Written By: Kujegi Camara
Sunita Viswanath is a fierce leader whose passion for women’s rights and faith-based activism has made her a beacon of hope for the people of New York City. Sunita was born in India to a traditional South Indian Hindu family. During her childhood in India, she was immersed in Hindu rituals and went to temple regularly. She remembers having a positive association with her religion. Sunita’s family later moved to England but she believes that her time in India helped form the core of the person she is today. Sunita is married to a loving Jewish husband and has three children. As a mother, she makes sure she teaches her children her Hindu tradition. Sunita is the co-founder and now full time volunteer and board member of Women for Afghan Women. She is also the co-founder of a grassroots Hindu organization called Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus. Sunita translates Sadhana as “faith in practice.”
Sunita has a beautiful story of her personal journey that has led her to where she is now. She spent her mid-20s to mid-30s working at the Sister Fund, a private family foundation in the United States. The work allowed her to bridge her two passions, faith and feminism. She later left the Sister Fund to become co-founder of Women for Afghan Women (WAW). For Sunita, the work that she does at WAW is not a job but a personal quest for justice. Her work takes her to Afghanistan every couple of years, but for the most part Sunita does fundraising and advocacy for WAW in NY. Over the 12 years since she helped start WAW, it has grown into an organization with 700 staff running shelters and other facilities across Afghanistan.
While being involved with WAW and moved by the Muslim women with whom she worked, Sunita yearned to meet women from the Hindu tradition who were doing social justice work from a faith-based perspective. For her, working at WAW and helping Afghan women came out of a desire to help others that was strongly rooted in motivations from faith. In working with faith and feminism, Sunita says it hurt her not to know Hindu voices who were doing social justice work from a faith core. For Sunita, all the work that she does is based on her faith core. She cites “we are all one” from the Bhagavad Gita and describes doing social justice work as her dharma (role/duty). Over the years, Sunita became increasingly aware of the fundamentalist movement in Hinduism and she was searching for a voice to counteract that, a contemporary Hindu voice for social justice. The summer of 2011 would bring it all together for her as she worked with other like-minded people to create Sadhana, a grassroots Hindu organization that operates on the following motto: living out faith by doing seva (service) in the world.
A central component of Sadhana is Project Prithvi, which is an environmental initiative (Prithvi is the Hindu term for Mother Earth). As part of Project Prithvi, Sadhana is involved with cleaning up a beach in Jamaica Bay, Queens where Hindus worship but leave behind huge piles of their offerings. Sadhana has officially adopted this beach, conducts regular clean-ups, and also does outreach through Hindu temples to advocate that Hindus worship in environmentally conscious ways. Sadhana is currently working on putting on an art show at the Queens Museum of Art in September showcasing some of the religious items that were retrieved from the beach cleanups.
One last quote to leave you with from Sunita, “obstacles are stepping stones.” In my talk with Sunita, I was able to see how she welcomed every challenge with excitement and courage, and with opportunities to learn. It was a pleasure to talk to such an inspiring woman whose love for service knows no bounds. Sunita glowed when I first met her and even while I was talking to her over the phone, I could feel her love and passion in the movements of her voice, the same miraculous and beautiful glow.