The 27-year-old associate director of the Hindu American Foundation, Kansara spends his days lobbying Capitol Hill for respect for Hindus at home and abroad. Kansara’s parents emigrated from Jugarat, India, to the United Kingdom in the 1960s and to the United States in 1979. He majored in government and South Asian studies at the University of Texas at Austin. After moving to D.C. in June 2011, he now works in an office on Farragut Square, explaining and defending Hinduism to those who don’t know much about it, as well as fighting for human rights. You work for the foundation advocating for human rights on Capitol Hill. Why do Hindus care so much about human rights?
I think in any religion, in any faith, the core component is human rights. Every religion tries to bring out the best in humanity. Unfortunately, there are people in any given faith who will abuse their privileges and power and use religion as a tool to divide instead of unite. Hindus — who come from a tradition of pluralism, where one faith or way of seeing the world is not necessarily the only way — are persecuted as a religious minority in some countries, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and even Bhutan, where they measure gross national happiness. HAF publishes an annual human rights report, “Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights.”
