07/03/2024
DIVERSITY - A GUARANTEED SOURCE OF LIVING PEACEFULLY
If you can shed the bias towards others, you'll love the connections with every human that God or his systems have created. This creates a sense of freedom and brings meaning and joy to life. Embracing and respecting how people dress, eat, and practice their beliefs becomes an enriching experience.
Here is my diversity, and I hope you can write about it and share it with me.
I grew up in a diverse environment, thanks to my parents. My father, who was the mayor of our town, and I, along with my sister, celebrated festivals across different religions, including Hindu, Christian, Jain, and others. I carried on this tradition with my children, taking them to various places of worship in Dallas, including the LGBTQ church and Pagan gatherings. My mother conversed weekly with a Zoroastrian lady, while my father and maternal grandfather regularly discussed Shia-Sunni theology. I absorbed much of this diverse knowledge in pluralistic terms
In addition to this, my father's flour mill attracted people from various backgrounds, including Adivasis (tribals), Gypsies (Banjara/ Khandari), Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, and Hindus, all of whom came to get their grains (wheat, millet, and rice) ground. As a teenager working with my dad, I learned to respect the diversity of our community by listening to and asking questions of these diverse individuals who stayed in our mill for over an hour.
During my teenage years, I engaged in interfaith dialogues with Christians, Hindus, and Muslims, including my college professor, Dr. A. Ramachandra, and Fakhru Bhai, a weaver in these conversations. Both of them had expertise in Hinduism and Islam.
Friday was time at the Mosque, and Saturday nights were singing Bhajans (Hindu devotional songs) at the Hindu temple on my street in Yelahanka, my hometown; every Wednesday, I went to the Mahabodhi Center – Buddhist teachings, and once a month went to the Church.
I worked as an admin in a catering college called Food Craft Institute in Bangalore. There, we interacted with students from many countries and enjoyed different foods daily, over 200 cuisines in one year for three years. There is a lot of diversity in cuisines and cultures.
I worked in Saudi Arabia as deputy controller of the largest ($5.3 billion) project in the mid-70s for Fluor Arabia in Shedgum and Dhahran. It was a gas gathering project converting into Liquified Natural Gas - I managed 5 sites and interacted with 44 nationalities from South and South East Asia, Africa, and Europe and Americans who worked there; I loved their different accents in English, and now I can hear anyone speak English and understand it with fairly ease.
Between Food Craft Institute and Fluor, my ability to hear and pronounce different names and listen to different accents has increased tremendously in communicating with anyone.
I have gained enriching experiences in various facets of real estate, including home building, leasing, and property management. Throughout that time, I have had the opportunity to build six new homes and reside in diverse neighborhoods before finally settling in an all-Black community in Southeast Washington, DC.
Within the Center for Pluralism, I have taken the initiative to organize and lead four annual events featuring workshops exploring 12 distinct religions and engaging radio shows. Do seminars on 12 different faiths and produce and anchor 780 hours of radio shows on religions. Dallas Morning News has published about 250 articles on interfaith and over 100 articles in the Huffington Post. Over 300 newspapers have published my work across the world. My aspiration is to encapsulate these remarkable experiences in a book.
One of the most fulfilling aspects of my life has been officiating over 400 weddings between individuals from different faiths (9), races (4), and ethnicities (over 50). Additionally, I have liaised with more than 500 families to ensure seamless and joyous wedding celebrations. These experiences have also allowed me to travel to over 50 cities across America and Canada and even partake in destination weddings in Mexico, with plans for Spain and other locales shortly. Additionally, I have conducted Nikah (Muslim wedding) ceremonies over Zoom in Sweden, Norway, the UK, Germany, New Zealand, and India (India: three Muslim-Hindu and one Sikh-Muslim).
I believe embracing diversity enriches life and brings a profound sense of joy and meaning. It fosters an environment where we can appreciate and celebrate the distinctive modes through which people express themselves through their attire, culinary traditions, or spiritual beliefs. By learning to respect and acknowledge the uniqueness of others, we pave the way for harmonious coexistence, thus diminishing conflicts and giving rise to viable solutions. This, to me, is the epitome of pluralism at the Center for Pluralism.
The above is a summary. God willing, I plan to write a book in the hope that it will provide insights into the joy of living in peace "with a bias towards none (Lincoln)." I know that we are tested when genocides are happening around when tyrants harass their people. I feel that I can answer my grandkids that I have made every effort, spoken, written, and continue to write to do my share of Tikkun Olam, Islah al Alam, or repairing the world to restore Dharma.
I am 72 and on dialysis, and I am thankful to God every morning that I am alive. My greatest happiness is my wife, and we are enjoying our lives. She is God's blessing to me, and together we love our life.
Mike Ghouse
