Standing Firm for Justice and Peace at World Council of Muslims for Interfaith Relations 2025
Sunita delivering her keynote
This weekend at the World Council of Muslims for Interfaith Relations (WCMIR) Annual Conference in Lombard, Illinois, Hindus for Human Rights’ Executive Director Sunita Viswanath served as lead panelist for a session titled “Standing Firm for Justice and Peace.” The gathering’s overarching theme—“Challenges to Creating a Moral Force”—set the tone for a day of clear-eyed conversation about what it takes to anchor public life in conscience across traditionsWCMIR 2025 Conference (100). Joining Sunita on the panel were Rabbi Rebekah Levin of Jewish Voice for Peace and Dr. Tanveer Azmat, WCMIR Board Member and Treasurer, whose reflections underscored a common ethic: love organized as action, truth lived in public, compassion made durable
Sunita’s remarks moved from lived witness to moral throughlines. She began with two scenes of faith in motion: multifaith prayers and nonviolent witness with Rabbis for Ceasefire/Jewish Voice for Peace, including a delegation to the West Bank; and the joyful, determined organizing of Hindus for Zohran in New York City, where a small WhatsApp group grew into a protective Hindu presence answering a surge of Hindutva hate with song, prayer, and solidarityDRAFT_ Full Speaker-Ready Scrip…. These stories, offered without triumphalism, illustrated how communities can meet fear with disciplined courage.
From there, she traced a moral lineage that refuses easy binaries. No tradition, she reminded the room, is innocent of violence; yet every tradition carries an inheritance of compassion and liberation. She situated HfHR’s work in that inheritance—ahimsa as discipline rather than slogan, satyagraha as the courage to refuse cooperation with injustice, and seva as the daily tether between the sacred and the justDRAFT_ Full Speaker-Ready Scrip…. The names she lifted—Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Irom Sharmila, Sharmila Rege, Lata Mani, Kishwar Naheed—were not a pantheon but a chorus, each voice clarifying a different register of conscience.
A throughline of the session was anti-caste responsibility. Sunita was unequivocal: interfaith solidarity that does not center Dalit and Adivasi leadership is performance, not spiritual practice. Anti-caste is not an add-on to our coalitions; it is the ground beneath our feet. The measure of our work, she argued, is whether those most impacted tell us they are safer, freer, and more powerfulDRAFT_ Full Speaker-Ready Scrip…. She paired that charge with a quieter, equally demanding practice: care. Movements must make room for rest, gratitude, apology, and grief—because a movement that does not care for its people cannot ask its people to keep caring for the world
In dialogue, Rabbi Levin and Dr. Azmat extended these threads from their own communities’ vantage points, returning, again and again, to the shared work of building a moral center sturdy enough for disagreement and durable enough for the long haul. The session closed with Sunita’s invitation to braid lineages together: join or start an inter-tradition action on an urgent issue; ground public work in a daily spiritual practice; and partner with Hindus for Human Rights to widen the coalition of conscience
FULL TEXT OF SUNITA’S SPEECH
Salaam and Namaste
I’m Sunita Viswanath, cofounder of Hindus for Human Rights, and I’m so grateful and honored to be with you all today.
I live in New York City and I have to admit, it was hard to tear myself away from my incredible, euphoric city. I hope and pray that the results of Tuesday night in NYC are just the beginning of a people-driven nationwide, about-face towards love, compassion and inclusion.
I want to start by sharing two very recent real life examples of faith in gorgeous and urgent action:
Firstly, our inspiration from Jewish Voice for Peace and Rabbis for Ceasefire.
Hindus for Human Rights is six years old, and even as we created and built our organization and movement, we benefited from strategic advice and training by our leaders in the anti Zionist Jewish movement for Palestinian liberation. Rabbi Alissa Wise, one of the leaders who built JVP, facilitated our early strategic planning retreats. She said the best thing she could do with her tactical learnings is to teach them to a group of Hindus wanting to annihilate caste and defeat Hindutva (Hindu nationalism). After Oct 7th 2023, she spearheaded Rabbis for Ceasefire. I traveled with Rabbis for Ceasefire to the West Bank about a year ago, and we offered multi faith prayers at the Southern border to Gaza. I invoked Lord Shiva, the Hindu God of both destruction and regeneration, and prayed for the day that inevitably follows the end of a genocide. A few weeks ago, on Yom Kippur, my Jewish husband and I gathered with 1500 Jews and allies, who answered the question, how do we practice our faith during a genocide? We prayed, expressed rage and pain, prostrated on the concrete ground, ripped apart fabric, and then blocked a massive entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge and took arrest. I long for a mass movement of Hindus of conscience whose prayers and prostrations will be in service of peace and unity of us all. And my Jewish siblings have shown me what is possible.
My second example is the joyous and motivated whatsapp group we created in New York City, which we called Hindus for Zohran. Our group grew over the past six months from a handful to 125. And our purpose was singular: be a protective Hindu buffer against the scary levels of Hindutva hate being leveled at Zohran’s campaign. We took Zohran to Hindu temples, our banner was visible at every rally and parade, we did garbas in the street for Zohran during navratri, as election day drew nearer and the hate was reaching a crescendo and you may have seen an emotional press conference Zohran gave about the relentless Islamophobic threats, we organized a prayer gathering along with Zohran’s Hindu mother Mira Nair, which brought together Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Muslim religious and community leaders to pray for his protection.
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Thank you for gathering in this spirit of learning and courage. We meet at a time when it’s tempting to give in to despair. Each headline insists our world is defined by violence, grievance, and endless retaliation.
I want to begin with a simple truth that may be uncomfortable but undeniable, and then a second equally undeniable truth that gives me hope, that's in fact my North Star.
First: no tradition is innocent of violence. Across history, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim movements—indeed all traditions—have been distorted into instruments of fear and exclusion. This is not a failure only of the creating a notion of the “other.” It is a risk inside every human community, including my own.
Second: every tradition also carries a deep inheritance and legacy of compassion and liberation. Within the same lineages that have been misused, we find revolutionary teachers, poets, and seekers who re-imagine conscience itself as a force for justice.
At Hindus for Human Rights, we choose that inheritance, that legacy. We practice ahimsa—nonviolence—as a discipline, not a slogan. We practice satyagraha—truth-force—as the courage to refuse cooperation with injustice. And we live seva—service—as a daily tether that binds the sacred to the just. Peace, to us, is not the absence of struggle; peace is the presence of integrity.
I want to trace a short journey through some shining traditions of conscience that shape our work, and then show how we try to live these values in public. From Gandhi’s disciplined nonviolence, Ambedkar’s Buddhist re-founding, and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Khudai Khidmatgar, to Irom Sharmila’s endurance, Sharmila Rege’s tender rigor, Lata Mani’s contemplative clarity, and Kishwar Naheed’s faith-rooted dissent—these voices form one moral imagination. Together, they teach us what it means to stand firm.
Gandhi taught that nonviolence is not passive. It is rigorous truth, self-restraint, and organized noncooperation with oppression. When we reduce him to a saint of politeness, we miss the point: his nonviolence was strategically disruptive, morally demanding, and politically transformative.
Standing beside Gandhi was his friend Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan—“Frontier Gandhi”—who led the Khudai Khidmatgar (“Servants of God”), a devotedly interfaith movement of tens of thousands trained in disciplined nonviolence. Their example is simple and urgent: nonviolence isn’t owned by any religion—it’s a human practice.
Ambedkar’s path begins in a Dalit home and moves, step by brave, stubborn step, through schools that didn’t want him, libraries that saved him, and courtrooms where he learned the weight of a word. He gave India’s new Constitution its language—words shaped by the struggle against empire and filled with a young nation’s promise of liberty. When he turned to Buddhism—shoulder to shoulder with his Dalit community—it was a powerful move into an ethical home. That turn sits in a complex relationship with Hinduism, a tradition he studied rigorously and critiqued fiercely for the cruelty of caste. And yet, part of what makes a living tradition worthy of our loyalty is its capacity to honor those who question it—or in fact walk away. Many people don’t know that while Ambedkar did renounce Hinduism, he had a very important parting message for the Hindu fold: that we don’t have to look beyond Hindu scriptures such as the Upanishads to find the teachings and resources that will equip us to jettison caste from our faith practice. What we lack isn’t spiritual resources and tenets, its social will.
If a faith cannot hold space for its reformers and refusers, it is too small for the truth. Ambedkar’s journey demands that Hindu communities prove their largeness by listening, learning, visioning, rejecting and transforming—and by building a future where the dignity of every single human is non-negotiable.
Cornel West once said to me: “I am a Christian but if my religion requires me to place a Jewish baby’s life higher than a Palestinian baby’s life, then I’m no longer a Christian. My religion is radical love.” That’s the kind of Hindu I am, and that’s the kind of liberatory Hindu movement I desire in the world.” And there is inspiration to be drawn from not only from history but all around us.
Last night I was fortunate to see Brooklyn musician and movement sibling Sonny Singh in concert with Afghan rabab player Qais Essar right here in Chicago. Sonny’s music is rooted in his Sikhi but dreams of the Sangat (that’s the name of the new album) or oneness of us all. He says, “I am rooted in my Sikhi, but the words of Guru Nanak tether me to all of humanity. The minute my identity separates me from you, I have no need for it.”
From the hills of Manipur came an act of endurance almost beyond imagination. In November 2000, after the killing of ten civilians by security forces in her home state —Irom Sharmila began a hunger strike demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. She stopped eating that day and did not take food again for sixteen years. The state kept her alive through forced nasal feeding, confining her to a hospital room that functioned like a cell. Imagine that: sixteen years of isolation, fed through a tube, her body turned into a witness against violence. When asked why she would continue such a life, she said simply, “My struggle is my message. I love my life very much, and I want to have the freedom to meet people and struggle for issues close to my heart.” Her protest reminds us that peace is not the quiet of surrender, but the fierce endurance of love refusing to normalize injustice.
Sharmila Rege was a scholar who pioneered what is called a “Dalit Feminist Standpoint,” linking the structural violence of caste with sexuality and labour, advocating for an intersectional approach in mainstream feminist discourse. She ran the Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women's Studies Centre at the University of Pune from 1991 until her untimely death in 2013. Rege was not a Dalit herself; in fact she hailed from an upper caste family, and yet she devoted her life to addressing the atrocity of caste and casteism. We are inspired by her painstaking rigor and her courage to be a pioneering anti-caste feminist scholar in spite – or perhaps, because – of her caste privilege.
Many of the members of Hindus for Human Rights come from caste privileged backgrounds, and are resolutely against caste in all its forms. We are often asked what is our sampradaya, our spiritual or religious lineage. And I for one am proud to say that my chosen sampradaya is anyone through history who has sought to reform the Hindu fold from within, and to jettison caste.
Next I lift up the historian, writer and filmmaker Lata Mani, and her beautiful contemplative work that focuses on topics like illness, spiritual philosophy, and contemporary politics. Her work is an act of love that helps us make sense of the suffering that is inevitable in our ordinary human lives.
And finally the clear voice of Kishwar Naheed of Pakistan—who prays with her pen and turns devotion into dissent. Her poems refuse the easy bargain of piety-as-obedience; they ask us to keep faith with justice instead. In the anthem she’s best known for, she names a courage that won’t be dazzled or domesticated: “It is we sinful women / who are not awed by the grandeur of those who wear gowns / who don’t bow our heads / who don’t fold our hands together.” That poem travels like a lantern passed from hand to hand—lighting the pathway of resistance.
Together, these figures are not a list; they are a chorus and we are invited in. And we could choose so many such inspiring lists. As Sonny Singh would say, a Sangat. These figures are also humans who are far from perfect. Perfection isn’t a goal, it isn’t the point. Even Hindu Gods have flaws, and try to overcome them.
Now—how we practice these lofty ideals of witness, service and dissent at Hindus for Human Rights.
Yesterday I was at the Chicago Cultural Center, and saw the words of early civil rights leader Ida B Wells emblazoned on a wall: The way to right wrongs is to shine the light on truth on them.”
First, truth-telling about harm, including within our own communities. We speak plainly about caste oppression and the weaponization of Hindu identity for political power. We do not see this truthtelling as a betrayal of our community. Satya—truth—is the courage to hold our community to its best self.
Second, organized noncooperation, civil disobedience, satyagraha in the face of cruel injustice. We show up. We build coalitions. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with friends across traditions. Sometimes that is an interfaith rally for immigrant justice where Hindu chants and Muslim prayers flow into one stream. Sometimes it is climate work—because care for the earth is a sacred obligation. Sometimes it is speaking against state violence—anywhere from Delhi to the West Bank to Brooklyn to Chicago —because nonviolence is universal.
Third—and this is a non-negotiable first order of business for us at Hindus for Human Rights—inter-tradition solidarity must begin with anti-caste responsibility. Our first gesture as Hindus of conscience must be to stand with those most harmed by caste: Dalit communities and Adivasi communities whose lives, labor, lands, and languages have been erased, exploited, and policed. If our coalitions do not center Dalit leadership, if our gatherings do not make space for Adivasi sovereignty and knowledge, if our prayers do not name caste violence directly, then our “solidarity” is a photograph, a performance, a sham, not a spiritual practice. I’m speaking to a room of mostly Muslims, and the Muslim community also work to do here. Anti-caste is not an add-on; it is the ground beneath our feet. We commit to learning from Ambedkarite movements; to resourcing Dalit and Adivasi organizers; to resisting caste in our homes, temples, workplaces, and diaspora networks; and to measuring our success by whether those most impacted tell us they are safer, freer, and more powerful. That is the test.
Fourth, care and caring. We try to build a culture where leaders are allowed to be human. Where we help, rest, thank, apologize, remember birthdays, grieve publicly, and refuse to sacrifice one another to the news cycle. A movement that does not care for its people cannot ask its people to keep caring for the world.
Let me gather our teachers one last time: Gandhi’s rigorous discipline and truth force; Frontier Gandhi’s insistence on collective nonviolence; Ambedkar’s Buddhist re-founding; Irom Sharmila’s endurance; Sharmila Rege’s tender rigor; Lata Mani’s contemplative clarity; Kishwar Naheed’s faith-rooted defiance. They don’t agree on every point—they don’t need to. What they share is an unbroken moral imagination: that love can be organized, truth embodied, compassion made into law.
So three invitations as I close:
First, if you aren’t already in a group that celebrates diversity, join or start an inter-tradition action this month—one that works on an urgent issue such as protecting democracy, immigrant protection, climate justice, anti-caste education, or community safety. And all South Asian communities need to address the harms of caste and casteism: whether you are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian, or other, commit to building Dalit and Adivasi leadership in your group.
Second, ground your public work in one daily personal practice. Keep your lamp filled. A daily walk, a daily intention, breathing exercises, a yoga practice. I was in an event this week with a queer Pandit who finds their alignment and liberation from communing each night woth the moon.
Third, partner with us at Hindus for Human Rights. Let’s braid our lineages together and widen the coalition of conscience.
And a bonus invitation, since I am, after all, with Hindus for Human Rights, and a core Hindu belief is that the divine exists equally and identically in every single one of us. Meet people where they are, and do not assume that because of someone’s identity or politics, there is no meeting place of mind and heart.
To stand firm for justice and peace is to honor the sacred in one another—to live as though truth were the ground beneath our feet and compassion the air we breathe. Peace is not passive. It requires Justice. Justice for all. Peace is the most demanding form of love.
"Hum Dekhenge" is a powerful Urdu poem (nazm) of resistance written by the acclaimed Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz.
Hum Dekhenge
WE SHALL SEE
It is set in stone – that we will see
A promise of a day that is so
Written on the eternal wall
When the king-mounts of violence
Are as if cotton flakes soaring away
When we who have never been heard – beneath our feet..
This land will lub and dub in each heartbeat
When the crowns of the oppressors
Will be cast upon by the thuds and grrs of thunder
When from the word of the ruler to the home of the ruler
All lies will be taken away..
When we the truth seeking, subjected unworthy of the sanctuary
Will be seated among the most worthy
All the crowns will leap in ridicule
All the thrones will come tumbling down
Only One name will remain
The One who is the absence and the presence
The One who is the visual and the visualizer
A calling will rise “I am the truth” shall be declared
I am the truth and you are the truth..
And each one of God’s creatures will rule
“Who you are – and – who I am too..”
Hum Dekhenge
Shukriya. Dhanyavaad. Thank you.