At a gurdwara and a synagogue in LA...
Harish Khare
I came to Los Angeles on Wednesday. This sprawling metropolitan city in California, on the west coast of the United States, is a total and complete contrast to Barre, the village-town on the east coast I was in last week.
Consider this: Los Angeles city alone accounts for over one dozen gurdwaras. One of the oldest is Gurdwara Vermont, taking its name from its address of 1966, North Vermont Avenue. It was established in 1969 and is housed in an aesthetically pleasing building.
Gurdwara Vermont boasts of the traditional Nishan Sahib outside the building. There is an assembly hall which can accommodate a nearly 400-strong congregation. Understandably, the congregation is present in strength only on Sundays. Both the devotees and the jathedars and granthis are gainfully occupied on the weekdays.
I visited the gurdwara on Friday. Despite its near-emptiness, it exuded that special air of spiritual wholesomeness. The resident jathedar was pleased to welcome me. He gave me karah parshad and invited me to come again on Sunday, when kirtan, katha and ardas are performed. And, of course, the langar hall gets full.
The jathedar is a recent import from Delhi and did not give the impression of being much versed in the Guru Granth Sahib wisdom. However, what he did say was simply striking: the gurdwara welcomes everyone, not just the Sikhs. With that simple statement, he had managed to convey an elusive wisdom. He proudly told me that Hindus, Christians and even Muslims could often be seen partaking of the langar. The gurdwara, as he would have it, was a place of enlightened religiosity.
As can well be imagined, the gurdwara has also become a rallying point for the Sikh community in an alien land. There have been some unfortunate cases of hate crime against the Sikhs in the United States. It is in the face of such organised prejudices that a community feels the pain of being a minority. For example, there is a poster, put up in August, saluting the memory of the six Sikhs who were killed in what is known as the Oak Creek (Wisconsin) massacre.
And, indeed a gurdwara, like any other place of worship, also induces a bond of solidarity, a sense of fellowship. A poster advertised for Punjabi-speaking classes, while another offered advice on how to bring down “bad cholesterol”.
Los Angeles, like New York City, is home to a truly multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious population. Everyone and anyone who has anything to offer needs to make the pitch in an inclusive and accommodating tone. Gurdwara Vermont too seeks to attract. It was most pleasing to find that its brochure was available in the Spanish, Chinese, Chinese Traditional, Persian and Armenian languages, besides, of course, English. That speaks of openness and self-assured large-heartedness.
ON Friday evening, I also found myself at the Beth Shir Shalom Synagogue in the Los Angeles area. Just as in the morning at the gurdwara, I was made to feel welcome in the synagogue as well. And, just as in the gurdwara I was expected to cover my head, at the synagogue, I was invited to don a yarmulka cap.
I was at the synagogue to attend a service in memory of my father-in-law, who passed away a year ago. The congregation was rather small. Just about a dozen people made the big prayer hall look almost empty. But the rather small number of devotees was made up by the presence of Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels.
The good Rabbi led the prayers. Curiously enough, his sermon was more a conversation, a dialogue, rather than an authoritative exposition. And he sang beautifully and played the guitar adequately. He (and occasionally the congregation) sang in Yiddish (also, with a bit of English). So melodious was his voice that even a non-believer and a tone-deaf person like me found myself spellbound.
And, just as at the gurdwara in the morning, the message imparted here was the theme of universal understanding. The Rabbi seemed to suggest that the Jewish religion and its teachings were not just for the Jews, but also for everyone else. A good Jew was a good global citizen too.
I was to learn later that the good Rabbi has a habit of getting involved in politically correct causes. In fact, during the course of his “sermon”, he mentioned that he was trying to put together a “consortium” of synagogues, churches and mosques in the area. The idea was to pool resources and energies if something could be done about the immigrant refugees from Syria. Amen.
THE two “Indian” weeklies — India-West and India Journal — report the setting up of a new group, to be called the “Republican Hindu Coalition”. This group, the reports suggest, brings together “conservative-minded” Indian-Americans and it takes inspiration from the Republican Jewish Coalition, an influential voice.
The gentleman credited with the setting up of this new group is Shalabhi Kumar. He is described as a businessman and also as a “major supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.
The Republican Hindu Coalition (RHC) has succeeded in roping in former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as its honorary chairman. Gingrich happens to be one of the most controversial and polarising figures in American politics in recent years. His presence at the head of the group is bound to lend it a sharp edge of extreme partisanship.
The RHC is the latest manifestation of the sections of the Indian community basking in the sunshine of success under the American sun, feeling sufficiently self-confident and self-assured as to want to make an intervention in American domestic disputes. The Indian community feels that it has paid its dues and is now entitled to have its say on how the United States should arrange its internal political equations.
Kumar has reportedly expressed total disappointment with President Barack Obama’s record. In fact, he argues that the Democratic President had introduced in the United States a kind of baneful “babu raj”, which proved so deleterious to the Indian economy. For good measure, Kumar promises to personally donate “at least $2 million” and raise millions more for the Republican candidates in the 2016 race. He wants the Republicans to take the White House back from the Democrats.
The Republican Hindu Coalition is a harmless example of a familiar pattern of the immigrants’ itch to feel important. What is not so harmless about such a group is that its members, individually and collectively, also subscribe to the American politics’ habits. That in itself remains a benign preoccupation. What becomes somewhat problematic is when these Indian-Americans seek to inject long-distance similar habits and attitudes into the Indian political landscape.
Serious scholars regret that the American domestic political discourse unapologetically promotes highly personalised politics, generating bitterness and hostility among rivals. Some of these “insights” were imported into the last Lok Sabha elections. In that campaign, Narendra Modi followed some of these American tricks and injected a highly bitter note.
And, this surcharged NRI community now believes — and, is encouraged to believe — that it is entitled to believe that its preferences and tastes should be accepted by the “politicians back home”. This is the new elite that is making demands on India. In the long term, this cannot be a very helpful basis of a partnership between the government and the diaspora.
GETTING from Boston to Los Angeles is a long and tiring journey. However, all my tiredness simply dissipated when I noticed a coffee shop at the Los Angeles airport. The café was named, yes, you got it: “Klatch Coffee”. Below this name was the tagline: “where coffee is the conversation”.
kaffeeklatsch@tribuneindia.com
