As the American economy limped its way out of a recession, Indian-Americans may not have fared as badly as the general population, largely because of their high level of education and economic status. However, crimes committed by members of the community cast a shadow over it, and a massive tragedy engulfed the community in sadness when a white supremacist opened fire in a gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wis., killing six Sikh devotees on Aug. 5.
Rising Tide
Nevertheless, in hindsight, 2012 could qualify as the year of the Indian-American at least so far as politics and social indicators go. The U.S. Census showed Indian-Americans growing rapidly in numbers and rising from strength to strength – the most educated, wealthy and adaptable, settling around the country. A June 2012 Pew Research Center study titled “The Rise of Asian Americans” showed Indian-Americans had a median household income of $88,000 compared to $66,000 for all Asian-Americans and $49,000 for the general U.S. population; 32 percent of Indian-Americans had a bachelor’s degree and 38 percent had an advanced degree, compared to 29 percent and 20 percent, respectively, for Asians, and 18 percent and 10 percent, respectively, for the U.S. population as a whole.
Maturing Community
As proof the community has arrived, a study of Asian-Americans and their faiths by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, showed Asian-American Hindus were a pretty balanced and even secular lot. While 78 percent have shrines in their homes, only 48 percent pray daily and just 19 percent attend services weekly. While 95 percent celebrate Diwali, 73 percent also celebrate Christmas. Even as they appeared more secular, however, Asian-American Hindus were a somewhat insular lot, least likely to marry outside their community, as compared to Asian-American Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists or the unaffiliated.
Youth
Indian-American youth scored well in national competitions be it the Spelling Bee or the Geography Bee, the Google Science Fair, or the Intel Science Talent Contest. In March 2012, Nithin Tumma, 17, of Fort Gratiot, Mich., whose research could lead to less toxic and more effective breast cancer treatments, received the top award of $100,000 at the Intel Science Talent Search. In May, the top 3 winners of the Scripps National Spelling Bee were Indian-Americans. Snigdha Nandipati, 14, of San Diego, Calif., won the grand prize; Stuti Mishra, 14, of West Melbourne, Fla., came second; and Arvind Mahankali, 12, of Bayside Hills, N.Y., came third. Though the grand prize did not go to an Indian-American in the 2012 Google Science Fair, five Indian-American kids qualified as finalists in the 13-14 age group; two in the 15-16 age group; and one in the 17-18 age group.
In High Places
Several Indian-Americans left high positions in the Obama administration after a grueling three to four years. Among them were Preeta Bansal, an adviser in the Office of Management and Budget; Vivek Kundra, the chief information officer; Aneesh Chopra, the chief technology officer; and Suresh Kumar, secretary for trade promotion and director general of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service. Several others were appointed to various positions by the president: Smita Singh was named to the Global Development Council; Sachin Dev Pavithran, a blind man, to the Architectural and Transportation Compliance Board; Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe Systems, to the President’s Management Advisory Board; businessman Romesh Wadhwani to the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Ranee Ramaswamy to the National Council on the Arts. In March, President Obama nominated Paula Gangopadhyay to the National Museum and Library Services Board and Sonny Ramaswamy as director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in the Department of Agriculture. USAID chief Rajiv Shah continued in his position, the highest of any Indian-American in the administration.
The White House recognized the nation’s scientists, engineers and technologists, among them former IBM researcher Rangaswamy Srinivasan who got the 2012 National Medal of Technology and Innovation for his breakthrough in laser surgery techniques. On Feb. 13, President Obama presented Nobel laureate Amartya Sen the national award in the fields of arts and humanities.
The two Indian-American governors, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina, continued to shine on the national political stage. After the November general elections, Jindal took on the mantle of chairman of the National Republican Governors’ Association. Haley came out victorious despite, or because of, her show of independence as an early supporter of presidential candidate Mitt Romney and her opposition to Obamacare.
Some politicians listened to the well-heeled community as surveys warned that Indian-Americans should not be ignored with more than 30 percent apparently “undecided” and therefore a “swing” vote in the presidential election. Not so, as the community came out overwhelmingly in support of President Obama, giving him some 65 percent of its vote.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties highlighted Indian-American candidates, praising their fund-raising prowess. Republicans made much of 25-year-old wunderkind Ricky Gill of California’s San Joaquin Valley, naming him a “Young Gun” holding great political promise; Democrats raised the stature of candidates such as California’s Dr. Ami Bera, Pennsylvania’s Dr. Manan Trivedi and New Jersey Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula.
Some Firsts
All of this culminated Nov. 6, in the election to the U.S. Congress of Bera. A highlight for Hindus was the election of Iraq war veteran Tulsi Gabbard, a practicing Hindu though not of Indian origin. Meanwhile, Aneesh Chopra, who quit as the nation’s chief technology officer in early 2012, declared his run for Virginia’s lieutenant governor in 2013.
In a historic move, Obama nominated U.S. Principal Deputy Solicitor General Srikanth “Sri” Srinivasan to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. If confirmed, Srinivasan would be the first Indian-American or South Asian to sit on a federal circuit court bench.
The U.S. Senate on May 7 confirmed the nomination of Ajit Varadaraj Pai, a Republican, to serve on the board of the Federal Communications Commission.
Indian-Americans made it to virtually all Forbes magazine lists of America’s richest, and Indian-American small business generated healthy revenues in a down economy. Five Indian-Americans were on Forbes magazine’s 400 Richest Americans list – Bharat Desai of Syntel; Romesh Wadhwani of Symphony Technology Group; Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures; Ramesh Bhargava of 5-Hour Energy; and Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures. Fortune’s 2012 top businesspersons list included Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard; and Deepak Narula, managing partner at hedge fund Metacapital Management; apart from Chanda Kochar, head of India’s ICICI bank.
Attorney Bernadette D’Souza, 57, originally from Goa, became the first Indian-American judge in Louisiana, starting March 1, also becoming the first permanent Family Court Judge at Civil District Court in New Orleans.
Physicist Kumble R. Subbaswamy was selected to take over as chancellor of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in April, and began his tenure on June 1, one of a growing number of top Indian-American administrators of major universities around the country.
In May, Pradeep Khosla, dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, was appointed chancellor of the University of California at San Diego; from July 1, Ajay Nair, senior associate vice provost for student affairs at the University of Pennsylvania, began his tenure as senior vice president and dean of campus life at Emory University in Atlanta.
In the world of entertainment, Mindy Kaling became the only Indian American to get a sitcom of her own - The Mindy Project.
Professor Rajeev Alur of the University of Pennsylvania and his team secured a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation to accomplish a mission enabling eighth-graders to become computer programmers; Dr. Jay Shendure, associate professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, and his team successfully reconstructed the whole genome sequence of a human fetus, their findings opening up the possibility of prenatally evaluating a fetus for all single gene or “Mendelian” disorders with a noninvasive test that could replace invasive procedures like amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling.
Disappointments
Despite these seeming victories, there were significant disappointments for the community. At least 9 percent of Indian-Americans continued living on or below the poverty line; activists cautioned against typecasting a “model” minority because many of those they helped were Indians who lost their homes or worked multiple jobs and tightened their belts like most Americans.
Several Indian-Americans were involved in high-profile and lesser crimes, from insider trading to health care fraud. Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, continued his zealous investigations on Wall Street fraud and caught and prosecuted more white-collar criminals. The “Street Fighter” made the cover of Time magazine in February. Among his top cases was that of former McKinsey & Co. head and Goldman Sachs Director Rajat Gupta, who was sentenced for two years for passing insider information to former hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, who is serving an 11-year sentence. Gupta, however, is out on bail while he appeals the verdict. Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager at SAC Capital Advisors LP of Stamford, Conn., was accused in November, in the biggest insider trading fraud totaling $276 million, outdoing Rajaratnam; numerous physicians, their assistants, and those they employed as recruiters of patients, were indicted or pleaded guilty in Medicare fraud nationwide.
Crime
The crime spree began with a Hindu temple and a mosque being among four sites firebombed on New Year’s Day 2012 in Queens, N.Y. No one was injured but the incidents mobilized state and local authorities with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg declaring no stone would be left unturned in the investigation. Law enforcement arrested Ray Lazier Lengend, an unemployed truck driver, on Jan. 3. He wanted to take out “as many Muslims and Arabs as possible” with his Molotov cocktails when he hit the Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Queens, New York Daily News reported. Then, on Jan. 4, Jerry Ramrattan, 39, the ex-private eye who framed his former girlfriend in staged armed robberies after she charged him with rape, was sentenced to 32 years in prison. In June, Krittibas Ray, former manager of an investment firm, who pleaded guilty in federal court in San Francisco on March 30, was sentenced to five years and five months in prison and fined nearly $3 million for running a multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme.
Some landmark cases brought by maids of diplomats also made the news. In March, a U.S. judge recommended that diplomats Neena Malhotra and her husband Jogesh Malhotra, pay $1.5 million in compensation for allegedly mistreating and overworking their former maid Shanti Gurung.
On Jan. 24, five Indian-Americans were among nine health care professionals in Michigan, indicted in a kickback scheme that paid employees and outsiders to refer patients to specific clinics and outpatient facilities. In February, Mohammad Khan, 62, a Texas hospital administrator and his alleged co-conspirators, were indicted for Medicare fraud to the tune of $116 million. In May, a nationwide takedown by the government’s Medicare Fraud Strike Force in seven cities netted 107 alleged fraudsters, including doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals, including at least more than 10 persons of Indian and South Asian origin. The vast number of cases involved $452 million in false Medicare billings, the highest amount in a single takedown in strike force history, according to the Justice Department.
Three Chicago-area physicians of South Asian origin, Drs. Farzana Begum, Fauzia Lodhi and Kamal Patel, were indicted June 27 for allegedly participating in a scheme to pay and receive kickbacks to the tune of more than $1 million in exchange for the referral of Medicare patients for home health care services.
In July, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged five physicians of Indian origin with insider trading in the securities of an East Lansing, Mich.-based holding company, American Physicians Capital Inc. for a medical professional liability insurer. They included Apparao Mukkamala, Jitendra Prasad Katneni, Rao A.K. Yalamanchili and Mallikarjunarao Anne. The physicians agreed to pay a combined total of more than $1.9 million to settle the charges.
A bizarre case involved Annie George, a widow living in a multimillion-dollar 30,000-square-foot estate with 24-karat gold gilded ceilings and a glass elevator, in Saratoga County, upstate New York, who was accused in March of keeping an illegal alien as a maid in her home and treating her inhumanely for six years from 2005 to 2011, when federal agents rescued the woman from the home.
Former Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi, accused of a bias crime after he webcast his roommate Tyler Clementi’s gay sexual encounter, was sentenced in May to 30 days, served time and was released. Some Indian-Americans believed justice was not served by making Ravi a national symbol of cyber bullying. The community also continued to press for justice in the impending trial of four teens in New Jersey accused in the fatal beating of 49-year-old Divyendu Sinha in Old Bridge, N.J.
