Suhag A. Shukla, Esq.

Turn on the TV. There is breaking news about a 16-year-old girl who has gone missing. A few hours later, we learn that the abductors have contacted the missing girl's parents. The abductors, according to the news anchor, maintain that the girl was not kidnapped. We're told the girl ran...

I am a Florida Gator and so is God -- the latter, at least, according to a great bumper sticker that could be seen throughout the streets of Gainesville that read, "God must be a Gator since He made the sun orange and the sky blue." It's an unspoken rule:...

Yoga can wreck your body and make you fat -- at least according to New York Times science writer William Broad. Between Maureen Dowd's column back in October, "How Garbo Learned to Stand on Her Head," on Broad's upcoming book, "The Science of Yoga: The Myths and the...

America is addicted to junk food and we're getting fat. Still, we just can't resist sweet, fatty, pretty-packaged edibles that are not only tasty, but convenient too. Unfortunately, this love affair with "quick and easy" isn't just infecting our food choices. Take for example the latest serving of

A few weeks ago I received an unexpected phone call.

"This is David Williams," said the voice on the other end.

"As in the Senator from Kentucky?" I responded.

I thought the gubernatorial candidate was calling to apologize in response to media coverage, the Hindu American Foundation's

The Diwali season is upon us -- five days of food, festivity, fireworks, friends, family and worship. For Hindus, Sikhs and Jains around the world these sacred days are not only a time of celebration and consumption (thanks to Diwali sales that make Black Friday look like window...

This November, if the Senate does not take action on H.R. 2867 -- the bill to reform and reauthorize the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) -- yet another chapter of our country's myopic and special-interest driven approach to U.S., and in this case, faith-based foreign...

Last week when CNN interviewed me for a Hindu perspective on a recent ruling from a New Jersey appellate court that would allow a group of strict vegetarian Hindus to sue for the cost of travel to India to purify their souls after being served meat samosas, I...

Frigyes Karinthy may have come up with the idea of "six degrees of separation" -- that every person is a "friend of a friend" within six relations -- but I'm convinced that for Ahmedabad, the Indian city of 6 million in the state of Gujarat, and its diaspora, the degrees...

Bangladesh has seen rapid Islamization and a campaign of targeted violence against its Hindu minority over the past decade. Just five-months after the election of an Islamist party in 2001, more than 10,000 cases of gang rape, murder, beatings, harassment, kidnappings, attacks on temples, looting, and illegal occupation of land...

To stay abreast of the ins and outs of the Hindu world, I subscribe to a news service called Hindu Press International (HPI). HPI sends out daily digests of stories from India and around the world about Hindus and Hinduism. Most days, I quickly scan the short blurbs...

I often joke that if I were in Chicago without my cell phone, I would not be able to get a hold of my sister who has lived there for more than four years and whom I speak to nearly every day. Why? Because I still don't have her "new"...

"Conversion, murder and India's Supreme Court" by Mathew Schmalz, Professor of Religious Studies at College of the Holy Cross, was featured on Washington Post's On Faith a few days ago. I take this opportunity to respond to two questions he posed, namely, "Is conversion wrong?" and "Is anger...

This past Monday, on a day meant to celebrate the life and message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who continues to inspire so many of us with his call for brotherhood among all Americans, Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama had this to say:

"...There may be some people here...

Working out more, getting organized, losing those last ten pounds ... these are amongst the top ten promises that millions around the world, including me, have made this weekend and likely break before the end of the month. Hoping to arrive on something less short-lived, something not so self-centered, something...

The N-word -- it's not a sacred image, but it is an example of how the acceptability of a word, whether in common usage, the media or commercial contexts, depends entirely on who's saying it and why. As most Americans have agreed, the N-word's usage is not okay for Caucasians,...

In my role at the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), I participate in a lot of interfaith dialogue. In most sessions I end up having to present a Hinduism 101 of sorts as I face a curious audience that knows little if anything about my tradition. I start with...

Of course no one owns yoga. Nor do you have to be Hindu to practice and benefit from yoga. Pretty obvious one would think, but not so for the many perturbed Western yogis who have entered the now global debate that the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) started about the Hindu...