For whatever reason, Facebook recently thought I might be interested in the subscription South Asian themed webzine and newsletter The Juggernaut. I don’t mind paying for media. I pay for The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. But why should you pay for The Juggernaut? Here’s a snippet from their about page:
It’s like your other email briefings. But browner. Join thousands and get the newsletter that curates the best global news on South Asia(ns) every Sunday. We also send updates on events, giveaways, our original reporting, and more. Unsubscribe anytime.
There are some good stories in The Juggernaut. I especially liked “Not Indian Enough” by Sabrina Malhi, a Guyanese American of East Indian ethnicity. This is a good piece of journalism because it shines the light on a topic and experience that’s underexposed, the liminality of being of Caribbean East Indian background. I learned a lot.
But the problem with The Juggernaut is that it strikes a pose as “South Asian,” which like “Social Justice” or “Family Values” is innocuous on the face of it, but connotes particular affinities, identities, and preoccupations, which are exclusionary of vast swaths of its potential audience. Back when the Sepia Mutiny blog was a thing I went to some meet-ups, and one thing that I noticed is that despite the focus on inclusive South Asian language on the internet, privately most people were conventionally nationalistic in regards to where their parents came from.
People didn’t talk about Desi or South Asian, they talked about Indian identity.
Since then the political and social cleavages have polarized. The Juggernaut is a pretty conventional distillation of progressive Diasporic poses. It focuses a great deal on marginalized elements of the brown experience and is lockstep with the global Left in a deep skepticism of Hindu nationalism.
There is nothing wrong with that. But it’s just one viewpoint and a viewpoint that seems extremely overrepresented among the Diasporic media class. There are potential readers who are somewhat outside of this progressive South Asian American exoteric box. I wish publications like The Juggernaut had enough viewpoint diversity to reflect and attract them.