Born in Mumbai,fighting for American Dream today

The India-born conservative political commentator,author,and first-time filmmaker is currently at the centre of a political storm in the US. His documentary film 2016: Obama’s America,which criticises Barack Obama for having made the US “weaker” over the last four years,is drawing widespread comment and argument in the middle of the presidential election campaign.

Since its release in July,the film has been viewed by over 2.5 million people,making it the sixth highest-grossing documentary ever — and the second highest-grossing political documentary after Michael Moore’s anti-George W. Bush Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004.

The documentary,based on D’Souza’s 2010 The New York Times bestseller The Roots of Obama’s Rage,has been produced by Hollywood heavyweight Gerald R Molen,who produced the Oscar winning Schindler’s List,Rain Man,Jurassic Park and Minority Report. D’Souza is co-director of the film,which is now playing in theatres across the United States.

The President has attacked the film and D’Souza personally — a September 5 post on barackobama.com says Obama’s America is “an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the President by giving intellectual cover to the worst in subterranean conspiracy theories and false,partisan attacks”.

It describes D’Souza as a man with a “long history of attempting to add a veneer of intellectual respectability to fringe theories,conspiratorial fear-mongering,and flat-out falsehoods”.

D’Souza has hit back with a post on the film’s official web site,calling the President’s “ferocious attack” on him “a clumsy,ill-aimed and misleading blast”,and extensively countering Obama’s charges.

His film,D’Souza says,works because it provides information,and does not merely throw allegations at Obama. As a man who has Indian roots but has spent a major part of his life in the US,he is able to,D’Souza says,look at American politics both as outsider and insider,with a global perspective of the country’s future under Obama.

“Obama and I are similar in many ways,” says the 51-year-old,referring to the associations both the men have with third-world countries,and their studying in the US on exchange programmes.

Born in 1961 to a Catholic family in Bandra,D’Souza went to St Stanislaus,a Catholic school close to his home. While in junior college at Sydenham,D’Souza applied for the exchange programme through the Bombay Rotary Club.

“We were a middle-class family — my father was a pharmaceutical engineer who spent most of his working years with Johnson & Johnson,” he says. “When the opportunity arose,I chose America over Europe and Australia — it was the American Era and I,like anyone else,was fascinated by the impressions of the country through its movies,music and sports. I recognised that America was a dominant power and was intrigued to explore it.”

D’Souza went to Patagonia Union High School in Arizona,followed by Dartmouth College,where he graduated in English,with history and political science as his other subjects. It was in these years that he imbibed the spirit of the American Dream,he says,“leaving behind the complexes that otherwise accompany third-world roots”.

D’Souza went on to become editor of the conservative monthly magazine,The Prospect,and subsequently,of the conservative journal Policy Review in Washington.

“I realised I could write the script of my own life here (in the US),self-direct it. This was most certainly not possible in India of the 1970s and 1980s. It may not be possible even today,because in India it matters whether you are male or female,what is your social background or if you are the elder son of the family,” he says.

A stint in a mid-level job as policy adviser in the Ronald Reagan administration in 1988 strengthened D’Souza’s conservative ideas. He is currently president of the evangelical The King’s College in New York,and a prominent voice on Christianity,a recent aspect in his life that has had something to do with the birth of his daughter Danielle with wife Dixie Brubaker.

His conservative ideology,D’Souza says,is rooted in his Indian upbringing. “American conservatives derive from the beliefs of American Revolution — free markets and prosperous society that is decent and orderly. These ideas resonated with the values I was brought up with in India.”

He is different from most Indian Americans who lean towards Democrats — that,he says,is “because Democrats welcome outsiders,although their ideologies are at odds.”

D’Souza believes that his idea of the ideal America is in danger under Obama. In The Roots of Obama’s Rage,he argued that the President is unable to break from the anti-colonial beliefs that his father had,and that affects his decisionmaking.

“Obama feels guilty that America has so much. His anti-productivity policies are an indication that he wants to give away,” D’Souza says.

The documentary,which D’Souza has co-written and co-directed with John Sullivan,builds on these ideas,and also draws from D’Souza’s new book published last month,Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream. The need to make a documentary,he says,arose because books have a limited audience — and because a film can engage both emotionally and intellectually.

Accordingly,2016: Obama’s America begins with D’Souza’s narration of his experiences in the US as an Indian immigrant,comparing himself with Obama. It then travels to Indonesia and Africa,where extensive interviews take place with Obama’s half-brother George.

D’Souza strongly believes that Obama “fooled everyone,including his own party,into believing that he is a political healer,a unifier who will listen to both sides — an embodiment of the American Dream”.

“But there has been no inconsistency on his part in displaying that he perceives America as a colonial power. His domestic policies have focussed on removing wealth from the US and his foreign policies have made the country seem weaker,” he says,referring to Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq,suspend Guantanamo,and sign the New START treaty with Russia to ensure reduction of long-range nuclear weapons.

“He does not want America to call the shots — while some,like the people from Rio and Jakarta will support that,such views have never been held by a President before,” says D’Souza.

He does have one good word for the President,though: “Race relations have improved considerably” under him.