Born in Mumbai, fighting for the ‘American Dream’ today

When he left India in the 1970s, he was, like everyone else, chasing the American Dream, says Dinesh D'Souza. Now, over three decades on, having realised the Dream himself, he is fighting to save it, he says.

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.

Born in Mumbai, fighting for the American Dream today

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.

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