The issue of "who we are" has been an ongoing one. It's part of the ongoing identity crisis of America.

My first intellectual challenge was to try to understand this incredible city of Banaras (also called Varanasi) in India and its meaning for Hindus. That was the place I lived for the first year I was in India and I've been back many times. It's a kind of home to me.

The issue of "who we are" has been an ongoing one. It's part of the ongoing identity crisis of America.

I do think that the U.S. has an opportunity as a democracy to really exemplify what a religiously diverse society can be when it embraces the pluralism.

If you went to the headwaters of most rivers of the United States, you'd have a wonderful naturalistic hike or trek, but you wouldn't find a shrine there. At the headwaters of the rivers of India, they are pilgrimage places.

The journey to sacred places is the most common way that people travel in India. They are always going on pilgrimages to sacred places. They are always undertaking spiritual journeys to visit the great shrines in the Himalayan tier of pilgrimage places; these places are called tirthas, a word that means "crossing place," a place where you can cross the river to the far shore but also cross over into another dimension of life. Cross over to heaven, in one sense it's used.

Pluralism isn't just diversity; it's something we create out of this diversity.