{"id":8160,"date":"2009-08-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/08\/23\/the-beautiful-prose-of-talented-hindu-americans\/"},"modified":"2009-08-23T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-23T12:00:00","slug":"the-beautiful-prose-of-talented-hindu-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/08\/23\/the-beautiful-prose-of-talented-hindu-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beautiful Prose of Talented Hindu Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/newsblaze.com\/story\/20090816060755zzzz.nb\/topstory.html\">newsblaze.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>UNITED STATES, August 16, 2009: &#8220;As I don my body armor, grab my weapon, and prepare to lead my platoon of 32 soldiers into Afghanistan, I hesitate. I turn to the portrait of Krishna in my office and demand of him, &#8216;What is the worth of this fight? Is it worth our limbs, our lives, or the heartbreak of our parents?&#8221; Thus begins the moving essay by Rajiv Sriram Srinivasan, one of the winning pieces in the Hindu American Foundation&#8217;s (HAF) first &#8220;NextGen Essay Contest: The Importance of a Hindu-American Identity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This summer, HAF heard from an often silent constituency within its membership &#8211; Hindu Americans from 17-28 years of age. The contestants, divided into two categories based on the age groups, 17-22 and 23-28 years, were asked to submit an original essay on the topic, &#8220;Beyond Indian American: Why is having a Hindu American identity important? How can you advocate for this identity in public policy and your private life? How can Hindu American advocacy be beneficial to our American society?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Srinivasan, 23, a lieutenant in the United States Army who&#8217;s currently leading a platoon during a year-long deployment in Afghanistan, was the overall winner in the senior category receiving $500. Other winners included Purnita Howlader, Hamsika Chandrasekar and Shivi Chandra.<\/p>\n<p>Winning entries can be read in their entirety at http:\/\/www.hafsite.org\/node\/380<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: newsblaze.com UNITED STATES, August 16, 2009: &#8220;As I don my body armor, grab my weapon, and prepare to lead,&#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-8160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8160","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=8160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}