The Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb: Overcoming Religious Differences to Champion Human Rights Around the World

Hindu-Muslim relations tend to conjure images of violence and hate, and yet, for centuries, common Hindus and Muslims have not only managed to tolerate each other, but celebrate each other’s diversity and stand up for each other’s rights, building a collective culture of mutual understanding, syncretism, and oneness that is well known in South Asia as the “Ganga-Yamuni Tehzeeb”, but unheard of outside the area. Now, in an era in which South Asian geopolitics has become largely defined by conflicts between the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, this session, led by local and national leaders within both the Hindu and Muslim Communities, focuses on how Indian-American Hindus and Muslim Pakistani-Americans have come together to not only tolerate each other, but to work together to champion peace, women’s rights, and the idea that all human beings, regardless of religion, have fundamental freedoms that ought to be protected around the world.