White House State Dinner, Guest List, Bollywood &the Indian Elite

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South Asian, Indians or Desi's as we sometimes call ourselves feature prominently on the White House Guest List for the first official State Dinner to be hosted by the Obamas

The Dinner is for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Since this is the first State Dinner to be hosted by the Obama's it is getting a lot of attention.

It is interesting to note that Bollywood royalty Abhishek Bachan and Aishwarya Rai are NOT on the guest list as previously reported by Politico. The full White House State dinner guest list has just been released.

Kal Penn (the actor the Harold and Kumar films) will likely be there now that he is a staffer in the Obama Administration, though he know goes by the name Kalpen Suresh Modi.

A.R. Rahman will be performing likely his hit Jai Ho which was featured in the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire.

Vishakha N. Desai, president of the Asia Society

M. Night Shyamalan, Hollywood director

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal

Raju Narisetti, managing editor of the Washington Post

Mr. Ratan Tata, Chair of Tata Group

Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi

CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Obama's original pick for Surgeon General

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani

Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Amatrya Sen, Nobel Prize Winning Economist

Fareed Zakaria,  Newsweek/CNN journalist and broadcaster                            

Of course this is not the first time that the White House has held State Dinners for Indian Heads of State. It started with Truman.

Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Sr and Bush Jr all have held some type of White House Dinners for Indian Prime Ministers