Parmatma Saran: I am Parmatma Saran. I have the title of chairperson of this conference, generosity of Dr. Tam. 90% of the work has been done by him and his staff, but he asked me to take care of a few things here. First of all, because of weather, we are a little bit behind. We are still expecting some other guests, but we will get started. Before I say anything about the conference I would like to invite my very old friend and a great scholar, our chairperson, Dr. Betty Sung, to extend greetings on behalf of the institute.
Betty Lee Sung: Good morning. It’s so good to see all of you, and you have made it through this stormy, stormy weather. I’m sorry, don’t look at that clock though. That clock is not right. We’re not that far behind. It is my very pleasant duty and honor as chair of this Asian American Asian Research Institute to open this conference on South Asians and to welcome each and every one of you, especially those who have traveled some distance to come and make their presentations. I understand somebody came as far as from California. In many ways, AAARI, which is an acronym for the institute, is at the vanguard in putting together this conference on South Asians. One, because they are more recent comers to the United States, and second, because there has been so little attention paid to them. Americans are notorious for their ignorance about peoples and cultures of other lands. Their concept of the world is Eurocentric and U.S.-centric. The rest of the world barely exists. Unfortunately, as globalization gallops ahead, this country is paying a price for that ignorance. We hope this conference, in some ways, opens the curtains for us to the sub-Continent of India and South Asia. We have some distinguished and learned scholars to make their presentations today. So please consult your program for their names and topics. We want to thank Professor Parmatma Saran for chairing this conference and especially to our Executive Director Dr. Thomas Tam and his very dedicated staff for putting all this together. So today we hope we’ll have a very successful conference. I’m sorry, I think more of the people will be coming later, as you can see from the long list of registrants we have, which the weather has deterred from coming. So welcome again, and have a nice day. Thank you.
Parmatma Saran: Thank you, Betty. I just wanted to share some hard parts about this conference. As you know, we have been in business for quite some time. We have organized a number of conferences and symposiums, workshops and all that. And it is known as Asian American Asian Research Institute. And in spite of our best efforts, we have not been able to attract as many Asian groups as we would like to. We of course have very good representation of Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans, Filipinos, and many other groups. South Asians are also getting there. India has good representation. But this is the first time we have tried to attract scholars as members of the community and leaders from other South Asian communities, and I am pleased to inform you that at least we have some representation from Pakistan and Bangladesh. We were hoping to get someone from Nepal and Sri Lanka as well, but this time we didn’t have luck.
It so happens, I am a late starter. I never start my classes until 1:00 or 2:00. So that whenever I have something in the morning, I accept someone’s hospitality in the city. And my daughter lives next door, so last night I was at her place. I knew that something was coming out, but my daughter had a copy of Newsweek, this week’s Newsweek, and some of you might have seen it. South Asia is catching up. There is a full article on South Asians in this country. I happen to be quoted some place in this article. But I’ll just read what they say at the top. They say: “They have changed they way we eat [that is, we Americans], dress, work, and play. South Asians come from many places and they succeed by balancing East and West.” And it is a full four to five page article, and a number of people are being discussed here. So I think it is quite appropriate that we are doing it at this time. We have a number of panels. I will not take much of your time. I am very pleased to see many parties from various campuses.
I would particularly like to recognize Mr. Ravinda Pandar who has come from the Indian Consulate. He’s consul of Culture and Education. Mr. Pandar. We were talking yesterday or the day before about a Conference that he is organizing at the Consulate, and he was asking me to come. And it occurred to me that it would be nice if he could come. And so at short notice, one or two day notice, he was very generous to come to this conference. I would also like to recognize my good old friend, Lenny Gordon, who is teaching at Brooklyn [College] and he is Director at [inaudible] Foundation located at Columbia. Some of you may know [inaudible name] was one of the earliest South Asian Olympians to come to this country. We had other speakers and one of our Vice-Chancellors to extend his greetings, but he is not here at this time. If he does show up, we certainly invite him to share his thoughts. But at this time I would invite Dr. Tam to get started with our first
