I'm not in favour of dividing Hindus and Sikhs. I'm not in favour of dividing Hindus and Christians. All the citizens, all the voters, are my countrymen.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As for my stand, I think it has become difficult in our country to be a Hindu and a liberal at the same time.
Whether the Sikhs want to worship in Wisconsin or the Christians want to worship in Texas or the Jews want to worship in New York, we're living under the magnificent umbrella of a Constitution that says we can.
When I was very young, my background as a Sikh-American made me aware of the tensions that underlie choice.
People's identities as Indians, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way - quite suddenly - to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.
I am a Hindu, brought up mostly in India.
Being a Sikh meant having to do what Mom and Dad said, and going to temple, and Mom and Dad choosing who I would marry. But going to an American school taught me that I was the one who's supposed to make those choices.
The Hindu nationalists see a religion near perfection save for the tampering of Muslims and Christians. So they fall upon these groups, rather than try to reform their own practices by drawing on India's sophisticated philosophical traditions.
This whole issue of Hindu-Muslim in India is completely overhyped.
People can be only divided into good or bad; their race, religion, nationality don't matter.
We maintain and hold that Muslims and Hindus are two major nations by any definition or test of a nation.