Joshua DuBois, executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships and Special Assistant to President Barack Obama, has lauded Hindu Americans for promoting inter-faith dialogue and cooperation through service in the United States.
In an exclusive interaction with the Hindu American community, 26-year-old DuBois -- a political strategist and Pentecostal minister -- said his office has been tasked with some special projects by the president in his first term in office, one of which was "promoting inter-faith dialogue and cooperation both here at home and across the globe, especially cooperation through service."
"And, on that point, we have been really honoured and amazed at the great work that many Hindu Americans and broader dharmic organisations have done around service on the 'Summer of Service' campaign," he said.
DuBois said, "These were just tremendous work done by over 118 sewa centres and temples and ashrams and other organisations all across the country, completing over 1,300 sewa projects, and we took note of that and want to make sure that we are working to engage your community to do that even more."
At the outset of his welcoming remarks, he said: "The President and this administration have been very intentional and very serious about engaging the dharmic community over the course of the first year in office and we are honoured to connect with the Hindu American community."
DuBois said his office was 'rooted in two extraordinary simple but fundamental principles that President Obama has -- principles that he has taken with him all the way from Chicago to the White House -- that are self-evident but important nonetheless."
"The first simple principle is that we have got some significant challenges that we are facing as a country. We all know that the large publicly debated challenges like Afghanistan and Iraq and a health care system that we have to fix and an economy that we have to get back on track."
But, in addition to these, DuBois noted, "that are on the front pages of the newspapers, the President also knows that there are challenges in our communities all across the country that don't necessarily make news, including the hunger that ravages many communities still, youth who are too often dropping out of school and falling by the wayside, seniors who don't have the care that they need and so on and so forth."
Thus, he argued, "together, we can meet these challenges, we can come together to address these issues in communities across the country, but we can't do it here in Washington alone. Instead, what we have to do is to connect with the community-based organisations and the faith-based groups and leaders like you all who are meeting these challenges day in and day out."
DuBois pointed to the White House events, honouring the Hindu community during the Diwali, which President Obama had presided over.
During the interaction that followed, one of the questions that came up was about resources and how to make sure that communities like the Hindu American community could have access to federal grants that they may be also be eligible for to support social service activities.
DuBois, said, his office itself does not run or manage any grant programmes directly.
"We don't control grant funding or any say in who gets funding. However, we do provide organisations with information on federal grants that are out there that you might be eligible for and can apply for."
He advised: "The best way to find out information about those grants is to go to grants.gov but also to connect directly to the faith-based centre in an area that you might be interested in, for example, if you want to run a health programme, we have faith-based centre at the Department of Health and Human Services that can let you know about all the grants that you might be eligible for there."
"If you want to run a housing program, you can connect to our centre at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to find out more about grants in that particular area. All of this information can be found at our website, www.whitehouse.gov/partnerships and you'll find the contact information for each of these centres that can let you know more about federal resources," he said.
Dr Ved Chaudhary, longtime community activist from New Jersey said that Hindu Americans "are very encouraged by President Obama's message of inclusion of all faiths, including Hindus."
He called for more Hindu Americans and dharmic community members to be appointed to the several task forces of the Faith Based Initiative of the White House "because those are the task forces that provide information to the President and the Congress about the needs of the various communities and the priorities."
Chaudhary said, "We are a new community and therefore, we are looking for inclusion. So our community can be served by various programmes."
There were also other participants who said that while some of the priorities of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships like finding common ground on the challenging issue of abortion was not particularly relevant to dharmic communities, there was a crying need for the inter-faith dialogue because of the many misperceptions of Hinduism that was out there, not least among the academic community, which remained unaddressed.
Also, that a lot of Indian American seniors are facing a sense of isolation and alienation and thus was an issue to be addressed.
DuBois acknowledging all of these concerns and issues, exhorted the Hindu American community to help the inter-faith community to disseminate the information of the White House initiative "so as to engage more people to get involved."
He asserted, "There is no one better positioned to make sure that the Hindu community is aware of what's happening in this space than you are. So, that would be very helpful to get the community engaged in our work."
DuBois also said that his office was also "seeking to work with the State Department on how to engage religious leaders and religious communities abroad. There is not a great history or tremendous infrastructure in reaching out and engaging religious leaders abroad."
"In fact," he bemoaned, "outside the issue of religious freedom, which is critically important, our foreign policy apparatus really doesn't have a mechanism for speaking to and engaging religious leaders. So, we are working very closely with State to build out those mechanisms."
DuBois stressed, "We are thinking about the role of religion in our foreign policy, in our development in our defence as well."
