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My guest is Sunita Viswanath. She is a life-long organizer and activist, a founder of a nation-wide activist organization, and a Hindu. In New York City, you’ll always see Sunita in the demonstrations for immigration right’s, Black Lives Matter, & against climate change. And she is also a member of the Strategy Team for the Micah Institute (a multi-faith justice coalition). This year, she received the Micah Spirit award for her work in New York City.
Much of her work is among the Hindu community – mostly concerning the caste system. As a founder of Sadhana, a US-wide progressive Hindu organization, she and fellow members are involved in Hindu community and faith-based justice work in many US cities.
Our conversation went deep into the difficulty of organizing as a Hindu in the broad coalitions of progressive activism in the US and of organizing among Hindus in the US to participate in broader struggles here, and to begin the process of eliminating the caste system, which brands certain people as Dalits, or “untouchables”. This social system, which is practiced throughout India and some other Hindu areas, also labels some people as Brahmans, the highest caste, and everything in between. All of this leads to generational poverty on a mass scale in India.
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