About LA LOTUS Foundation

There wasn't one particular incident that made me start LA LOTUS Foundation. It was more like years of seeing the same things happen and asking the same question: why don't we have a place that deals with this properly?

When something happens to Hindus, we talk about it among ourselves. We share it on WhatsApp. We post about it on social media. Everybody is angry for a few days, and then another story comes along.

Six months later, try finding what actually happened. Try finding the original report. Try finding out whether anyone was arrested, whether the case went anywhere, or even whether some of the things being shared at the time were true.

Very often, nobody has kept track.

I saw the same problem in other areas too.

If a Hindu student is being made uncomfortable because of their religion, where do they go? If somebody is facing a problem at work because of a religious practice, do they know their rights? If parents believe their child is being bullied because of their faith, do they know what they can do?

And then there is an entirely different problem: who explains Hinduism?

So much is written and said about Hinduism, Hindus, caste, Hindutva and India. Sometimes I read something and genuinely wonder whether the people being discussed would even recognize themselves in that description.

I don't think the answer is to become angry every time somebody criticizes us. And I certainly don't think every criticism of Hinduism is Hinduphobia.

But I also don't believe Hindus have to sit quietly while everybody else gets to define who we are.

That is really where LA LOTUS began.

I wanted somewhere we could document what happens, understand our rights, preserve our history and traditions, and also have difficult conversations without being afraid of them.

Being a lawyer probably has a lot to do with how I approach this.

I care about evidence.

If a temple is vandalized and we don't know the motive, then we should not invent one. We can say the temple was vandalized. We can document the damage. We can follow the investigation. And if evidence later establishes that it was religiously motivated, we update the record.

If something is alleged, we call it an allegation.

If something is disputed, we say it is disputed.

And sometimes the most accurate answer is simply: we don't know yet.

I don't see that as weakening Hindu advocacy. I think it makes us more credible when we do have something important to say.

But LA LOTUS cannot only be about what happens to Hindus.

That would be a very incomplete organization.

There is an enormous civilization behind us.

I want a Hindu child growing up in America to know more about their tradition than the festivals their family celebrates. I want them to understand why we light a diya, what a murti actually represents, why the swastika is sacred to Hindus and other Dharmic traditions, what our different schools of philosophy argued about, and why questioning has always had a place within our traditions.

I want a college student to be able to find a Hindu organization on campus. And if there isn't one, I want us to help them understand how to start one.

I want people who aren't Hindu to be able to come here too. If someone genuinely wants to understand what Hindus believe or why we practice something, I would much rather they ask than assume.

There is also something I want to be very clear about.

Yes, I created this Foundation because I believe Hindus need a stronger voice. I don't apologize for that.

But protecting Hindu civil rights does not require caring less about anybody else's.

If I expect someone to stand beside a Hindu child who is bullied because of her faith, then I should be willing to stand beside another child facing the same thing because he is Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist or belongs to any other community.

Otherwise, what exactly am I asking for?

Equal rights cannot mean equal rights only when the person being treated unfairly looks like us, worships like us or agrees with us.

That doesn't mean we will avoid uncomfortable subjects.

We won't.

I have questions about the way Hinduism and Hindu identity are discussed. I have questions about caste narratives, Hindutva, religious extremism, the representation of India, academia, the media and the way some incidents involving Hindus receive attention while others disappear.

I have my own views on many of these things.

When I write my own analysis, my name will be on it. You will be able to look at the sources I relied upon, understand why I reached the conclusion I did, and disagree with me if you want to.

I am a lawyer. I am very comfortable with disagreement.

What matters to me is that we stop having important conversations without doing the work behind them.

The same applies to our history.

One of the things that bothers me most is how easily people become statistics.

Twenty people killed. A hundred families displaced. A temple destroyed. A hate crime reported.

We read the number and move on.

But somebody was behind every number. Somebody had a name. Somebody had a family. Somebody prayed in that temple. Somebody called that place home.

That is why remembrance is part of LA LOTUS too.

Not everything should disappear because the news cycle has moved on.

LA LOTUS is still new, and I am not going to pretend that we have everything figured out. We don't.

Some things we build will work. Some will need to change. Our research will grow. Our documentation will become better. And if we publish something that credible evidence later shows is wrong, I expect us to correct it.

But I know why I started it.

I want Hindus to know their rights.

I want our children to know their traditions.

I want incidents affecting our community to be documented rather than forgotten.

I want us to be able to question the narratives written about us.

I want people outside our community to have somewhere they can come to understand us.

And most of all, I don't want us to keep waiting for somebody else to do all of this for us.

For us, LA LOTUS represents Liberty & Advocacy through Learning, Outreach, Tradition, Unity & Sanātana.

It started in Los Angeles. The purpose was never meant to end there.

If a student somewhere finds our website because she is having a problem on campus and discovers that she has rights she didn't know about, this work matters.

If someone reports an incident that otherwise would never have been documented, it matters.

If a young Hindu comes here knowing almost nothing about their own tradition and leaves wanting to learn more, it matters.

And if someone who is not Hindu spends ten minutes here and understands us a little better than they did before, that matters too.

That's the LA LOTUS Foundation I want us to build.