<Begin Segment 17>

AI: I think in our, this interview, as we've gone through it, we've gone back and forth between the personal level and the national and the global, and even beyond into touching some of the spiritual realm. But before we closed, I did want to touch on some current events now in India, because for the first time a non-Hindu has been made prime minister.

PJ: Yeah.

AI: And I wondered if you would speak a little bit about that and what you think the significance is and what it may mean?

PJ: Well, it's, as you say, it's amazing, this is the first non-Hindu prime minister that India has had. It's a Sikh, which especially given the events following the September 11th and the way the Sikh community has been attacked, I know it's had huge significance to the Sikh community here. And then following the events in India's history where a Sikh actually assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and then Sikhs were discriminated against hugely in the '80s. Many of the Sikhs that are here today came after being persecuted in Punjab and in Delhi and other places. There were mass riots and mass killings of Sikhs. It's, again, very significant. He's being inaugurated by, or been inaugurated by a Muslim prime minister in a predominantly Hindu country. And so to me, that's part of the hopefulness of what we have before us. India is a, is an incredibly religiously diverse and tolerant place. And unfortunately, politics has taken religion and used it for its own means. But that isn't how the average Indian interacts with people of other religions. And some of, I mean, part of the reason it's, some of the great religions of the world have been born there is because of that tolerance in India, and that secularism. And so it's significant for, for India. I think it's significant for the world in terms of what it says about keeping religion separate. You know, so much so that you can have a tiny majority, person from a tiny majority run an entire country. It's a huge lesson for the United States. I don't think we, we would ever, I think we're very far away from having somebody who is not Christian run this country. So there's that piece of it.

But I also think that for me, it's funny. It all, I think it all kind of ties back to why I started Hate Free Zone and people have asked me, "You're not Arab, you're not Muslim," and sometimes people have said this in wonder and sometimes in anger, sort of like, "You're not Arab or Muslim, why are you representing our issues?" And the thing is that I was taught that, I was raised in a country where we had Muslims in our house along with Hindus and Jews and Christians. Kerala, the state that I'm from, is one of the most religiously diverse states in the country. And I was taught that each of our freedom is inextricably linked to the freedom of everyone else. And so if we tolerate... you know, I guess Martin Luther King has said it much more eloquently, but "an injustice to one is an injustice to all." If we tolerate that for anybody else, that is ultimately a corrosion of our, or erosion of our, of our individual freedom. And so that was really fundamental to why I started Hate Free Zone. I couldn't sit back and watch those things happen to people because it's not like it's happening to them. It's happening to us. And I think that, ultimately, the idea that the country that I came from can be run by a Sikh and a Muslim in kind of the titular heads, anyway, is just a bomb. And particularly following a coalition government that has been largely run by the fundamentalist Hindu party and politics, religious politics has been brought so much into bear in the last ten years in India with huge riots of Muslims happening in Gujarat, and Hindu government turning a blind eye to it, and just some horrible, horrible things. I think a lot of that had to do with why this government was kicked out. In spite of the world's opinion that somehow India was on the right track economically.

But in India -- this is the other very hopeful thing -- in India, 75 percent of the people who vote are low socioeconomic. In the United States it's the exact opposite. And so I think it's a really hopeful example of what -- and there's lots of flaws in Indian democracy and people get paid for votes and all kinds of things. But ultimately, the majority of the population does decide who they want in or out. And it's not necessarily that they're making the right decisions all the time -- [laughs] -- but they, they definitely have an opinion and a voice that demonstrates itself in the election. And to me that's incredibly hopeful for what we want for the world.

AI: Well, is there anything else that you'd like to comment on or anything else that you'd like to add?

PJ: No, I guess the only thing is, you know, just thinking about just the incredible, just wanting to somehow make a tribute to the historical leadership of so many different communities and people. Because I don't think that any of does the work that we do in a vacuum. I think we're influenced by leaders and inspirations to us. And so sometimes I think that we're just conduits to getting things done, but, but it isn't about, necessarily about me as an individual. It really is about the collective and what we're trying to transmit about the collective. And so that's been an incredible process for the last couple of years, and I think just, again, it's a testament to the examples that we've had to follow.

AI: Well, thanks very much for your time.

PJ: Sure. Thank you, Alice.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.