This Week at Multifaith Mondays: Witnessing to Faith, Democracy, and Courage

Jun 3

On Monday, June 2nd, Hindus for Human Rights' Executive Director, Sunita Viswanath, joined an inspiring lineup of spiritual leaders, musicians, and justice-seekers at Multifaith Mondays for Democracy — a weekly interfaith public witness led by Riverside Church and the Interfaith Center of New York.

Held weekly at 5:30 PM at the USS Maine Monument in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle, Multifaith Mondays are a sacred gathering point for people of all faiths to affirm our shared values of truth, justice, and democracy. Each week, clergy and faith-rooted leaders share prayers, songs, and reflections calling us to moral clarity in a time of political uncertainty and spiritual urgency.

This week’s gathering featured heartfelt music led by John Del Cueto, grounding reflections from Rev. Adriene Thorne and Rev. Lea Matthews, and a powerful address from our own Sunita Viswanath.

In her remarks, Sunita called for truth-telling rooted in faith, community dialogue across difference, and a recommitment to the sacred labor of justice. Drawing on Hindu teachings, the words of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Bhagavad Gita, she reminded the gathered crowd that inaction in the face of injustice is itself a moral choice—and one we must resist.

Below is the full text of Sunita Viswanath's speech:

Sunita Viswanath | Multifaith Mondays for Democracy | June 2, 2025

I am grateful to be included among the faith leaders that Adriene, Mira and the team from Riverside Church and Interfaith Center of NY have been gathering for some time now as part of MultiFaith Mondays for Democracy.

And I’d like to reflect on the faith leadership we must summon up within ourselves to respond to the urgency of NOW.

We are rooted in and propelled by the tenets of our respective faith traditions, and those teachings do not change with the political winds. While voters, political pundits and our nonprofit organizations make political calculations to survive during adversity, we faith leaders have one obligation above all else - to speak the truth courageously.

We are all anxious about our democracy under this Trump administration, and we must join with all those who wish to protect our democracy. However, as faith leaders, we must remind ourselves and our communities that the things we care about – civil rights, minority rights, racial justice, and the right to demand that our tax dollars do not fund and fuel genocides around the world – were not in good shape before Trump took office. And we all have a hand in the situation we find ourselves in today.

In every American community – Latino, African American, Chinese, Indian, Muslim, Hindu, you name it – there was a sharp increase in votes for the Republicans and for Trump. We all bear responsibility for this current moment. We faith leaders have the ear of our communities and people look to us for direction at this time of fear, panic and bewilderment.

And what we must preach, teach, share, embody, is found right at the heart of our faiths.

The way we heal this rupture to create cohesion and community is to:

(1) Stay in relationship and dialogue with those in our families and communities we disagree with. Even if the disagreement is fundamental and seems unbridgeable, we must hang in together.

We Hindus believe that God is in each one of us, and every aspect of the universe. There is no separation, there is no “other.” And the potential for good and evil, and everything in between, is in each of us. We must truly understand that we are one.

(2) We must give priority to the least of us. Those that are suffering the most, those without food, shelter, those without a voice. Those upon whom bombs are raining. Our opinion and ideology—our politics—are less important than their lives. This calls for humility and sacrifice. And the acknowledgement that we do not have all the answers, but we do have the ability to give, to listen, to be inconvenienced, to sacrifice, to step aside.

(3) And we must remember that the things we do have consequences beyond our lives, our families, our communities, our borders. When our Democratic AND Republican presidents roll out the red carpet for authoritarian leaders like Netanyahu and Modi, and we don’t raise our voices. When we don’t speak up about Muslim neighborhoods and mosques being bulldozed across India, or the willful starving of little children in Gaza, the consequences of our inaction and silence will surely reach us.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna tells Prince Arjuna that he has no choice but to act; that not acting is not an option, because inaction is itself a choice, an action.

The great Dalit rights leader, the architect of the Indian constitution, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar defined democracy this way: “A system where revolutionary change can be achieved without bloodshed.” I want to fight with all of you for THAT democracy.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr also sought revolutionary change through peaceful means. He spoke at Riverside Church on April 4th 1967, a year to the day before his blood was shed. And he spoke not on racial Justice but on the unjust war that America was waging in Vietnam. He refused to separate from the fight for civil rights at home.

“No one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”

King faced blowback, not just from major newspapers, like the NYT and the Washington Post, but also from the NAACP and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche. And yet he spoke his truth and showed us the way. May we all follow that path and speak our Truth with Courage.

Om Satya - Om Truth
Om Shakti - Om Divine Power
Om Shanti - Om Peace

Photo credits: Harold Levine (@hslinnyc on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky; Harold Levine on Facebook)

For more on Multifaith Mondays, visit www.trcnyc.org or follow the Interfaith Center of New York.