California State Senate here heard its first Hindu opening prayer today in its 157 years history, when famous Hindu chaplain, Rajan Zed, recited Gayatri and other ancient Sanskrit mantras. - Sacramento, California, August 27:
Starting with "Om", the mystical syllable containing the universe, which in Hinduism is used to introduce and conclude religious work, he read from Rig-Veda, the oldest scripture of the world still in common use, dated from around 1,500 BCE. He also delivered from Brahadaranyakopnisad, Taittiriya Upanisad, and Bhagavad-Gita (Song of the Lord), all ancient Hindu scriptures. He ended the prayer with last mantra of Rig-Veda, "samani va akutih", before concluding with "Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti", which he then translated as "Peace, Peace, Peace be unto all".
Before starting the prayer, he sprinkled Gangajal (holy water from river Ganga in India) on the podium, which is traditional in Hindu worship.
Wearing saffron colored attire, a ruddraksh mala (rosary), and traditional sandalpaste tilak (religious mark) on the forehead, Zed, after reciting the original lines in Sanskrit, then read the English translation of the verses. Sanskrit is considered a sacred language in Hinduism and root language of all Indo-European languages. Full text of the prayer will be recorded in the Daily Journal of the Senate, which is a permanent public record.
Reverend Canon James D. Richardson, Chaplain of California State Senate, introduced Rajan Zed while Don Perata, Senate President pro Tem; Senator Christine Kehoe (San Jose) and Senator Elaine Alquist (San Diego) personally welcomed him.
One of the paragraphs of this Hindu prayer read in Sanskrit was "Asato ma sad gamaya, Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya, Mrityor mamrtam gamaya", which was translated in English as "Lead me from the unreal to the Real, Lead me from darkness to Light, Lead me from death to immortality."
Zed was accompanied to the California Senate by his community volunteer wife Shipa Zed; son Navgeet Zed, recipient of Nevada Peacemaker of the Year award; and a group of other supporters, including Jassi Cheema, Paradhyeya Das, Chaitanya Dasi, etc., many of whom came out of town.
"This day of August 27, 2007, is an esteemed day for all Californians and momentous day for us when opening prayers from ancient Hindu scriptures are being read in this majestic hall of democracy," Zed remarked.
Rajan Zed, affiliated with World Congress of Faiths-London and listed in "Who's Who in America" 2006, volunteers as a chaplain in various hospitals, serves on various Boards of Directors, and is very active in interfaith dialogue. He created history on July 12 last when he opened the United States Senate session in Washington DC with Hindu prayer for the first time in its 218 years history. City of Reno issued him a proclamation and he received various honors from different organizations in this country and abroad.
Hinduism, oldest and third largest religion of the world, has no datable beginning but some scholars put it around 3,000 BCE. It has no founder, no one authoritative figure, and no single prophet or holy book. One of its scriptures, Mahabharata, is the longest poem ever written, comprising over 100,000 couplets. Hinduism in North America was introduced in 1830s with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau studying Hindu scriptures like Upanisads and Bhagavad-Gita. Vivekananda made a strong impression at World's Parliament of Religion in Chicago in 1893 and he then founded Vedanta Society. Protap Chunder Mozoomdar of Brahmo Samaj delivered his first American address on September 02, 1883 in Concord, Massachusetts.
California ranks eighth in Gross Domestic Product in the world, higher than Canada, Spain, Russia, India, Australia, etc. California State Senate has 40 Senators, with each Senator representing 846, 791 Californians. Current Senate Chaplain Richardson, an Episcopal Priest, is the 47th chaplain since 1897, when this office began. Generally he offers the opening prayer but guest chaplains are also invited from time to time.
The prayers are offered to God on behalf of the Senate in recognition that our freedom and our abundance are gifts from God, according to Senate Chaplain webpage.
Contact Details:Rajan Zed : rajanzed@gmail.com
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Was the US Senate Attack on Hinduism an isolated Instance?
Article by: Rajiv Malhotra, USINPAC Leadership Committee Member
The US Senate has a long tradition of opening with Bible prayers, occasionally extending a symbolic courtesy to prayers of other faiths. For the first time in its history a Hindu priest was invited to conduct the opening prayer. Indian-Americans, having contributed immensely to America, naturally felt proud to be afforded equal respect alongside other American religions. But the Hindu prayer was attacked as an "abomination" by hate-filled heckling that resulted from an organized mobilization by civic groups such as the American Family Association attempting, to demonize Hinduism as heathen, immoral and dangerously un-American. The President of the Family Research Council mobilized Americans to block the Hindu priest, saying, "There is no historic connection between America and the polytheistic creed of Hinduism." David Barton, one of the scholars informing the attackers, declared that Hinduism was "not a religion that has produced great things in the world," citing social conditions in India as proof of its primitiveness.
The denigration of Hinduism influences the way Americans relate to Indians. Andrew Rotter, an American historian, in his book on the US foreign policy's tilt against India and towards Pakistan during the Nehru era, cites declassified documents revealing US presidents' and diplomats' suspicions of Hinduism. They regarded "Hindu India" as lacking morality and integrity, and its "grotesque images" reminded them of previous pagan faiths conquered by Christians, such as Native Americans. American ideas about India are intertwined with stereotypes about Hinduism.
There are domestic implications concerning the diaspora as well. The great American meritocracy has enabled us to succeed as individuals, and many Indians see American Jews as a role model. But it took the Jews over half a century of organized lobbying and litigation by organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, to establish their religious identity in public life. The lesson Jews had learnt in the European Holocaust was that their individual success could easily be used against them if their civilizational identity was defamed. Indians also faced hate crimes in New Jersey when the Dotbusters targeted Hindus. Recent rants by Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs generate xenophobia against Indians for "stealing" jobs from "real" (i.e. white Judeo-Christian) Americans. As Indian-Americans stand out for their individual success, while US economic standards deteriorate, we may one day regret having neglected the projection of a positive civilizational image. Unlike many other ethnic and religious groups, we have not adequately engaged US universities, schools, media and think-tanks deeper than the pop culture layer of cuisine, Bollywood and fashions. On the contrary, many Indian writers have fed the "caste, cows, curry" images of India.
Hindu-Americans need to be educated on the history of American public religion and the "American way" of claiming one's religious identity across the spectrum of liberals and conservatives. In fact, even liberal Americans have always been a very Christian people. Hilary Clinton's devout Christianity has shaped her liberalism. She told New York Times that her Methodist faith has been "a huge part of who I am, and how I have seen the world and what I believe in, and what I have tried to do in my life." She carries a Bible on her campaign travels and confidently quotes from St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley, the father of Methodism. Another liberal, Barak Obama, proudly projects his Christianity and delivers many of his key campaign speeches before church congregations. It comes as a surprise to many secular Indians that the very liberal President Jimmy Carter describes himself as a Bible evangelist, and asserts that his Christian faith provided the moral compass to guide his presidency.
Liberalism in America is about egalitarian economic and race policies, and is not a rejection or even a departure from the nation's majority religion, i.e. Christianity. The equivalent scenario would be for India's CPM leaders (the liberal/left equivalent of Obama, Clinton and Carter) to quote Hindu sacred texts and deliver campaign speeches in major Hindu temples. While American labor unions have always been very deeply rooted in Christianity, India's labor unions are encouraged to discard the Hindu identity. Unlike in Europe, American public life has never abandoned its deep rooted Christian foundations. America's separation of state and church affects only formal institutions, and does not imply de-Christianizing the leadership or the national ethos.
Indian intellectuals have misunderstood America's Christian psyche because the Indian notion of secularism in India is very different to that of the American. Indian secularism requires distancing from the majority religion, i.e. Hinduism, by one or more of the following ways: by espousing a "generic spirituality" without any specific religious identity, by condemning any Hindu identity as a mark of communalism with BJP links, or by explicitly blaming Hinduism for all sorts of human rights problems. The equivalent situation would be to blame the Bible for all the US abuses in Guantanamo and in its domestic society, and to de-Christianize America into a sort of generic spirituality. While Hinduism, like all other world religions, does have social problems, it also has internally generated reformations, as well as immense resources to deal with the human condition.
Unraveling this requires understanding Hinduphobia's nexus in the American academy and seminaries. This is the subject of a well-researched eye-opening new book, titled, Invading the Sacred: An analysis of Hinduism Studies in America. (See: www.invadingthesacred.com for details.) The book exposes influential scholars who have disparaged the Bhagavad Gita as "a dishonest book"; declared Ganesha's trunk a "limp phallus"; classified the Hindu Devi as the "mother with a penis" and Shiva as "a notorious womanizer" who incites violence in India; pronounced Sri Ramakrishna a pedophile who sexually molested the young Swami Vivekananda; condemned Indian mothers as being less loving of their children than white women; and interpreted the bindi as a drop of menstrual fluid and the "ha" in sacred mantras as a woman's sound during orgasm. To understand the hatred spewed at us by the Senate hecklers one needs to understand the systemic creation and distribution of such one-sided "data" by an army of "scholars" whose mission is to bolster the image of Hinduism as a danger to the American way of life.
http://www.usinpac.com/articles1.asp
United We Stand - American Hindu Association
www.americanhindu.net
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