SPECIAL/HAF GOES TO DC
HAF supporters at the reception
Day of advocacy precedes PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTES Y HINDU AMERICAN FOUNDATION
HAF’s Capitol Hill reception
AZIZ HANIFFA
A full day of advocacy on Capitol Hill, where the
largest delegation of Hindu Americans to date broke
into teams to meet with more than two dozen lawmakers and their senior aides, preceded the Hindu
American Foundation’s Congressional annual reception and awards ceremony.
“This seventh annual day of advocacy and celebration
exceeded every expectation,” said Suhag Shukla, man-
aging director and legal counsel, HAF. “We had a
record size delegation, the lawmakers and their aides
were exceptionally receptive and the reception was one
of our best attended.”
She continued: “As in the years past, we focused on
human rights and religious freedom abroad as well as
civil rights domestically, and advocated for resolutions
and bills that are currently before the House. We had
four teams comprising our staff, board and executive
council members as well as supporters offering back-
ground and compelling evidence supporting the issues.
Among foreign policy issues, our top priority was push-
ing for passage of the resolution introduced by (United
States) Congressman (Frank) Pallone (H Res.1601),
which recognizes the human rights atrocities faced by
the Kashmiri Hindu Pandits who were ethnically
cleansed out of the valley over two decades ago… The
United States is the leading defender of human rights
and it is vital that elected members of the US House of
Representatives take a strong stance in not only con-
demning the extremist violence, lack of religious free-
dom and human rights violations committed against
Kashmiri Pandits, but also insisting that the terrorist
infrastructure in the region be dismantled, and these
terrorists be brought to justice.”
With regard to domestic issues, Shukla said, the HAF
had added its voice of support to those of community
groups demanding more vegetarian and vegan options
to be added to school lunches to promote a healthy
lifestyle by advocating for House Resolution 5504, or
Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act, and
also had pressed for the passage of House Resolution
1593 promoting the development of a national curricu-
lum standard for social studies “in the wake of politi-
cally and religiously biased school board proceedings in
Texas earlier this year.”
She said, “We highlighted how even the US military
has begun to take notice of our country’s obesity epi-
demic with over 27 percent of American youth being
obese and projections indicate the US will be unable to
staff the armed forces in the years to come, posing a
serious national security risk. We urged that Congress
insist on the plant-based diet language in HR 5504
because despite the overwhelming evidence supportive
of a plant-based diet, the Senate version (S-3307) does
not include a plant-based (diet) pilot program.”
At the reception, US Representative Ed Royce and
Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal were presented
with the HAF’s Friend of Community and Pride of
Community awards respectively. The Mahatma Gandhi
Award for the Advancement of Religious Pluralism was
awarded to Reverend Patrick McCollum, a leading
chaplain of the Wiccan faith, who spearheaded an
effort to overturn a hiring policy in California that lim-
ited the hiring of chaplains to five faiths — Protestant,
Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Native Americans. The
Dharma Seva Award went to Hinduism scholar Vishal
Agarwal, for working closely with the HAF during
national campaigns over textbooks and overcoming
biases in academia.
The prophecy you
proved wrong
Hindu Americans have
come a long way since his
father arrived five decades
ago to a segregated America,
said Neal Katyal, the principal deputy solicitor general
who is currently the acting
solicitor general.
Katyal, 40, who is among
the top five contenders to be
the next solicitor general,
was presented with the Pride
of the Community Award by
because they could never
assimilate”. Everyone in this
room has proved that that
prophecy was in some funda-
mental sense wrong.’
He said he was aware
‘today there are lots of chal-
lenges, both to our commu-
nity and to other communi-
ties, particularly Muslim
Americans today, that is
growing out of fear that is
worrisome. And, so I applaud
Neal Katyal
the Hindu American
Foundation at its annual
Capitol Hill reception last
week.
‘My parents came here
from India with just $8 in
their pockets because that’s
all the money they were
allowed to bring,’ he said. ‘My
dad arrived in Newport
News, Virginia, at a time
when he literally got off the
boat and there were signs
that said… there was a sign
for black restrooms and signs
for whites. He didn’t know
which one to use.’
Katyal, an alumnus of the
Yale Law School and former
professor at the Georgetown
Law School, continue: ‘And
when I think about it, that
wasn’t that long ago — half a
century ago. And where we
are today, I think about the
fact that the office that I am
in now in the Justice
Department — the Office of
the Solicitor General — filed
briefs in the last century that
said to the court that “teem-
ing millions of Hindus could
never immigrate to America
what this organization (the
HAF) does not just on behalf
of Hindu Americans but on
behalf of all of us to advance
the cause of justice, equality
and basic respect for one
another. That’s what I try to
do, and I know this organiza-
tion does as well.’
Katyal later told India
Abroad that regarding the
‘teeming millions of Hindus’
quote, he was quoting then
solicitor general James M
Beck’s brief in the Bhagat
Singh Thind case in 1923.
Beck had reasoned, ‘The peo-
ple of India were a subject-
race, and while the ideals of
liberty, equality and fraterni-
ty were being preached in
Europe and America, there is
no reason to believe that any
one seriously extended their
applications to the people of
India, or believed that those
people were of a kind to be
assimilated in citizenship in
Western civilization.’
Beck had concluded, Katyal
said, that “immigration of the
teeming millions of Asia into
America is unthinkable.”