Successive days have brought unbearable news:

A 25-year-old Salvadoran, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and his young daughter drowned during their attempt to swim across the Rio Grande to get from Mexico to the United States.

In Jharkhand, a 24-year-old Muslim man, Tabrez Ansari, was added to the long list of Muslim men who have been lynched to death by Hindu mobs since 2014. He was tied to a pole and forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Hanuman”, while being beaten for hours.

In Assam, a 14-year-old Muslim girl [name withheld], allegedly hanged herself with her dupatta because she believed her name was not in the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is being updated in order to target undocumented immigrants.

A six-year-old Indian girl died of dehydration in the Arizona desert. She had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her mother, who had gone to find water. It was reported that the number of Indians detained at the border rose from 2,943 in 2017 to 8,997 in 2018.

As a mother of three boys, aged 24, 21 and 11; as an Indian immigrant living in the U.S.; and as a community activist who has spent the last eight years mobilising Hindu Americans to connect their faith to the service of humanity, the world where Oscar, Tabrez and others die such cruel deaths, is not a world I can bear or accept.

The Taittiriya upanishad teaches: Matru devo bhava/ Pitru devo bhava/ Acharya devo bhava/ Atithi devo bhava (Be one for whom mother, father, teacher and guest/stranger are god). We are taught to see god in our nearest and dearest, and in those who are foreign, different or other.

Of course there are complex political machinations at play, but what the entire world needs right now is the ethic of love, compassion and reverence for all of humanity that is contained in that shloka.

Hindus — in the U.S., India, and beyond — whose hearts, like mine, cannot withstand such inhumane treatment of our young should stand up and give voice to their opposition to such atrocities, and be counted as ones with conscience. This dark hour calls for it.

sunita@sunitav.net