Two Governors of Indian Origin and one Congresswoman!
This is America, land of the free and land of the brave. Every one can
make it here, and I am proud of America, where an African American
becomes the president and is reconfirmed and re-elected as president, it
gives hopes to the people around the world.
Two politicians who have become my favorites are Barack Obama and Tulsi Gabbard, listen to her pluralistic speech - I relate with it, and that is my work as well
TULSI SPEAKS ON PLURALISM
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/14/politics/house-diversity/index.html
America is setting the new standards in culture,
innovation, social cohesion, science, technology, religion.... America
is God's own country represented by everything out there in the
universe. There is nothing like it.
Whether you are a white minority in South Africa, a
native American in Mexico, a Hindu in Pakistan, a Sikh in Malaysia or
any minority anywhere, do desire to serve and contribute to the overall success of the
nation. Obama has opened the doors for all such aspirants in the world, It will take a long time to see such a society all over the
globe, but we have to begin the process somewhere.
America will always produced the first, however, my motherland has set the new standards in the world; A Sikh head of the state, Muslim Presidents, Christian Defense Ministers, Parsee Supreme Court Judges... you can fill all the blanks of India's diversity and pluralistic heritage. The success of a nation depends on its ability to bring every one together, all the segments must be working together for every one to benefit.
While Indian Doctors and Engineers are enriching our nation, some of us are contributing in the social arena, bringing the gift of pluralistic heritage to America. I am committed to Pluralism in America through speaking, writing,seminars, conferences, events, TV and Radio appearances and making things happen. I do invite you to join me in taking this further.
There is a lot of work done by Indians in social area and I am doing my share of the work. Here is my CV and my Pluralism Profile and there is more at www.MikeGhouse.net. My goal is to build a cohesive America, where no American has to feel alienated, uncomfortable, apprehensive or fearful of the other. We are a land of the free.
Please check out the trailer of the movie, Americans Together - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMXsTo4VYh8&feature=youtu.be&noredirect=1
Mike Ghouse
Buddhist, Hindu Make History With Elections
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/buddhist-hindu-congress-mazie-hirono-tulsi-gabbard_n_2088939.html
Democrat Tulsi Gabbard gives her victory speech after winning Hawaii
2nd Congressional district seat at the Japanese Cultural Center,
Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012 in Honolulu.
Tuesday's elections brought two historic firsts for religion
in American politics: A Buddhist senator and a Hindu representative --
both from Hawaii -- will join Congress.
Democrat Mazie Hirono beat former Gov. Linda Lingle (R), making
Hirono the first Buddhist in the Senate. In Hawaii's 2nd Congressional
District, Democrat Tulsi Gabbard defeated Republican opponent Kawika
Crowley, making Gabbard the first Hindu in Congress.
Both elections were cheered by Hindu and Buddhist Americans, members
of two faiths that share a common history that traces back to ancient
India.
"These are all signs of dharmic communities being accepted in the
country," said Anju Bhargava, founder of Hindu American Seva Charities.
"It's all about inclusion and acceptance. The feeling that my faith and
my people are accepted. Ultimately, politics comes down to 'how does it
impact me?' or 'how am I included?' It will mean so much for the
upcoming generations of Hindus and Buddhists."
Hirono, who was born in Japan, practices the Jodo Shinshu tradition
of Buddhism. She was first elected to Congress in 2007 to represent
Hawaii's 2nd District, the seat that Gabbard won Tuesday. Prior to that,
Hirono served 14 years in the Hawaii state legislature and was the
state’s lieutenant governor for eight years. She is also the first
Asian-American woman senator and the first senator born in Japan.
“I certainly believe in the precepts of Buddhism and that of tolerance of other religions and integrity and honesty," she said when she first joined Congress.
Buddhism, which includes a widely diverse set of spiritual practices,
is one of the largest religions in the U.S., but statistics vary on how
many Buddhists live in the nation. Surveys have estimated the population between 1.5 and 3 million.
Gabbard,
31, was born in American Samoa, and raised by a Catholic father and a
Hindu mother. She moved to Hawaii when she was 2 and in 2002, joined the
Hawaii state legislature at age 21. She served in the Hawaii National
Guard the next year and, in 2004, went to Baghdad to be a medical
operations specialist. In 2008, she was deployed to Kuwait to work with
the nation's counterterrorism trainees.
Gabbard chose to embrace the faith after her mother started
practicing it when Gabbard was a teen. The congresswoman-elect, whose
first name refers to a tree that's sacred to Hindus, follows the
Vaishnava branch of Hinduism, which focuses on the Supreme Lord Vishnu
and his 10 main incarnations. She relies upon the Bhagavad Gita as her
main source of scripture.
In an interview
with Religion News Service prior to her election, Gabbard said she
hopes to be a bridge between cultures and nations. “Hopefully the
presence in Congress of an American who happens to be Hindu will
increase America's understanding of India as well as India's
understanding of America," she said.
Like Buddhists, estimates of the Hindu-American community in the U.S.
also vary. Largely made up of Indian-Americans, the Hindu population is
between 600,000 to 2.3 million. Unlike most Hindus, Gabbard is not of
Indian heritage. Her father is Samoan and her mother is a convert to
Hinduism.
The two best-known Indian-Americans to be elected to office are
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who was raised Hindu but converted to
Catholicism, and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was raised Sikh
but converted to Methodism. Haley had both Christian and Sikh wedding
ceremonies, and has said she attends Sikh services on occasion out of
respect to her family's culture.
Hirono and Gabbard will join an increasingly diverse Congress. The
first Muslim to join the House or Senate, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.),
was first elected in 2006 and reelected for a fourth term on Tuesday. In
2008, Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) was the second Muslim elected to
Congress. In 2008, Rep. Hark Johnson (D-Ga.), another Buddhist, also
joined Congress, making history with him and Hirono the first Buddhists
to be elected to Congress.
More than a century prior, smaller religious groups also made headway
into congressional seats for the first time. Lewis Charles Levin of the
American Party was the first Jew elected to Congress in 1845, and
represented Pennsylvania in the House. The first Mormon was John Milton
Bernhisel, who joined Congress in 1851 to represent Utah. The only Sikh
congressman, California Democrat Dalip Singh Saund, was elected for
three terms beginning in 1957.
The ultimate goal for all of us is to live securely with our faith, ethnicity, race, and culture. The Indian American immigrants in particular and the non-white immigrants, in general, owe their gratitude to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. It was their effort and subsequent passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that opened the doors for all of us.
Very few of us would have made it to America had it not been for the freedom that we take for granted now. Who would want to sit at the back of the bus, drink from a separate fountain and be humiliated?
The United States Declaration of Independence laid the foundation for the principle of life, liberty, and justice for all. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The guarantor of such rights comes from the assurance of electing the right candidates to uphold that principle.
No Indian American wants to mess up what has been good for us — a cohesive America where all of us can function together for common good, and elect the candidates who would uphold the dream of Martin Luther King Jr., to treat every human for his/her character and not his/her faith or color of the skin.
Sen. Harris is progressive and inclusive. She will not buy into the prejudices that hold the nation back. Her intellectualism is a breath of fresh air, indeed it is worth our time to watch her grill Judge Bret Kavanaugh and attorney general nominee William Barr. We need to explore if Harris has faced exclusion from the Indian American community while growing up, as her father was black. Indian Americans are still struggling with their own racism and prejudices.
Many Indians believe that the rise of Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley was due to their conversion to Christianity, which proved to be wrong. They made it by the dint of their own merit. Raja Krishnamoorthy, Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna and others have also made it by being who they are.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, needs to address her questionable attitudes. She seems to be prejudiced against fellow Americans who are Muslims and the LGBTQ community. And one wonders who else.
She has an affinity for authoritarians like Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, and Donald Trump. Vox.com writes in an article about Tulsi, “Gabbard’s fall from grace in the Democratic Party came in a bizarre fashion: She picked a series of high-profile fights with the Obama administration over foreign policy.
Gabbard was an exception. As early as January 2015, she started going on every cable channel that would have her — including Fox News — and bashing Obama’s policy on terrorism. She sounded indistinguishable from a Republican presidential candidate.”
She was pushing Obama to acknowledge the oxymoron phrase, Radical Islam, without even understanding that religion and radicalism don't go together. Radicals are a part of every religious, political and social group.
Islam has nothing to do with radicalism, if she does not get this, I would be happy to coach her or she can read the book “American Muslim Agenda.”
In a tweet on Oct 1, 2015, she praised Putin, “Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did.” After visiting Assad, she came back and parroted the regime’s line that there was no difference between the mainstream anti-Assad rebels and ISIS.”
A young Hindu Medical doctor doing his residency stayed with me for a month while attending a conference in Washington, D.C. We had terrific conversations on a daily basis. He wished his parents had the opportunity to know Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Sikhs, and blacks. He deplored their hatred towards them. He said, he has lived in the dorms, and everything they have said about others was wrong.
Many a parent inadvertently poison their kids against fellow Americans, without realizing that when their kids grow up to be adults, they have to work with the very people they were told to keep away from. It must be painful for these men and women to form trustful relationships. Not sure how much of brainwashing her father has done to Tulsi Gabbard to hold negative views against LGBTQ and Muslim communities.
I urge the Hindu Americans to look for candidates who will build bridges between fellow Americans. At the end of the day, we owe it our children, grandchildren and ourselves to have a cohesive America, where all of us can live in harmony and not in suspicion of each other.
---------
Mike Ghouse is executive director of Center for Pluralism in Washington, D.C.
