India's pluralistic ethos

My Dear Fellow Indians, 

We are Indians and nothing but Indian.

An Indian is an Indian is an Indian, period.

As a nation, collectively we are Adivasis, Atheists, Bahais, Bos, Buddhists, Christians, Dalits, Hindus, Jains, Jewish, Muslim, Sikhs, Tribals, Zoroastrians and every possible grouping. We are Brown, Black, White, Yellow and green with envy, magar phir bhi dil hai Hindustani.

Our Motherland is represented by every race, nationality, ethnicity, language, culture, and religion. We see God as one, none and many; and in every form; male, female, genderless and non-existent, being and non-being, nameless and with innumerable names.

We are proud of our heritage - a multi-faith, multicultural, multi-regional and multi-linguistic society, where we have come to accept and respect every which way people have lived their lives. For over 5000 years, India has been a beacon of pluralism - it has embraced Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Baha’i and Zoroastrianism to include in the array of the indigenous religions; Hinduism, Tribal traditions, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism.  

We may want to consciously start thinking and acting as one people, one people within a nation and a community and one people globally. It’s like home when we are conflict-free.  I do hope each one of us purges any bias towards the other, there is joy in being free from ill-will. Try to be free from this day forward… free from anything that prevents you from being a part of the whole.

Our combined philosophies believe in one world ; Hinduism describes the world as Vasudaiva Kutumbukum, the whole world is one family, the idea of Ek Onkar(one) in Sikhism, you are all created from the same couple as Quraan puts it and Jesus embraced every one regardless of who anyone is... similar philosophies are grounded in all our religions.

A few don't follow their own heritage and resort to thievery, loot, murder, terrorism, rioting, rapes, infanticide and other evils that destroy the fabric of the society,  but a majority of every group goes about their own way, living their life with struggles and ease and don't even bother others. We should build upon the 99% of the population and not on the less than 1% that does not follow any principles.

On this day, and every day from here forward, make a pledge to yourselves to talk about in terms of "I am an Indian" - and not Malayalee, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi.... or Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isaee. Don't expect others to jump and say the same, give them the time and if you are consistent for at least a year, you will see others emulating you.

India led the way to the freedom movement, since 1947 every country has been liberated from colonialism. Indian democracy is a shining example to the world, where the people have peacefully transferred the powers.

We are inherently secular and economically capitalistic. We believe in "live-and-let-live" lifestyle, which is the essence of capitalism.  We respect everyone's right to eat, drink, wear or believe in whatever they want after all God created each one of to be a unique being with our own thumbprint, eye print, taste buds, religious buds, and DNA. 

Through the years we have expressed the highest degree of maturity on handling extreme situations; the more divergent opinions we hear, the larger our heart grows, the bigger our embrace would be and we can cushion more differences. Let’s continue to honor the concept that there is always another side to the story, as finding the truth is our own responsibility. I am proud of my heritage and am proud to be an Indian-American.

.....

Indian Pledge of Allegiance

With a belief that every Indian wants justice and demands a fair treatment of every one of the 1.1 billion Indians; rich or poor, connected or not, we must come to grips with the social and community life to create an exemplary India, that will become a model nation in the world.

We have to figure out how to co-exist with least frictions. It is in your interests, my interest, and everyone's interest to have justice, which gives birth to sustainable peace and prosperity

We have to find solutions for people who go to the extremes; be them be Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Sikh, Zoroastrian or other, hoping they would recognize the God-given space to each one of us and eventually see the benefits of co-existence.

I propose that the parliament of India introduce a bill for every political, cultural and religious organization in India to register with the Home Ministry, state their purpose, list their assets for public scrutiny, list the membership roster to be updated annually. Include a modified version of the 7 items into Indian Penal Code, and make it into the law to punish the violators of the law.

Patriotism should be defined in terms of what you do to uplift the hopes of people, in terms of education to all, jobs to as many as we can in each successive year, home for every human, and a better lifestyle to every Indian.

Every public office holder from the Peon to the President of India and everyone in between must take this pledge and live by it. Violation should disqualify him or her from holding the public office. Let it be monitored publicly.

1. I pledge allegiance to India, indivisible nation that stands for liberty and justice for all.

2. I pledge that I honor and treat every Indian with "full" dignity.

3. I pledge that all individuals would be treated on par.

4. I pledge that I will treat all religions with equal respect, equal access, and equal treatment.

5. I pledge that I will oppose any act that treats any Indian less than myself.

6. I Pledge that I will work for an India, where every individual can live with security and aspire for prosperity.

7. I pledge that I will protect, preserve and value every inch of India and every human soul in India

This would be the first step towards ensuring a Just, peaceful and prosperous India, that can sustain its progress and peace.

Click and enjoy:

Our National Anthem National Anthem 2 Twenty Patriotic songs on click India's Map

Jai Hind

Mike Ghouse

Committed to cohesive societies
www.MikeGhouse.net
http://mikeghouseforindia.blogspot.com/

PATRIOTIC SONGS

• Vande Mataram - AR Rahman
• Vande Mataram
• Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna ab
• Saray jahan say achha -1
• Saray Jahan say achha - lata
• Mere Desh Ki Dharti
• Mera rangde basanti chola
• Kar chalay hum fida,
• Jahan Daal Daal par sone
• Hum laye hain toofan say kishti
• Hai preet jahan ki reet sada
• Ganga Meri Maa ka Naam
• Apni azadi ku hum hargiz
• Apni Azaadi ko hargiz hum
• ai watan ai watan, tujh ko
• Ai mere pyaare watan,
• Aao bachcho tumheien sire
• A jo des hai tera - Shahrukh
• A desh hai veer jawanon ka

...............................................................................................................................
Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker and a writer on pluralism, politics, peace, Islam, Israel,India, interfaith, and cohesion at workplace and society. He is committed to building aCohesive America and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. He believes in Standing up for others and a book with the same title is coming up. Mike has a strong presence on national and local TV, Radio and Print Media. He is a frequent guest on Sean Hannity show on Fox TV, and a commentator on national radio networks, he contributes weekly to the Texas Faith Column at Dallas Morning News; fortnightly at Huffington post; and several other periodicals across the world. His personal site www.MikeGhouse.net indexes all his work through many links. Most of his work is at www.CenterforPluralism.com 

A moment of humanity after 46 years of war.

It is an extraordinary story of a pilot Qais Hussain who was courageous to reflect on an act he did that bothered him and after a period of 46 years, he was able to get it out and hope with it came relief to him. He shot down a civilian airplane that strayed in to his national territory, the humanity in him made him hesitant because it was a civilian plane, but he hit because he got the confirmation that it might me a reconnaissance plane. On the other side, I felt very emotional that the people who lost their families did not have rancor towards the pilot who shot their parents. It is an emotional story and brings the humanity out of you.

Barkha Dutt the anchor woman rightly pointed out that the soldiers make the best peace makers, as they have seen the futilities of war first hand.

A lot of this has happened during the Vietnam War, where our veterans have gone back and visited the families who were their targets.

VIDEO AND FULL STORY AT: http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/the-buck-stops-here/46-years-after-the-war-a-moment-of-humanity/207609?hp

http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/the-buck-stops-here/after-the-war-a-moment-of-humanity/207609

It is a powerful story....

Mr. Hussain was not able to express his feelings well, and I really feel for him. It was simply beautiful to hear the three ladies who had lost their loved ones but did not have any acrimony or ill will.

This story needs to be explored further.

Barkha and Beena I salute you.

----

It was a similar emotion that inspired me to write a note about the loss of our soldiers in Afghanistan and I prayed for them after Iftaar in Ramadan, the month of Mercy.

HONORING OUR SOLDIERS | A MINUTE OF SILENCE PLEASEhttp://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2011/08/honoring-our-soldiers-in-aghanistan.html

In memory of our soldiers and Navy Seals who died on Saturday, please observe a minute of silence honoring them. May God bless them and give patience to their families. May God give us the wisdom to end Wars and find solutions through mitigating conflicts and nurturing goodwill. Amen

I urge fellow Muslim Americans to pray for their well beings, Insha Allah I will pray special prayers for them after Iftaar and Maghrib prayers this evening.

Our soldiers are the defenders of our freedom, they gave up their lives for us, and we have to express our gratitude and pray for them.

Mike Ghouse is committed to working towards cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. All his work is indexed at www.MikeGhouse.net.

In Texas, young Hindus want to Americanize ancient faith

This is a great story for people of all faiths to read and learn about America. America is amazing. It opens up peoples hearts and minds.

 The story is same from Aztec Americans to Zoroastrians Americans and every one in between, the first generation finds ways to assimilate and see the wisdom of their religion, that most people did not see back home, they just practiced their religion.

The youth are able to differentiate between culture and Religion, their culture is America with heritage of their parents culture. They youth know a lot more about Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and others than their parents. Either parents were too busy with life, or just don't see the need to unload what was dished out to them. I see the stinky attitudes in a lot of adults from India, Pakistan, China, Italy, Russia, France or wherever..

Mike Ghouse

Americans Together
www.MikeGhouse.net

In Texas, young Hindus want to Americanize ancient faith

By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/10/in-texas-young-hindus-want-to-americanize-ancient-faith/

Houston, Texas (CNN) – In many ways, 29-year-old Rishi Bhutada is a traditional Hindu, not so different from his Indian-born parents.
An officer at his dad’s pipefitting company, Texas-born Bhutada had an arranged marriage in India three years ago and then brought his wife back to his hometown, where they recently welcomed a son.
Bhutada is a strict vegetarian and avoids alcohol, as do many observant Hindus.

Complete coverage: Defining America

And the dashboard of his Toyota Prius is adorned with a small metal statue of Ganesh, an elephant-headed Hindu god known as the remover of obstacles. Bhutada prays to it each morning before leaving his driveway.
And yet Bhutada is a different kind of Hindu than his mom and dad.
His parents were part of a major wave of Indians who arrived in the U.S. in the 1960s and ’70s and focused their religious lives on building a community of believers and temples around Houston, which was then a Hindu wilderness.
Bhutada, by contrast, wants his religion to step out from that now-well-established Hindu hive to engage the broader culture.
Surprising origins of "Don't Mess with Texas"
Driving to lunch recently at a strip mall Indian buffet, he spoke of trying to forge a distinctly American Hindu identity that’s more tightly woven into the national fabric.
“The immigrant generation is focused on India, on the home country,” he said, noting that the TV in his parents’ house is often turned to a Hindi-language channel beamed in from the subcontinent. “I’m focused on the United States, which is my home country.”
That helps explain why a national group he’s involved with, the Hindu American Foundation, recently launched a Take Back Yoga campaign, aimed at raising awareness about the practice’s Hindu roots and values among non-Hindus.
And it's why Bhutada testified at the Capitol in Austin last year against a statewide school curriculum that calls Hinduism a polytheistic religion, a characterization many Hindus reject.
And it's why one area temple has begun placing copies of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, in thousands of Texas hotel rooms, right next to the Gideon Bible.
The developments speak to a new, publicly assertive stance that’s shared by many first-generation American Hindus across Houston, home to one of the country’s largest and fastest growing Indian enclaves, and by many young Hindus across the nation.
“Our parents had to build everything from scratch to make a united Hindu community in this country,” said Tejas N. Dave, 17, a high school junior who volunteers with a project bringing yoga to unprivileged Americans.
“Now we’re trying to reintegrate it back into society,” he said, “to make people realize that Hinduism is a religion and a way of life and a philosophy that’s not too different from what a lot of others believe. We’re all trying to make a better society.”
Some young Hindus are envious of the attention that American Muslims and Mormons have received in recent years – even if not all of the attention has been positive – and are trying to raise Hinduism’s national profile.
The impulse is not about winning converts. Hinduism, the world’s third-largest religion, doesn’t proselytize.
Rather, many young Hindus say, it’s about making their faith less exotic to others while making it more meaningful to their own modern American lives.
When their parents arrived from India a few decades ago, it was hard enough just being Hindu.
The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which overhauled the U.S. immigration system by eliminating biases toward European immigrants, among other things, opened American doors to millions of Asian immigrants, including Indians.
Those first arrivals struggled to recreate ethnic and religious networks from back home. When Bhutada’s father, Ramesh Bhutada, arrived in the U.S. in 1968, Houston played host to a single Hindu temple, which had opened earlier that year.
It was a stark change from India, where Hindus can stop into seemingly ubiquitous temples every day for brief visits, helping explain why so many Indians say “Hinduism is a way of life.”
There were more prosaic struggles, too. Many Hindus believe that vegetarianism denotes religious purity and a commitment to nonviolence, but they struggled to maintain that tradition in what was then a very meat-centric American diet.
“There was not even anything like a vegetable burger in those days,” Ramesh Bhutada said.
In those early years, new Hindu arrivals turned their homes into makeshift temples, holding religious education classes for their American-born children.
“There would be kids’ activities in one bedroom and adults in another,” said Dhruval Amin, 28, a Houston-based project manager at an international consulting firm, recalling childhood visits to such homes.
Today, Amin worships at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, a sprawling, snow-white temple carved from Italian marble and Turkish limestone that sits on 22 manicured acres in Stafford, just south of Houston.
Opened in 2004, the temple is a proud symbol of the local Hindu community’s growth and prosperity, though it’s a story that’s hardly confined to Houston.
The U.S. Census does not track the number of Hindu Americans; the Census doesn’t ask about religion, period. But data from the 2010 Census show that Texas’ Asian Indian population nearly doubled in size in the past decade, to around 250,000.
Now, for the first time, Indians represent the largest Asian community in the state. Many were drawn by lucrative jobs in Texas’s booming oil, technology and medical sectors.
“A lot of the doctors in small metro markets across Texas are first- or second-generation Indians,” said Ray Perryman, who heads an economic research firm in Waco, Texas. “And the top two or three students in every high school tend to be from some part of Asia.”
Similar trends have emerged in other parts of the country. Nationally, Indian growth has surged by 60% in the past 10 years, according to the Census, with 2.8 million Asian Indians living in the U.S. today.
Indians now represent the country’s second-largest Asian group, after the Chinese.
They’re also among the nation’s most successful ethnic groups, with 71% of Asian Indians earning bachelor’s degrees or higher, compared with 28% of all Americans, according to data from the U.S. Census’s 2009 American Community Survey.
The survey reported that Asian Indians have median household incomes of more than $90,000, compared with $50,000 for all Americans.
Not everyone from that community is Hindu. India’s Christian, Muslim, Sikh and Jain minorities are also represented in the United States.
At a recent yoga class at Houston’s India House, a community center, the instructor was Hindu, and most participants were Indian, but half were Catholic, Methodist or another kind of Christian.
When the instructor, Sarika Phalak, leads open and closing prayers that reference God, she invites participants to speak the name of their own deity. Many say “Jesus.”
Still, Hindu growth around Houston has exploded in recent years, with 19 temples now scattered across the sprawling metropolitan area, most built just in the past decade.
Temple-based Hindu youth camps long ago replaced home-based classes. And several national Hindu organizations now call Houston home.
The city’s Hindu onslaught put Charu Krishna Thammavaram, 28, in closer touch with her religion when she relocated from Lafayette, Louisiana, three years ago.
“I feel like a born-again Hindu now,” said Thammavaram, who works for an India-focused humanitarian group called Ekal Vidyalaya, which is headquartered in Houston.
In Louisiana, the lone “nearby” temple was an hour’s drive from Thammavaram’s home. Here, she had her choice of temples and settled on a Hare Krishna temple after shopping around, just as many Americans of other faiths do.
For many young Hindus, tweaking their religious heritage to make it more relevant has become an important project.
“My parents were just immersed in Hinduism, starting every day with prayer and accepting it without question,” said Kavita Pallod, a native Houstonian and first-generation American who recently graduated college. “But I don’t start my days with prayer. And Hinduism is something I’ve questioned and debated with friends.”
Yet Pallod, 23, has spent a good deal of time thinking about how to apply her faith to her life. “I believe that karma is the principal that guides the universe,” she said, referring to the Hindu concept of cosmic justice. “It’s one of the reasons I joined Teach for America.”
Pallod, who’s training for the teaching program this summer, was speaking at Star Pipe Products, the pipefitting distributor where Rishi Bhutada works and that his father, Ramesh, founded in 1982.
Situated at the end of a bland industrial drive on the city’s west end, the company doubles as a meeting place for local Hindus.
Among its warren of warehouse and offices spaces is a community center where a mural of Swami Vivekananda, a famous 19th-century spiritual leader who introduced the faith to the United States, fills the back wall.
But like the younger Bhutada, Pallod is intent on taking her religion outside officially Hindu spaces. As the president of the Hindus Student Association at the University of Texas at Austin until her graduation in May, she focused on introducing Hinduism to non-Hindu students.
Last spring, her group went all out to get non-Hindus to participate in Holi, a Hindu festival that involves throwing colored powder and water – often at other people – in a playful, rainbow-like spectacle.
“We wanted them to actually experience it themselves as opposed to just sitting there passively,” Pallod said of the event. “We wanted to teach that the colors are all about eliminating differences by making everyone look the same.”
The festival drew about 2,000 people, with many enthusiastically throwing colored powder at one another in the shadow the state Capitol. It was the kind of scene that Indian immigrant parents could have never imagined.

Terrorism Hits India Again

Mumbai, July 13, 2011. Three serial blasts have hit three different parts of Mumbai, killing 8 and injuring several.

When tragedy hits, we need to come together and focus on finding the fountain head for such evil acts and remove the cancerous cell and hold on to the temptations to blame anyone else. Blaming will do further damage to the society in times like this. This would be patriotic thing to do; to preserve life and safety of citizens.

If you committed a crime, let’s haul your ass to jail and bring justice for the crimes against the public. Your parents, siblings, spouse, neighborhood, community, religion or state has nothing to do with your evilness. If we want justice and peace, get the bad guys and not mess with good people.

Let no Indian look at the other with suspicion, out of a 1.2 billion people a dozen are responsible for this cowardice, we need to get them and get their fountain head. That is the right thing to do... one mishap should not tear India further apart. Hold on to the temptations to blame and you will serve your motherland right.

This is the time for us to come together.

As an American Indian Muslim I condemn this acts of terrorism.

Jai Hind

Mike Ghouse
http://mikeghouseforindia.blogspot.com/

Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker, writer and a frequent guest on Hannity show and nationally syndicated Radio shows and Dallas TV, Radio and Print Media. He presides America Together Foundation and is committed to building a cohesive America and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. Over 1000 articles have been published on Pluralism, Interfaith, Islam, India and cohesive societies. Two of his books are poised to be released this fall on Pluralism and Islam. He is available to speak at your place of worship, work, school, college, seminars or conferences. His work is encapsulated in 27 blogs, four websites and several forums indexed at http://www.mikeghouse.net/

Indian Heritage by Mike Ghouse India Speaker

We are proud of our heritage - a multi-faith, multi-cultural, multi-regional and multi-linguistic society, where we have come to accept and respect every which way people have lived their lives. For over 5000 years, India has been a beacon of pluralism - it has embraced Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Baha’i and Zoroastrianism to include in the array of the indigenous religions; Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism.

India led the way to the freedom movement, since 1947 every country has been liberated from colonialism. Indian democracy is a shining example to the world, where the people have peacefully transferred the powers. Indians are inherently secular and economically capitalistic. They believe in "live-and-let-live" life style, which is the essence of capitalism.

Through the years we have expressed the highest degree of maturity on handling extreme situations; the more divergent opinions we hear, the larger our heart grows, the bigger our embrace would be and we can cushion more differences. Let’s continue to honor the concept that there is always another side to the story, as finding the truth is our own responsibility.

I am proud of my heritage and am proud to be an Indian-American. Please join me in the discovery of India on a daily basis, as time permits and share the wealth of knowledge you have on this forum.

Mike Ghouse
Speaker on India
http://www.mikeghouse.net/

Muslim Speaker Mike Ghouse

NURTURING PLURALISTIC VALUES EMBEDDED IN ISLAM 

A Muslim Speaker, thinker, organizer and an activist committed to building cohesive societies with a belief that what is good for Muslims has got to be good for the world and vice versa to sustain peace, harmony and prosperity.

To be a Muslim is to be a peace maker, one who constantly seeks to mitigate conflicts and nurtures goodwill for peaceful co-existence of humanity. God wants us to live in peace and harmony with his creation; Life and Matter. Over 1000 articles have been published on a range of topics in Islam and Pluralism. Insha Allah, a book outlining the Muslim vision is on the horizon.

In defense of Islam, pursuing a civil dialogue

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20100919-In-defense-of-Islam-pursuing-9397.ece  
Over and over you hear it said: If Muslims oppose terrorism, why don't they stand up and say it?

 

If that has been you, Mike Ghouse ought to be your hero.

It is hard to imagine that anyone has worked harder than the Carrollton resident to demonstrate the peaceful and moderate side of Islam.

And that effort includes personally visiting Dallas' First Baptist Church last Sunday just to put a friendly face on the "evil, evil religion" that the Rev. Robert Jeffress denounced a few weeks before.

"It was wonderful," Ghouse said of the visit. "We were so warmly received."
He hopes a quick chat with Jeffress will be the start of deeper discussion about Islam and the importance of respect between religions.

"I want to have a dialogue with him, not to say he is wrong but to share another point of view," Ghouse said.

The 57-year-old Muslim was born in India and has lived in the United States for 30 years. He owns a small property management firm. But most of his day is devoted to building bridges between people of different faiths.

"It is my passion," he said in his distinctive raspy voice.

He has been a guest a dozen times on Sean Hannity's TV and radio talk shows. "I don't like the way Sean cuts me off, but I have to honor him for giving the American public a semblance of another point of view."

Ghouse said he can understand fear and criticism of Islam because he went through a time of similar feelings. As a teen, he was troubled by passages of the Quran. He called himself an atheist for a while.

But he said deeper study led him to realize the Quran had been purposely mistranslated down through history.

In the Middle Ages, European leaders commissioned a hostile Quran translation to foster warfare against Muslim invaders.

Later, Muslim leaders produced another translation to inflame Muslims against Christians and Jews.

"It was all for politics," he said.
Ghouse said he hopes to present Jeffress with a modern, faithful translation and challenge him to find evil verses.

"If he can, I will convert. I will join his church," Ghouse said. "If he can't, I will call on him to retract his statements and become a peacemaker."

Ghouse acknowledges that deep problems persist within Islam. "Three steps forward, two steps back," he said with a sigh.

And he agrees that mainstream Muslims have not done enough to counter violent images of their faith.

"That is very true," he said. "But part of it is that many Muslims have given up hope that we will ever be heard."

He said repeated denunciations of terrorism seem to fall on deaf ears.

And some efforts have backfired - like the proposed Islamic information center in New York. He said it should be hailed for furthering the moderate Muslim cause.
Instead, it has deepened hostility toward Muslims.

I have been astounded by the amount of anti-Islam propaganda that circulates via e-mail. Tons of it has come my way in the last few weeks.

One theme is that people like Mike Ghouse can't be trusted, that Islam encourages deception.

But Ghouse says actions speak louder than words. And he points to elections in Muslim nations.

More than half of Muslims live in countries with some degree of democracy. And time and time again, Islamist parties are overwhelmingly rejected in favor of secular, mainstream parties.

"The religious parties don't get more than 3 percent of the vote," Ghouse said.
Polls show deep mistrust of Muslims. "But the most important question in those surveys is: 'Do you know anything about Islam?' " Ghouse said. "Most people say no."
What keeps him going is faith in Americans, he said.

"The majority of Americans, if they know the truth, they will change their minds."
 

# # #

Mike Ghouse is a speaker, writer, thinker, futurist and an activist of Pluralism, Islam, India and Civil Societies passionately offering pluralistic solutions on issues of the day.

He is a commentator at Fox News on the Hannity show, nationally syndicated Radio shows along with Dallas TV, Print and Radio networks and occasional interviews on NPR.  He has spoken at international forums including the Parliament of Worlds Religions in Melbourne, Middle East Peace initiative in Jerusalem, International Leadership conference in Hawaii, Washington and elsewhere.

Concerned by the divisiveness, he saw the need to bring Americans together and founded America Together Foundation committed to building a cohesive America, indeed it is in response to ACT America which is bent on pitching one American against the other.  We will be holding series of educational programs, conferences and workshops to address the issues that divide us such as Civil Right, GLBT, Quraan, Abortion, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Racial Profiling and Stereotyping.

The Annual Unity Day USA is in its 7^th year now, it is a purposeful event to bring Americans together, on this Unity Day, we the people of the United States of America of every faith, race, ethnicity, culture and background will gather to express our commitment to co-existence, unity, prosperity and wellbeing of our nation.  

Thanksgiving Celebration is in its 15^th year showcasing cultural diversity.

The 5^th Annual Reflections on Holocaust and Genocides is to learn and to acknowledge and reflect upon the terrible things we have inflicted upon each other and commit to avert such tragedies.  Through this event non-Jewish people have consciously learned about Holocaust for the first time, it was also for the first time that people of 14 faiths came together to join in to commemorate the Holocaust that commemorated within the Jewish Community for years. They are not alone anymore in their anguish, we are all in it together with them, and it is a Muslim initiative to effect a positive change.

The programs, seminars and workshops conducted by the Foundation for Pluralism have become a part of the America Together Foundation. While the Foundation for Pluralism continues championing the idea of co-existence through respecting and accepting the otherness of other, the commitment to nurturing the pluralistic ideals embedded in Islam through the World Muslim Congress continues.

# # #

Fuller Profile is at:  http://www.mikeghouse.net/MuslimSpeaker.MikeGhouse.asp   

Mike is working on two books scheduled to be released this year; The American Muslim Agenda and My Journey to Pluralism.

Mike has written over 1000 Articles on Pluralism, Islam, India, Peace & Justice and civil societies published in a wide spectrum of Newspapers and Magazines around the world.

Locally, he is a panelist at Dallas Morning News's and writes weekly on a range of issues facing the nation. Washington Post, Huffington Post and other news papers and sites regularly publish his work.  

Mike is available to speak on Pluralism, Islam, Civil Societies, and Peace & Justice at your place of worship, school, work place, seminars, workshops or conferences. His work is reflected at three websites & twenty two Blogs listed at http://www.MikeGhouse.net/

Model of Democracy, the Indian Idol

Democracy means different things to different people. I will present a few different aspects of democracy in the coming weeks as the events unfold in the Arab World.

Democracy is about choices and the freedom to choose what one eats, wears, believes and seeks in the pursuit of happiness without being harassed or humiliated.  It is the unhindered choice available to every citizen equally.

The Asia Bibi incident in Pakistan took me right into my own childhood where the Dalits were treated inhumanly even in the cosmopolitan Bangalore in the early sixties, it must have been humiliating to them the way Brahmins washed the public tap after the Dalits collected the water, I had never liked those attitudes when I was in the line I felt their anguish.  But that was in America too where the African Americans could not drink from the same fountain. 

Thank God, my Dad broke all the traditions and had the Dalits sit in our house and drink the tea with us in the same cups we used; I clearly remember Mara, Naga, Muniyamma, Venkat and others.  My Dad was harassed by a few for giving space to “them” and I am sure many of you had similar parents.

India has come a long way, just as America has.  Out of nowhere the picture of 2007 Indian Idol popped on my facebook screen. There it was a non-mainstream Indian making to the top. This was unimaginable fifty years ago.

It is this model of democracy I want to rave about and thank the Bollywood industry for it, they set the trends of inclusivism, pluralism and secularism in India, just at the Hollywood does. It has broken the class, caste and religious barriers – and offers equal opportunity to all.  Problems are not gone completely, but the progress is significant.

In the two seasons of Indian Idol I have watched, I have witnessed with delight the “slum dogs” moving up, the women folks, the illiterate with no exposure to music and the well trained ones; they were all on the level playing field.  I have admired the comments made by hosts particularly Anu Malik, Javed Akhtar and Sonu Nigam.  No one had an upper hand; it is what they can strive for to be the best and they came from every segment of the Indian society. 

I would suggest similar programs to pop in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and else where, where they can shape the future leaders of their nations by offering opportunities to every one and let every one learn to compete in serving their nations.

We all have the responsibility to share and explore avenues in shaping the future of each nation and the family of nations. We are all in this together and I salute the Indian Idol for shaping the future of India. It gives hopes to every citizen and that is one beautiful aspect of democracy.

Mike Ghouse is committed to building cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day – www.MikeGhouse.ne

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Indian Idol 2007

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3828885197123734159

Asia Bibi Petition

http://www.petitiononline.com/Asiabibi/petition.html

Who wants to be the President of Pakistan

http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2011/01/who-wants-to-be-president-of-pakistan.html