Indian Americans make up the largest Asian American ethnic group in North Carolina. From India to the Triangle, the culture and traditions of the Hindu faith have found a home Morrisville.

96-year-old Gangahard Sharma and his wife 90-year-old Saroj Sharma first established the Hindu Society of North Carolina in Morrisville in 1976.

It’s membership is at 3,000 people and it’s open to all, says Soroj Sharma, "And we want to grow and we want to work with everybody. It’s not only Hindu. In this place, everybody is welcome, because God is one."

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A Hindu priest has called on more New Jersey schools to add the religious holiday of Diwali as a day off on their calendars. Currently, districts are required to excuse students who celebrate.

Rajan Zed, on his website, noted that 23 school districts have added Diwali to their school calendars. Twenty-...

When Linda Wells began her yoga journey a decade ago, she got lucky.

“I started practicing yoga with a Black teacher,” she said. “It was the first time that I had seen a Black woman teaching yoga, having her own wellness business and being someone that was standing in a place of her authentic self. And I was like, I want some of that.”

Today, Wells is one of the yoga teachers in Boston welcoming more people of color to the physical and spiritual discipline. Black Americans may feel unwelcome at white-dominated studios, and some have been unreceptive to the practice...

During Nikhil Mandalaparthy's senior year of high school in 2015, the local Hindu temple in his hometown was vandalized. Spray-painted in red on the outside of the Bothell, Washington, worship and cultural center were the words “Get Out” — alongside a symbol that was almost familiar to the temple’s patrons: a swastika. 

But the mark used to terrorize Mandalaparthy’s community was different than the swastikas he had grown up seeing in religious contexts. It was sharp and at a 45-degree angle, what he recognized immediately as a mark of Nazism and white supremacy. ...

A variety of religious traditions assembled Sunday evening to pray for one thing: peace in Ukraine.

The meeting at North Presbyterian Church was assembled by the Williamsville Interfaith Clergy Association and was led by two Ukrainian clerics, one Catholic and one Orthodox. Joining them were Presbyterians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha'i, Sikh and Unitarian Universalists.

North Presbyterian Pastor Bill Hennessy said the array of clergy was deliberate.

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Nathalie Charles, even in her mid-teens, felt unwelcome in her Baptist congregation, with its conservative views on immigration, gender and sexuality. So she left.

“I just don’t feel like that gelled with my view of what God is and what God can be,” said Charles, an 18-year-old of Haitian descent who identifies as queer and is now a freshman at Princeton University.

“It wasn’t a very loving or nurturing environment for someone’s faith.”

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The U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday it has reached a settlement with the Michigan Department of Corrections to change the state's policy limiting worship and religious activities for prisoners, as well as the kosher diet fed to Jewish inmates.

Under the agreement, Michigan corrections officials agreed to eliminate its policy that required a minimum of five people for religious services or activities. It will also remove a prohibition on group religious practices for Hindus, Yorubas, Hebrew Israelites and Thelema practitioners, unless there's...

This holiday season, American Girl characters Samantha, Addy and Josefina can celebrate the Christian holiday of Christmas, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah or Diwali, the festival of lights observed by Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs.

Next year, they’ll be ready for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, too.

The religious holidays are part of a capsule collection of doll clothes and accessories for six cultural celebrations and were released last week by American Girl, the popular line of dolls and books telling the stories of American girls throughout history to the...

Illinois Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi  submitted a statement in the House of Representatives Sept. 30, 2021, on recognizing October as Hindu Heritage Month. The statement is now part of the U.S. Congressional Record, the official daily record of proceedings in Congress. (His statement can be found in the Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 172 of Oct. 1.)

A Hindu himself, Rep. Krishnamoorthi, said he joins the many Hindu faithful in the United States in recognizing October as Hindu Heritage Month. Several Hindu organizations in the U.S., including Vishwa...

When Vineet Chander accepted his job as the Hindu chaplain at Princeton University in 2008, his Hindu community was baffled by his profession.

“It was incomprehensible to them,” said Chander. “I’d have people look at me like, what do you do? This is a full-time job?”

Their puzzlement was understandable: Chander, a former prosecutor, was not just the only full-time Hindu chaplain at any place of higher learning at the time; he was the first Hindu in the United States ever to fill the role. In part, Chander said, that’s because there have only been “notable” numbers...

A nearly 15,000-square-foot ornamental temple has been proposed at 1431 Hwy. 109, near its juncture with Old Eatherton Road and Babler Park Drive on a 5.72-acre site owned by the Geeta Ramayan Group of St. Louis. The facility is to be known as the Durga Temple of St. Louis.

According to its website, “the Geeta Ramayan Group of St. Louis is an all-volunteer, non-political, tax-deductible charitable organization registered in Missouri. Its founding members first met in the late 1960s when the Indian population of St. Louis consisted of only a group of...

US Sikhs have met with White House representative over the issue of evacuation of Afghanistan Sikhs and Hindus.

Dr Rajwant Singh, co-founder of the National Sikh Campaign (NSC) and chairman of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education, along with Gurwin Singh Ahuja, co-founder of the NSC, apprised key White House officials of the Sikh community’s concerns about the fallout of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“We conveyed that the Sikh community will be ready to assist the Biden administration if the Sikhs and Hindus are evacuated to the US. We are thankful to...

FAIRHAVEN — Hindu statesman Rajan Zed of Nevada is requesting luxury handbag brand Brahmin to change its name.

Headquartered in Fairhaven, the company produces luxury handbags made of cow leather. In a press release on Wednesday, Zed stated that the cow was sacred and had long been venerated in Hinduism, and that inscribing the brand's name on a bag created from the animal was "quite out-of-line and was painful to the Hindu sentiments."

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A Hindu group that had hoped to build a temple on a former plantation in Hanover County held a ceremony last week to honor and bless the enslaved who had worked there and to heal the land that they now are selling.

Dominique Gay, who lives at Quietude plantation with her partner and Hindu priest, Gananathamritananda Swamiji, said the group has put the property up for sale after five years of dealing with obstacles and opposition in the county.

“It is because of discrimination and ignorance of the Hindu faith that we were not able to obtain a permit to have public...