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TULSI GABBARD: HINDUS NOW HAVE A FELLOW BELIEVER IN CONGRESS

NEW YORK (AP) -- When Dr. Uma Mysorekar looks at the members of the new Congress, the Indian immigrant and practicing Hindu can see that, for the first time, there's someone who shares her ethnicity and someone who shares her faith.To her surprise, they're two different people.Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is the first Hindu elected to Congress. Rep. Ami Bera of California, also a Democrat, is the third Indian-American to serve in the House.Gabbard, however, isn't from India, where Hinduism originated and to which the vast majority of its adherents have ethnic ties.Bera is a Unitarian. His two Indian-American predecessors in Congress, Dalip Singh Saund and Bobby Jindal, also were not practicing Hindus. The late Saund, a California Democrat elected in 1956, was Sikh. Jindal, a Republican elected to the House in 2004 and now Louisiana's governor, is Catholic.Gabbard's presence in Congress creates an interesting moment for Hindus in the United States, a chance to celebrate a barrier broken but also a topic of discussion as they ponder how closely religion and nationality are entwined, or even should be.Mysorekar is glad to see a practicing Hindu in the country's halls of political power, no matter her nationality.Gabbard \is a Hindu representative