhi plays in much of America.

Hippie beliefs have mutated into the New Age, which continues to feed the fascination with the lore of South Asia. The sale and bastardization of South Asian traditions is a big business. Watered down South Asian food, music, and philosophy play much better in suburbia than do the originals. Not only is this view of South Asia inaccurate, it is also outdated: hardly anybody is interested in the South Asia of today. There are five times as many classes on Harappa and Hanuman as there are on South Asian politics and economics. Those who do take the time to read about South Asia find condescending books by Barbara Crossette, V.S. Naipaul, or Mother Teresa, and come away with an impression of crushing poverty and an attitude of superciliousness.

Yet the Kobe earthquake in January elicited two weeks of glossy, sympathetic, eight-page stories across American media. It was reported in a manner usually reserved for American disasters, and never accorded to similar earthquakes in India or the Soviet Union. What had changed? Yes, the Japanese economy is in a downturn; yes, the U.S. auto industry has regained some market share. But the real change was in our perception of the Japanese. They had earned our respect as civilized, First World, developed -- rich -- and we were willing to share in their misfortunes.

And this one event holds the key for changing the way that Americans perceive and portray South Asians. Absent inoculations of mythology, New Age dogma, or personal interaction with South Asians, people's perception of South Asia itself determines how they treat us. In terms of strict self-interest, we South Asian Americans must change the perceptions of South Asia if we are to be treated with respect in this country. Since respect accrues primarily from economic power, it is the economic arena we must concentrate on first.

Today, India is in the midst of sweeping economic reforms and widespread privatization. These are heady times for India, which is currently pondering a foreign exchange surplus. U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown just returned from a trade trip to India that created $7 billion in new business. India needs to build infrastructure, both physical and virtual -- roads, bridges, telephones, wireless networks. American companies in these businesses are tripping all over themselves to sign deals in India.

The political spillover has been just as positive. Mindful of the growing economic importance of India and the economic clout of Indian Americans, politicians are toeing a pro-India line. Political candidates met frequently with the Indian American community during the 1994 campaign season. Politicos who never before expressed much of an opinion on Indian politics are now finding it safer to be for India than against. For example, the Pressler amendment denying F-16's to Pakistan staved off repeal by a comfortable margin.

Karl Marx held that an economic analysis of history held the most answers, and he was correct. What decades of cultural education and activism by Indians could not correct, economic power has righted in a fraction of the time. Anything that South Asian Americans do to aid our home countries economically has a direct, beneficial effect on how we are treated in the U.S. There are all sorts of discretionary situations in which prejudiced attitudes are expressed, and they cut across all class boundaries: meeting new people, interviewing for a job, asking for a promotion, interacting with police. To the extent that South Asia is viewed with respect, so are South Asians.

The South Asian/American Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to my dual homelands, and I hereby promise:

1. To help South Asia progress economically via business deals and technology transfers. Given its effectiveness over the last four years, this is our number one priority. Besides, South Asian Americans are uniquely positioned to profit from business deals with our homelands.

2. To set aside the maze of fractures within our communities and unite as South Asians. Remember, others don't distinguish between Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Nepali, or Indian. We are all brown to them.

3. To defend South Asia and South Asians against unfair and ill-informed attacks in the media. Because our numbers are small and our protests pitifully weak, we are frequently lampooned in ways that other ethnicities would not stand for.

4. To pressure South Asian nations in resolving parochial political conflicts on the subcontinent which stand in the way of economic progress. Shared economic prosperity and interdependence has a way of soothing rivalries.

5. To help South Asia progress socially by working with and contributing to schools and organizations which attack social ills. Many of these problems are caused by the general economic health of the region.

6. To help reform South Asian nations' institutions, concentrating on abuses by law enforcement and the courts, political and bureaucratic corruption, and the grossly inefficient civil service system.

7. To personally work for political power in the U.S. to help achieve these ends.

8. To work with other minority organizations towards our common goals. We owe a large debt to the communities and organizations of the civil rights movement. This movement changed racist immigration laws, which is why most of us are in the U.S. today.
   

It is our duty as South Asian Americans to pave the way for future generations. We are just beginning to show up on the radar screen in the U.S., and we are economically powerful: this is an incredible opportunity to shape our future. The danger is that we slip into comfortable, middle-class complacency and let this opportunity pass us by. We must not allow the U.S. turn into the U.K. or Canada, where racism against South Asians is generally acknowledged to be a major problem. Today, the biggest safe havens for South Asians are South Asia itself and the U.S. Our destinies are inevitably intertwined: if South Asia advances, so do we.

Wish I may, wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight.

Next time: The "Hindoo Peril"; following Taiwan.