"When you start a prize with the Dalai Lama, how do you keep it going?" asked Thomas P DiNapoli, New York State comptroller, at the Guru Nanak Interfaith Prize event in New York, April 18.
The two Indian Americans on the White House inter-faith council, Eboo Patel, a Muslim, and Anju Bhargava, a Hindu, have strongly endorsed United States President Barack Obama's support for the proposed mosque cum community and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero in New York, saying it was a constitutional issue with regard to freedom of religion that had to be protected zealously
One of his earliest memories of childhood that interfaith leader and bestselling author Dr Eboo Patel remembers is that of his father's friend Ajit Uncle. Eboo was about four or five when he asked the question that has been bothering him: What is on your head?
India-born Eboo Patel, founder of a group focused on global interfaith youth movement and member of President Barack Obama's faith advisory council, has won the 2010 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, touted as the world's most prestigious prize in the field.
The list of 22 leaders was compiled in association with Harvard Kennedy School. It also includes Federal Reserve Board Chirman Ben Bernanke, Newark city Mayor Cory Booker, Cisco Systems CEO and Chairman John Chambers and playwright-activist Eve Ensler.
Amid the row over the proposed Islamic Centre near Ground Zero and the earlier plan by a Florida-based Pastor to burn the Quran, an Indian American interfaith advisor to the United States President on Saturday said Muslims in the country are now more scared than they were in the days after 9/11. "When the faces of intolerance show themselves, the forces of inclusiveness in America go into action," he said.
President Barack Obama has appointed the first Hindu community activist and one of the first Hindu women priests in New Jersey, Anju Bhargava, to the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Mumbai-born Eboo Patel, 33, the only Indian American thus far appointed by President Barack Obama to the 25-member Advisory Council, has said that he was honoured and blessed, and ready to get to work and operationalize President Obama's commitment to inter-faith cooperation.
'The challenges of the world are too great for any one religious tradition to address alone... The best way to learn about other religions is not from books, but from people... Go talk to someone from a different faith tradition. Get to know them. Build up some trust.' Dr Katharine Rhodes Henderson, who jointly won Hofstra University's Guru Nanak Prize for inter-faith champions in the United States, discusses religion and the challenges of extremism in this lively interview with Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
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