AP
Rajan Zed, president of Universal Society of Hinduism, delivers a prayer
from Sanskrit scriptures before the Idaho Senate on Tuesday in Boise.
For the first time the opening prayer for the Idaho
state senate was said on Tuesday by a Hindu cleric amid protests by some
senators who claimed the United States was a Christian nation and
denounced Hinduism, local media reported.
Universal
Society of Hinduism president Rajan Zed, who said the prayer in Sanskrit
and English, made a call for the legislators to “act selflessly without
any thought of personal profit” because “selfish action imprisons the
world.”
He was invited by Senate President Pro-Tem
Brent Hill to be a guest chaplain and deliver the invocation which is
usually made by a Christian chaplain at the start of the day’s
legislative session in Boise. According to The Idaho Statesman,
when protests were made before the session, Mr. Hill said: “I reviewed
the prayer. It did not seem offensive in any way.” He added: “It refers
to ‘deity supreme’.”
Senator Steve Vick, who walked
out of the Senate chamber before Mr. Zed’s invocation said that Hindu
prayers should not be allowed because the U.S. was “built on the
Judeo-Christian, not only religion, but work ethic, and I don’t want to
see that undermined”, the Statesman reported. Hindus “have a caste system,” he added. “They worship cows.”
He
was one of the three Republican senators to boycott the prayer. Senator
Sheryl Nuxoll said she boycotted Mr. Zed’s prayer because she believed
the United States is a Christian nation and “Hindu is a false faith with
false gods,” according to the newspaper.
But Mr. Hill, who is also a Republican, told the Statesman,
“In my mind, you either believe in religious freedom or you don’t... We
have had Jewish prayers, many denominations of Christian prayers.”
The Statesman quoted Mr. Zed as saying of the protests: “We don’t mind. Hinduism is more embracing.”
KTVB-TV
said that Mr. Zed noted “that most of the legislators welcomed him
warmly” and said, “We all have different viewpoints, and that is
wonderful, that is what makes our country great.” He added: “We are all
looking for the truth. If we can join our resources together, we can
reach there faster.”
Senators from both the
Republican Party, which controls the Senate, and the Democratic Party
shook the saffron-clad Mr. Zed’s hand and thanked him for coming, the Statesman said.
The
U.S. does not have an official religion and the secular constitution
prescribes strict separation of religion and state. However, federal and
state legislatures open their sessions with prayers, even though
prayers are prohibited in government schools because of the
constitutional injunction.
In 2000, Venkatachalapathi
Samuldrala of Shiva Hindu Temple in Parma, Ohio, made the opening
invocation in the House of Representatives in Washington. Mr. Zed said
the opening prayers at the federal Senate in 2007 when it was disrupted
by protesters from the public gallery.
Idaho borders
Washington State, where two Hindu temples were vandalised last month.
The second attack occurred the same week that an influential Christian
fundamentalist preacher, Pat Robertson, said on his TV show that Hindu
prayer “sounds like gibberish.”
A former candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, he had earlier called Hinduism “demonic.”
Keywords: Rajan Zed, Idaho state senate
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