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Hindu Americans, like other minorities and new immigrants, were excited and involved with Obama for President as a candidate. They cheered him, canvassed for him, raised funds for his campaign and supported his election whole heartedly in many ways. During this election many more of our second generation became eligible to vote for the first time. And they voted for Obama.
At the same time, they also held very high hopes of him once he was elected to the highest office. One of the most significant aspects of our collective hopes was that his administration will be more inclusive than previous ones. It is therefore gratifying to note that, for the first time, Barack Obama in his Presidential inaugural speech included the word Hindu while listing the names of religious groups, thus explicitly recognizing the faith of a billion people on earth, and the faith of the vast majority of Indian Americans, now over 2 million strong in America.  Also for the first time, a Hindu representative, Dr. Uma Mysorekar, President, Hindu Temple Society of North America, New York, was invited to the National Prayer Service /benediction following the Presidential Inauguration. These firsts are very significant events for the Hindu community in America.
Another major development during the first 100 days was the appointment to the President’s Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, of Anju Bhargava, President, Asian Indian Women in America and Founder, Indian Americans Building Communities.  Bhargava’s appointment affords the Hindu community a voice on par in the religious and community development landscape of America.  With unprecedented downturn in the economy brought about by the strongest recession since the 1930’s depression, many people have lost jobs and homes.  This is the time when people turn to find solace in their faith.  Hence, it is particularly important now that faith based organizations put extra efforts to serve their communities.  Since the US population is so diverse with many faiths, ethnicities and languages, it is heartening to see that our President’s agenda includes representations from many diverse faiths in our society to help the people in these very difficult times.  The faith based organizations should fully understand the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and help redirect the dollars and the opportunities from this once in a lifetime government effort to empower and strengthen the communities they service.
Additionally, the Indian American community is pleased with the appointments of Preeta Bansal, Neal Katyal, Sonal Shah, Kalpen Modi, Rajiv Shah, Neera Tandon, Aneesh Chopra and Vivek Kundra to high level positions.  Hindu American community has a very strong presence in the medical profession and we hope to see one serve as the Surgeon General in the future.
US relations with India are a matter of high interest to the Hindu American community.  President Obama’s administration has made tremendous improvements in international relations. However, a lack of progress in defining solutions to the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq/Iran problems, combined with the old political conundrums like CTBT have stymied progress in relations with India. And, India is the only country in the region that shares with USA the democratic principles of government.  India desperately wants to maintain peaceful relations with its neighbors in spite of a barrage of terrorist activities directed towards its major cities including the capital New Delhi, business hub Mumbai, IT hub Bangalore, and the most sacred temples and cities like Varanasi. Immigration is another major concern to the Hindu American community. The economic recession has made foreign worker H1B visa holders unwelcome in America.  This is short sighted and hopefully short lived. We hope the recent restriction will be lifted as economy pulls out of the recession.
The Hindu American community wishes President Barack Obama well in his endeavors and joins hands with him in taking our nation out of the current crisis onto a path of continued prosperity

It’s now official: Sonal Shah, former head of global development at Google.org, the search-engine company’s philanthropic arm, is head of the new White House Office of Social Innovation.
Shin Inouye, a White House spokesman, today confirmed Ms. Shah’s appointment—which has not been formally announced, although it is an open secret in nonprofit circles.
Mr. Inouye said the new office will fall under the Domestic Policy Council, a body that coordinates domestic policymaking in the White House and is headed by Melody Barnes. He said he could not give further details as the office “has not been rolled out yet.”
Members of President Obama’s transition team proposed creating an Office of Social Innovation to promote government efforts to help innovative nonprofit groups and social entrepreneurs expand successful approaches to tackling pressing social problems.
The office will no doubt be involved in the Social Innovation Funds pilot program that was just created by the Serve America Act, a national-service bill that will be signed by the president next week.
The funds, which will be administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, will provide money for groups that are “developing innovative and effective solutions to national and local challenges.”
Ms. Shah was a member of the Obama transition project’s advisory board and co-chair of a transition group that made recommendations about technology and innovation, including “innovation and civil society.”
She is co-founder of Indicorps, a nonprofit group that offers fellowships to Indian-Americans working on development projects in India.
She has also held positions at Goldman, Sachs & Company, the Treasury Department, the Center for Global Development, and the Center for American Progress.
Jane Wales, director of the Program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation at the Aspen Institute, praised the new White House office today in a Chronicle online discussion.
“First and foremost it has the opportunity to encourage public-private partnerships aimed at addressing some of the toughest problems we face at home and abroad,” she said. In addition, “the office can take a careful look at U.S. government policies, including tax and regulatory policies, and determine which policies spur innovation, and whether
others might needlessly impede innovation.
“This is not an easy task,” she said. “But the office is led by a remarkably talented person, Sonal Shah. If anyone can do it, she can.”

The online group on the Facebook network that catapulted the Pink Chaddi Campaign to new heights has been hacked repeatedly in the past two weeks and renamed with racist and misogynist tones. Even after several complaints to Facebook administrators, not much has happened.

Hackers have vented their fury on the Facebook group which captured the world’s attention with an imaginative and subversive campaign which entailed a puckish sense of humour and a big point made to the moral police.

The famous Facebook group, Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women, which had become the face of the real and virtual revolution against rightwing moral policing in the State, was bizarrely rechristened by hackers as “A good Bong is a dead one.”

Other names included the “Nathuram Godse Appreciation Society”, “Burn Graham Staines Society” and “Pro-aversion” society and featured pornographic pictures and lewd commentary.

The group encouraged women to send pink chaddis to the Sri Ram Sene to protest the infamous Mangalore pub attack and its threats against those celebrating Valentine’s Day.

In what was widely acknowledged as a successful campaign, the pink chaddi idea effectively took the wind off the saffron sails.

Campaign over, the group’s activities subsided. The recent hacking disrupted the site and the names of a staggering 59,000-odd members have vanished.

Despite a month of sending of emails to Facebook about the group being hacked continuously,

Nisha Susan, creator of the group, who also started the Pink Chaddi Campaign, has received no response from Facebook. “We got automatically generated emails from Facebook saying that they were looking into it, and then emails saying that Facebook could not be hacked,” she said.

Account disabled

A few days ago, her account was disabled by Facebook, because as the creator of the group she was seen as abusing her account.

“It does not take too many people to hack the group; it could even be one person,” said Ms. Susan, who is amused at the erratic content by the hackers.

For example, “A good Bong is a dead one” attacks many Bengali women in the group. Calling themselves the Ravana Sene, the hackers threaten: “You will never recover this group and life in India will get increasingly harder as groups like Sri Rama Sene see that it is more fun to be like Ravana Sene”, apart from obscenities.

The last time Ms. Susan was able to access it there were 135 administrators. “It means the trolls have taken over,” she says.

]\Meanwhile various other groups supporting the Pink Chaddi campaign and the Consortium have sprouted, created not only from India, but also by people from the U.K.

“I think the hackers might have been laid off, which is why they have so much time on their hands,” says Ms. Susan, who doesn’t think that there is a need to panic. “We can create another group,” she said simply.

New campaign

Soon another campaign initiated by her will kick off. “This is Indian Culture” campaign will have people posting videos of them doing what they think is Indian culture and will be hosted online.

The Hindu