Indian-American hoteliers own some 20,000 properties — more than 40 per cent of all hotels in the United States. Of these hotels, which employ some 6,00,000 people, roughly 70% are owned by Gujaratis, as Pawan Dhingra wrote in his book, Life Behind the Lobby: Indian American Motel Owners and the American Dream. Dhingra, a sociology professor and museum curator, also mentions that of those Gujaratis, an incredible 75% share the last name Patel. Hence the moniker ‘Patel Motel’.
Now the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA), which represents 14,500 small business owners accounting for nearly $10 billion in payroll annually, has traditionally been a big support base for prime minister Narendra Modi.
They, for instance, played a key role in inviting him to the US in 2005 (when his visa was revoked) for the organisation’s annual conference. During Modi’s ongoing visit — his second as PM — the Patels of AAHOA may appear to be perched on those proverbial horns of a dilemma.
The PM versus the Pretender
Back in aapro Gujarat, a certain 22-year old who shares the same surname as the motelwallahs has kicked off a raucous campaign for the inclusion of the Patel caste in the other backward class (OBC) category in a bid to qualify for reserved quotas in education and government jobs. For good — or bad — measure, Hardik Patel has even taken a dig at aapro Modi’s 56-inch chest with the revelation that the Patels’ match up to the PM in the upper body department.
To be sure, he’s thrown the BJP government back in Gujarat — which has long relied on the Patel vote — into a tizzy on how to tame the 22-year-old who at the time of writing was claiming that he had been abducted apparently to prevent him from going to Bihar (where a crucial assembly election will be held in a fortnight).
So even as AAHOA members wax eloquent about their excitement around the PM’s second trip to the US, voice their admiration for Modi’s “bold leadership” and “appreciate his prioritising the Indian American community” — as per the official message from AAHOA president and chief executive Chip Rogers — the multibillion dollar question really is whose side are they on: the PM or the pretender.
Danny Patel of PeachState Hospitality, makes no bones about what he thinks of Hardik’s high jinks. “It’s only a small section of the Gujarati Patidar community in the US who are politically motivated and that has spearheaded the protests against PM Modi. We are all hotel owners and concerned mainly with running our businesses and have no time for such disruptive activities,” says the president and chief executive of the family-run hotel development and management firm with 34 franchised and independent hotels in Georgia and Alabama. Danny, who moved to the US in 1989 and founded the group with the acquisition of a 16-unit independent motel, added that Modi’s second coming to the US was about reaching out to entrepreneurs, and Indian-American hoteliers represented a big success story of entrepreneurship.
Mukesh J Mowji, serial entrepreneur in the hospitality sector and past chairman of AAHOA, had spearheaded the effort to have Modi visit the US as chief guest of the annual AAHOA convention in 2005. Mowji, who after pointing out that the entire Indian-American community is “proud to have Modiji visiting Silicon Valley”, reckons that the issues over reservation in Gujarat are India’s domestic issues and don’t involve the diaspora in America in any way. “While Indian American hoteliers can’t fix those issues, it is in the spirit of democracy for the Indian government to sit across the table and discuss them with the pro-reservation leaders back in India.”
A Common Language
Los Angeles-based hotelier Naresh Bhakta, a Patidar community leader in the West Coast, has been involved with the organisation of the event at the SAP Center in San Jose on Sunday where PM Modi will address a large number of Indian Americans. For his part, Bhakta feels that the “shadow cast over the trip by Indian domestic events [presumably the reservation agitation is one of them] was unnecessary.”
This of course is after he revealed that “Indian entrepreneurs and professionals on the West Coast are greatly energised by PM Modi’s visit.”
It is safe to conclude that the reservation movement back home hasn’t exactly struck a chord with the Motel Patels. After all, it would appear preposterous if it did. As Sanjay Puri, chairman of the Washington DC based US Indian Political Action Committee, puts it:
“Hotel owners of Indian origin own 40% of all hotels in the US and are thus hard pressed to ask for reservations.” A PM talking in the language they understand — of entrepreneurship — is clearly more up their street.
Source: The Economic Times
