Leap of faith

She has been recognised as one of the 12 faith leaders in the world by the United States government and has been given the Champion for Change award, but Sunita Viswanath, founder of Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus, is as humble as they come.

In an age where the only stories related to religion that one gets to hear are those that involve extreme ideologies, Sunita is throwing light on the founding principles of Hinduism, ones that have been forgotten amidst the debates surrounding religion. She is taking these principles to bring about a change in the streets of New York and for the families in Afghanistan.

Born to an Andhra family, raised in UK and Chennai, living in the US since she was 19 and working for women in Afghanistan now, Sunita says that her meandering journey through the world might perhaps explain why she hasn’t been able to embrace any kind of nationalism. “This sense of openness resonates deeply with the Hinduism that I was raised with, which teaches me that no matter what a person’s race, religion, caste or gender, we are all one in the eyes of God. I am grateful that my parents raised me to think this way. The other core principle my parents instilled in me is that there is no pure good or pure evil. We all have the potential for good and bad within us, and it is up to each of us to do our best to act for good and just causes in our lives,” she says.

The organisation, Sadhana, is four years old and follows the Hindu principles of ahimsa and sadhana for environmental change. Talking about their projects, Sunita shares, “Project Prithvi — the project we were honoured for by the White House — is a grassroots environmental project. We have officially adopted a beach in Jamaica Bay, Queens where Hindus perform puja, but their puja offerings wash up on shore and line the beach, becoming entangled with all the other garbage. We enlist priests and pandits to urge devotees to only offer biodegradable materials like flowers. And we bring large groups of devotees and other volunteers out on a monthly basis to clean up the beach.”

Work extends beyond Sadhana for her, however. “Along with other moms in my neighbourhood, I started the Brooklyn Bala Vihar three years ago. We teach kids aged four to eight every Sunday morning, and our curriculum is based on the Chinmaya Mission curriculum. We have 40 Brooklyn kids, quite a few of them from mixed faith families where one parent is Hindu, who love the community we’ve built,” she adds.

Sunita is also the co-founder of Women for Afghan Women. “For the past 14 years, I have worked with Muslim women and men for whom there is no contradiction between their faith and their work for justice. Today WAW has a staff of almost 700 Afghan women and men, and every one of them would say that their work for women’s rights is their duty as a Muslim,” she affirms. “As a young woman starting out on my journey, I was involved with a New York group called ‘Sakhi for South Asian Women’. We addressed issues of domestic violence in the South Asian communities in the city, and I was struck by the way the battered women and survivors of violence we worked with spoke so freely about their faith,” she says.

“All this leads me to what I am doing now: speaking about my work as an expression of my Hindu faith and practice. The idea is to mobilise other faithful Hindus to see that the teachings of Hinduism are a rallying call to take part in the work to achieve justice anywhere and everywhere on our planet where it is denied,” she adds.

Although Sunita has been abroad for several years, she fondly remembers her days spent in India. “My parents moved to the United Kingdom when I was just one and a half. Then when I was five, I moved to Chennai to live with my aunt and her family. I learnt Carnatic music and was enthralled when my cousin performed Bharatanatyam. Those were five glorious years for me, and I was actually sad to return to London. I have family in Hyderabad, Chennai and other cities and visit them whenever I can. I love taking my children to India, and we usually volunteer for wonderful organisations when we visit.”

It was also here in India that Sunita found the fundamental beliefs that have shaped her into the woman that she is today. “My obsession with what is fair and unfair was born in India. My family practised segregation based on caste — we weren’t allowed to lay our eyes on the scavenger who cleaned the toilets, and we had to shower after haircuts because of the caste of the barber. 

The domestic servants ate on aluminum plates which were kept separate from our stainless steel ones. I questioned all of this vociferously. Ultimately these discriminatory practices changed, but not because my family was convinced that no one should be treated as inferior. Rather, I think it was modernisation in general that helped these practices fall away,” she recalls.

She now hopes to build a global movement for progressive Hindus. “We would like to organise a series of in-person and online convenings of Hindu grassroots leaders, scholars and other progressive Hindus. We invite progressive Hindus all over the world to be in touch with us and help us build this force for justice,” she signs off.