Talk
Remarks on Receiving the Swami Vivekananda Award for Advancing Pluralism
Truth is one; the wise speak of it in many ways.
On 4 October 2026 the Hindu American Foundation presented Gaurav Rastogi with its Swami Vivekananda Award for Advancing Pluralism at its Bay Area Gala in San Ramon, California, recognising contributions to advancing pluralism, selfless service and community involvement. These are his remarks on receiving it.
Thank you. An award for pluralism.
It’s a word our country stamps on every coin: e pluribus unum. Out of many, one.
Out of many, us.
But read only that side of the coin and you can picture a future where everything tastes the same: the same songs in the same key, the same answers to the same questions, all of us quietly blended in.
Nobody would call it a catastrophe. It would just be bland.
Our tradition has been looking at the other side of that coin for five thousand years.
एकं सद्विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति
Ekam sat, vipra bahudha vadanti.
Truth is one; the wise speak of it in many ways.
Out of one, many.
And so we became a civilization of many: many paths, many practices, many arguments, and running under all of them, a stubborn delight in being alive.
Pluralism is American.
Hinduism is pluralistic.
So we never have to choose between being American and being Hindu.
So ask what you can do for your country, and what you can offer it because you are Hindu, from a civilization a good deal older than that coin.
That is our responsibility: to add something to the pluribus.
That is how great civilizations are built.
Ours was.
This one is, and it is made great each time we give it all that we have, without hesitation.
So here is what I’ll leave you with.
Future generations will inherit whatever we put on the table.
And if all we do is blend in, we become that guy at the potluck. You know the one.
He just brought the Costco cutlery.
(From our other sacred tradition, of course.)
So why not bring forth your own taste, your own heritage, your own songs and gifts, your own search for what is true, in its myriad ways?
Ekam sat.
Thank you.
“Ask what you can do for your country” is John F. Kennedy’s, from his inaugural address of 20 January 1961. Ekam sat, vipra bahudha vadanti is from the Rig Veda (1.164.46).
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