{"id":2277,"date":"2002-08-11T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-08-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/08\/11\/2002-08-11-us-deepavali-stamp-proposed-by-congressman\/"},"modified":"2002-08-11T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-08-11T12:00:00","slug":"2002-08-11-us-deepavali-stamp-proposed-by-congressman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/08\/11\/2002-08-11-us-deepavali-stamp-proposed-by-congressman\/","title":{"rendered":"US Deepavali Stamp Proposed by Congressman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/articleshow.asp?artid=18486173\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON, D.C., August 8, 2002: Possibly more than two million Hindus in America, from India, Africa, Caribbean, Fiji and native-born, now celebrate Deepavali (Diwali), the festival of lights, each year at the end of October or the beginning of November. Backed by these numbers from a 2000 census, Gary Ackerman, top Democrat on the House International Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, is advocating that the U.S. create a postage stamp to honor Deepavali. In a letter to Dr. Virginia Noelke, chairperson of the U.S. Citizens Stamp Advisory Commission, Ackerman said, &#8220;For Hindus, the holiday of Diwali is comparable in magnitude to Christmas for Christians,&#8221; Congressman Ackerman was prompted to introduce the idea of a Diwali stamp by the New York-based Federation of Indian Associations. Amitabh Sharma, president of the India-American Cultural Association in Atlanta says, &#8220;A Diwali stamp is a symbol that 2.5 million Hindus in the U.S. would be happy about. It should be welcoming &#8212; an open namaste (hands in welcome) with the diya (deepa, lamp).&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE WASHINGTON, D.C., August 8, 2002: Possibly more than two million Hindus in America, from India, Africa, Caribbean,,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}