Newsweek International Editor and television personality Fareed Zakaria, author of the best-selling The Post-American World, and host of CNNs Fareed Zakaria GPS, was chosen India Abroad Person of the Year 2008 at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York on March 20.
Acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair, winner of the India Abroad Person of the Year Award 2007, presented Dr Zakaria with his award at a star-studded ceremony.
The annual awards gala has become a marquee event on the Indian-American community calendar, and the quality of previous winners has made it a cachet even for those Indian Americans who have widespread mainstream acceptance. Past winners include Iowa legislator Swati Dandekar in 2002; co-founder, Indicorps, Sonal Shah in 2003; Mohini Bhardwaj, captain of the silver medal-winning American gymnastic team at the Sydney Olympics in 2004; then US Congressman Bobby Jindal in 2005; Pepsico Chairperson Indra Nooyi in 2006 and Nair in 2007.
India Abroad is the oldest and most widely circulated weekly newspaper serving the Indian-American community, published out of New York, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Toronto. It is owned by Rediff.com
Opening honors went to a trio of prodigiously talented children: Sameer Mishra, winner of the national Scripps National Spelling Bee; Akshay Rajagopal, who won the equally prestigious National Geography Bee; and Shivani Sud, who won the national Intel Science Talent Search contest.
This year, India Abroad instituted a new award: The Face of the Future Award. On debut, it was won by Manjul Bhargava, the mathematical genius who solved a problem that had baffled the best minds for 200 years, and who became at age 28, one of the youngest full professors ever at Princeton University.
The 2008 US presidential election cycle saw an unprecedented level of community involvement; it also witnessed a generational shift in leadership with the younger members of the community coming into the limelight.
In recognition of this, the India Abroad Gopal Raju Award for Community Service, named after the newspapers late founder, was shared by seven young Indian-American leaders at the forefront of this change: Preeta Bansal, General Counsel in the Office of Management and Budget at the Obama White House; Nick Rathod, Director of the Office of Inter-Governmental Affairs in the Obama administration; co-founders of South Asians for Obama Hrishi Karthikeyan and Dave Kumar; founder of the Indian National Leadership Initiative Varun Nikore; Communications Director for the Campaign for Americas Future Toby Choudhuri; and newly appointed chair of the Indian American Republican Council Dino Teppara.
To honour a legendary career that has spanned five decades, and to mark the career of a man who, single-handedly, has planted Indias flag at the pinnacle of Western classical music, India Abroad presented this years Award for Lifetime Achievement to ace conductor Zubin Mehta. On hand to honour Mehta with the Award were previous winners, novelist Salman Rushdie and the economist couple Professor Jagdish Bhagwati and Professor Padma Desai.
The India Abroad Publishers Award for Special Excellence -- a prize previously won by achievers like astronaut Sunita Williams -- was awarded to novelist Jhumpa Lahiri, who in 2008 published her third work of fiction, a collection of short stories titled Unaccustomed Earth that in unprecedented fashion debuted at the top of the prestigious New York Times bestseller lists.
The event, emceed by Columbia Journalism School Professor Sreenath Sreenivasan, came to a fitting conclusion when Fareed Zakaria accepted his award as the India Abroad Person of the Year 2008.
The event, which was punctuated by a sit-down dinner at the halfway stage, was attended by among others Meghan Mylan, who won an Oscar last month for her documentary Smile Pinky; Infosys Co-Chairman Nandan Nilekani; world-renowned cancer specialist Dr Dattatreyudu Nori; showbiz personalities like actress Madhur Jaffrey and actor Abhay Deol; Director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra Zarin Mehta; Indias Consul General in New York Ambassador Prabhu Dayal; New Jersey Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula; Rujuta Vaidya, who choreographed the Slumdog Millionaire dance numbers at the recent Academy Awards; CFO, District of Columbia, Natwar Gandhi.
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Shahrukh on Fareed Zakaria on CNNby donshema48,013 views
I am very proud of Fareen Zakaria being Indian, this is what India is about, HINDU,MUSLIM,SIKH or others we call us Indian and that what make us proud. Thanks you sir!
Gandaghela 1 month ago
@UnnaturallyNatural
Later, fagot. Your mom is giving me cheap blowjobs. May be she can get a job in the US.
LogicalFlawDetector 1 year ago
@LogicalFlawDetector So in reality Europeans have 300 million more literate people and Chinese have 500 million more literate people than India....thereby debunking the population IQ myth about Indians
UnnaturallyNatural 1 year ago
@LogicalFlawDetector lol....the majority of Indian immigrants in the US aren't Brahmins or high-caste...yet the average IQ of an Indian in the US is 112, higher than Jews and East Asians.
India doesn't have a high literate population dumb ass. India's literate population size is around 700 million, where as Europeans literate population size is 1 billion and Chinese is 1.2 billion
Notice if a Chinese or East Asian has a high IQ no one says "it must be the top 1% of 1.5 billion"
UnnaturallyNatural 1 year ago
@LogicalFlawDetector Your IQ is a factor of your educational level. The more educated the person is, the higher her IQ is going to be. Given the illiteracy rate of India, I am not sure how you can compare the general public to that of an East Asian country. As for your ethnological arguments, I am still not sure what accepted, peer reviewed study proves that IQ is a factor of race. I am sure you can provide a link for one however. :)
omgjustwannawatch 1 year ago
@mozart20dlubos
Take the top 1% of more than a billion. And take the most brilliant of them and bring them to the United States as graduate students, established physicians and engineers, and computer programmers. They will flourish. This is very different from taking a random sample of the Indian population and doing the same thing. Of course, you will have to be literate in the science of race and IQ. I don't think moronic imbeciles like you do.
LogicalFlawDetector 1 year ago
@mozart20dlubos
And that's coming from a self-absorbed fool. Winning Nobel Prizes (less than 10) speaks only for the individuals, not the general population. Given that the average IQ of Indians is a mere 81, you don't have any chance compared to the average east Asian (Mongoloid) with an average of 105. However, Indians, being a Caucasian stock, have a higher IQ range. You will find a tiny percentage of people with the highest IQs. They can flourish in the west.
LogicalFlawDetector 1 year ago
Fareed Bhai - I admire you and Dr.Sanjay Gupta. You are well and truly great models for my young son to emulate.
sank123456 1 year ago
@LogicalFlawDetector You're crazy. Indians are some of the smartest people the world has to offer. They've won nobel prizes and all sorts of other prizes and they've contributed a lot to society. Judging alone from the number of competent computer programmers they produce, they deserve a lot of credit for being an intelligent group of people.
mozart20dlubos 1 year ago
Fareed was mouthing platitudes for his countrymen. "Look at the hard working people in the slums," "they are the future!" As an Indian who was raised in a poor family, I know that's not the truth.
LogicalFlawDetector 1 year ago