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.

That is the strength of having a trusting and ongoing relationship that draws on our history and moves right on into our present, and I have that kind of marriage.

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.

The practice of leaving settled society to undertake a spiritual journey, or a spiritual life really, is something that is much more common in India. Common especially to a certain phase of life, to the end of life. But not so unusual for younger people as well.

We are built on a structure of the freedom of religion and the non-establishment of religion. That really is a pretty sturdy rudder for the U.S.