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To Silicon Valley Indian Entrepreneurs

Where Are You When the South Asian Community Needs You?

By Raj Jayadev/PNS

As I watched the gathering of 30 or so Bangladeshi Hindus protest against Islamic fundamentalism in a downtown park, a white Toyota crept up slowly. From the driver’s seat a middle-aged white man yelled, “We should kill all of you!” and sped away.

It seems that whether you’re Muslim, Hindu, Bangladeshi or Afghani, Americans hell-bent on hating brown-skinned foreigners assume you’re linked to Osama bin Laden. An Indian gas station owner in Arizona is widely regarded as the first backlash murder post-Sept. 11 victim. South Asians nationwide are being attacked or profiled for being suspiciously “Arab-looking.”

Due to their economic and political muscle in the United States, South Asians should be well positioned to beat back the rising tide of discrimination. But here in the Bay Area, the loudest civic voice of the community — Indian American venture capitalists and high-tech CEOs — has been conspicuously silent since Sept. 11. The question vulnerable South Asians I work with ask of these so-called civic leaders is: Where are you now that we need you?

Indians have been part of the American tapestry since the early 1820s, when they worked on farms and railroads, but started gaining prominence in American society in the 1960s. Indian scientists and engineers were brought over during the Cold War, when the United States feared falling behind Russia in military technology.

As the information technology (IT) industry exploded in the 1990s, Indian Americans were at the forefront. By the end of the decade, Indian American IT professionals owned or were in top management positions at 40 percent of all Silicon Valley start-ups, and had a net worth of $62 billion.

Along with tremendous economic power came unprecedented political clout for an immigrant group. The gravity of Indian American civic engagement redefined modern immigration law. In 2000, Congress raised the quota of the highly skilled work visa (called H-1B) to 195,000, from 115,000 only a year before. Half of the estimated 420,000 foreign professionals currently working in the United States on H-1B visas are Indian.

By the last presidential election, Indian American IT professionals were being courted shamelessly by both the Democratic and Republican parties. In mid-September of 2000, President Bill Clinton held two luncheons in Indian American homes in the Bay Area, and received a $1 million donation to the Democrats in a single afternoon. Indian Americans had arrived as a major player in U.S. politics — America’s newest and richest “model minority.”

Much of the civic identity of Indian American elites has emerged from The IndUS Entrepreneur (TiE), a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting Indian American business growth. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, TiE has chapters all over the world.

TiE’s biggest pre-Sept. 11 move was to raise relief funds for the earthquake in Gujarat, India. TiE was also instrumental in facilitating an Indian American candlelight vigil in Silicon Valley for the victims of Sept. 11 shortly after the attack.

But since that event, Silicon Valley TiE and well-known Indian professionals have said little about racial profiling or hate crimes, or a “war against terrorism” that is deeply intertwined with South Asia.

“We have decided not to engage in politics,” says TiE co-founder and prominent angel investor Kanwal Rekhi, who raises venture capital for start-ups led by Indians.

This position has not gone unnoticed by many lesser-known South Asian groups struggling to bring their concerns to a broader audience. The Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA), a Bay Area media advocacy, education and outreach group, recently brought together South Asian and Arab American high school students to figure out protection strategies against on-campus hate crimes.

Through ASATA, Deepak Lal, a 28-year-old resident of Union City, has been attending Indian festivals and places of worship since Sept. 11 to let people know their legal rights with respect to hate crimes. “I know TiE says they are not a political organization, but meanwhile the Indian cab driver is feeling the effects, whether he’s political or not,” Lal says. “These influential South Asian groups who already have connections to congressmen and senators need to say something.”

Raj Desai, executive director of TiE, acknowledged the group’s silence. “Clearly we have not had a public face after the events of Sept. 11, even though we are such an important organization,” he says. “We are shying away until we have a clear policy, which the international board is currently drafting.”

“TiE is in a bind because they have worked so hard to appeal to the mainstream,” says a young TiE member who is the CEO of a Bay Area e-commerce company. “If they say something other than the mainstream, it might be considered pro-Taliban.” The entrepreneur requested anonymity for fear that his funding from South Asian venture capitalists might run dry if he was identified.

When asked if he is concerned about how the recent political instability of the region might affect business, Desai says, “Actually we are relieved that the U.S. is cleaning up the region. It should lead to opportunities that the lack of democracy and terrorism stopped before.”

Rekhi, who personally spearheaded the creation of two TiE chapters in Pakistan, agrees. “This is a historic opportunity to put behind the region’s unproductive past. Having the U.S. aroused in the region can help catapult it forward.”

For Silicon Valley, Rekhi sees the aftermath of Sept. 11 as providing a potential new market to aid the ailing high-tech economy. “Security issues such as ID cards, checking visitors who come to the U.S., etc., can be a huge boost for high-tech industry,” he says. In fact, Indian immigrants are once again finding themselves in business with U.S. security and military entities. Famous Indian American entrepreneur Nimish Mehta of Mountain View’s Stratify recently received millions of dollars of funding from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, for his latest project, a superpowered search engine.

Rekhi does not regard racial profiling as a major problem. “Profiling is just the nature of things, and for the hate crimes, you have to let the passions pass.” Both Rekhi and Desai claim individual members have been publicly denouncing hate crimes against South Asian Americans. But a personal denunciation just isn’t the same as an organizational one.

As the words of the Toyota driver echo in my head, I, for one, am calling on the most influential members of our community to go beyond promotion of their business interests and act like true civic leaders.

PNS contributor Raj Jayadev (svdebug@pacificnews.org) is editor of www.siliconvalleydebug.com, the voice of young workers, writers and artists in Silicon Valley.