“The Indian Diaspora,” says the acclaimed Indian author Kiran Desai, “is a wonderful place to write from, and I am lucky to be a part of it.” To paraphrase Desai, a bit, the Indian Diaspora is also wonderful to write on. Westwards or eastwards, from San Francisco to Singapore, and several continents in between, there is so much happening in the Indian Diaspora that we will be failing in our duty if we do not track some of it, given especially that we have been arguably the first predominantly Diaspora-focused magazine published since October 2004 from India.

In this issue, we’ve an exhaustive and extensive Diaspora segment, cutting across geographies. Varun Ghosh, 38, became the first-ever Australian Senator to take oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita. Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong wrote on Ghosh with more than a tinge of humor on X, mentioning, “I have often said, when you’re the first at something, you’ve got to make sure you’re not the last.” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that Ghosh, a barrister at Francis Burt Chambers, will be a “great voice” for the Western Australian seat that he represents. “I was so pleased to support your candidacy…fantastic to have you on the team,” he mentioned. Ghosh is the second Indian-origin Senator in Australia after Dave Sharma (NSW) whom we covered in the January 2024 edition.

Neena Singh has become the first Indian-American woman to be sworn in as the Mayor of Montgomery Township in the US state of New Jersey. She was unanimously selected to serve as mayor by her fellow township committee members. Indian-American New Jersey State Senator Vin Gopal sent a congratulatory video in which he said, “For every young South Asian girl growing up not just in Montgomery but across New Jersey, they’re going to have a true role model to look up to.”

Indian-American Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, 46, has been named again to serve as the US’s representative on the executive board of the World Health Organization (WHO) by President Joe Biden. He will serve in his new position alongside his continued duties as the country’s Surgeon General. Elsewhere, entrepreneur and philanthropist Sunil Wadhwani, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, in late January made an endowment of INR 110 crore towards setting up the Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the institution.

UK’s first Indian-origin PM Rishi Sunak shared his experiences of facing racism as a child, saying his parents sent him for extra drama lessons so that he could “speak properly” without an accent to fit into society. In an interview with Anushka Asthana of ITV News, Sunak recalled the pain of hearing slurs directed at his younger siblings, adding that racism “stings” and “hurts in a way that other things don’t”, The Guardian reported.

Indian-American Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley, the lone challenger left against former US President Donald Trump, has formally requested Secret Service protection citing “multiple issues,” the BBC reported. The former South Carolina Governor and United Nations ambassador discussed the request for protection during an interview with The Wall Street Journal in early February. “We’ve had multiple issues. It’s not going to stop me from doing what I need to do,” she said after a campaign event in Aiken, South Carolina. “When you do something like this, you get threats. It’s just the reality. That’s not going to deter me. Does it mean we have to put a few more bodies around this? Yes, that’s fine,” she told the paper.

There is also a pick of business stories that you can run through in this issue. Hope it’s a good read.

Sayantan Chakravarty
sayantanc@gmail.com