After the horrific events of 9/11, some of my Hindu friends were concerned about their safety. They had been yelled at and threatened by strangers. And for no reason at all they were told they weren’t wanted in the USA.
Over the years, such incidents have increased. According to a recent CNN article by Harmeet Kaur, “Over the past year, researchers at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate have documented a surge of anti-Indian sentiment on X that is showing no signs of abating.”
Even FBI Director Kash Patel is not immune. When he wished followers on his X account a happy Diwali, his post was flooded with bigoted and mean-spirited remarks toward him and Hindu worship.
An Indian-American right-wing author, filmmaker, and commentator, Dinesh D’Souza was also perplexed: “In a career spanning 40 years, I have never encountered this type of rhetoric. The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation?”
The fact is, the sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad-gita, has been studied and revered in America for over two hundred years by thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Emerson wrote, “I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.”
In 1893, at the end of the 19th century, the Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda traveled to America and gave an inspiring address at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago. He began his speech with “Sisters and brothers of America.” Just those words alone received a standing ovation from an audience of several thousand.
Read More https://iskconnews.org/becoming-one-in-peace-and-friendship/
Comments