US Senate opens with Hindu prayer

Washington, July 13: A history of sorts was made when the 208-year-old United States Senate opened its day's business with a Hindu prayer.

As Hindu chaplain, Rajen Zed of the Indian Association of Northern Nevada began the invocation yesterday, a couple of ''Christian fundamentalists'' present raised protest. They were promptly removed from the chamber to enable Rajen Zed proceed with his 90-second prayer in English.

Rajen Zed resumed: ''Let us pray. We meditate on the transcendental glory of the deity supreme, who is inside the heart of the earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of heaven. May he stimulate and illuminate our minds. Lead us from the unreal to real, from darkness to light and from death to immortality.'' This is not the first experience of this kind for Rajen Zed.

Earlier on March 19 this year, he read a similar prayer in the Nevada state Assembly and in May, he prayed with members of Nevada state Senate.

UNI