{"id":3440,"date":"2003-08-28T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-28T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/08\/28\/2003-08-28-hindu-support-group-formed-at-okinawa-bases\/"},"modified":"2003-08-28T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-08-28T12:00:00","slug":"2003-08-28-hindu-support-group-formed-at-okinawa-bases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/08\/28\/2003-08-28-hindu-support-group-formed-at-okinawa-bases\/","title":{"rendered":"Hindu Support Group Formed at Okinawa Bases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.estripes.com\/article.asp?section=104&#038;article=7481&#038;archive=true\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>CAMP FOSTER, USA, April 14, 2002: Thanks to the efforts of Chaturbhuj N. Gidwani, the Okinawa American Hindu population has formed a Hindu study group and meets twice a week on U.S. military bases at Kadena Air Base and Camp Foster, according to this report from last year. &#8220;There are many people in the military with an Indian background. I felt they were missing their cultural heritage,&#8221; said Gidwani, the chief mechanical engineer for the Marine bases Facilities Engineer Division. Gidwani, a religious lay leader, hopes one day the military will have Hindu chaplains to serve the 3,000 to 4,000 Hindu service members. Gidwani, 64, is a retired sergeant major in the Army Reserve. He grew up in Bombay, India, and immigrated to the United States when he was 28. &#8220;Back in 1997 the Pentagon agreed to give full support to a program of having Hindu lay leaders organize study groups on military bases,&#8221; he said. He was instrumental in starting a group at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., and then, three years later, at Misawa Air Base, Japan. The group at Kadena meets at 4 p.m. every Sunday at Chapel One. The Camp Foster group meets at noon Fridays in the Camp Foster Chapel Annex. Gidwani is following a study guide provided in &#8220;Self-Unfoldment,&#8221; by Swami Chinmayanda. &#8220;It is well-designed and accepts all the faiths,&#8221; Gidwani said. &#8220;I think anyone can come and sit in with us and gain knowledge from this.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceCAMP FOSTER, USA, April 14, 2002: Thanks to the efforts of Chaturbhuj N. Gidwani, the Okinawa American Hindu population has,&#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-3440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440","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=3440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}