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.

Some of my best friends are Hindu or Buddhist or Sikh, my students as well. This is the sea in which I swim.

The idea that the United States government would have to figure out what to do about the headscarf is simply ludicrous. We don't get involved in that.

When immigrants come, the freedom to practice their faith is a guarantee. They may have trouble with their neighbors, but freedom of religion is part of the blueprint for America, and that is the recipe for the religious diversity that we have today.

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.

People came as immigrants from all over the world, and Hindu and Muslim and Buddhist and Sikh communities became part of the landscape of the U.S.