{"id":6,"date":"2009-10-16T19:15:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-16T19:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html"},"modified":"2009-10-16T19:15:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T19:15:00","slug":"obama-on-rama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama on Rama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My inbox was flooded today with emails from friends, co-workers, and family members, full of smiley face emoticons and an overuse of exclamation marks, excitedly directing me to YouTube to see President Obama deliver his Diwali Message. The two minute video has Mr. Obama summarizing the significance of Diwali for Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs, and asking that we take the opportunity to reflect on those less fortunate. <\/p>\n<p>Of particular delight to Vaishnava-Hindus (the majority of the folks flooding my inbox): in recounting one of the more popular Diwali narratives, President Obama took the name of Lord Rama. According to the tradition, one&#8217;s life can be perfected just by uttering once the sacred sound of Rama&#8217;s name.<\/p>\n<p>Whether one believes that Obama earned cosmic credits by mentioning Rama by name, or just that he racked up good PR with the Hindu-American community, I expect that the emails flooding my inbox &#8212; smiley faces, exclamation marks, and all &#8212; will keep coming. <\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the video: <\/p>\n<p><object width=\"560\" height=\"340\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/SuiAW_6XKVM&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1&#038;\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/SuiAW_6XKVM&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1&#038;\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"560\" height=\"340\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p><i>Video courtesy of WhiteHouse.gov and YouTube. After the video playsthere may be several links presented to other videos. Om Sweet Om has no control over the selections presented and is notresponsible for their contents.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My inbox was flooded today with emails from friends, co-workers, and family members, full of smiley face emoticons and an overuse of exclamation marks, excitedly directing me to YouTube to see President Obama deliver his Diwali Message. The two minute video has Mr. Obama summarizing the significance of Diwali for Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs, and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays-festivals","category-in-the-news","category-video"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Obama on Rama - Om Sweet Om<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama on Rama - Om Sweet Om\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My inbox was flooded today with emails from friends, co-workers, and family members, full of smiley face emoticons and an overuse of exclamation marks, excitedly directing me to YouTube to see President Obama deliver his Diwali Message. The two minute video has Mr. Obama summarizing the significance of Diwali for Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs, and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Om Sweet Om\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-10-16T19:15:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Vineet Chander\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Obama on Rama - Om Sweet Om","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Obama on Rama - Om Sweet Om","og_description":"My inbox was flooded today with emails from friends, co-workers, and family members, full of smiley face emoticons and an overuse of exclamation marks, excitedly directing me to YouTube to see President Obama deliver his Diwali Message. The two minute video has Mr. Obama summarizing the significance of Diwali for Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs, and&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html","og_site_name":"Om Sweet Om","article_published_time":"2009-10-16T19:15:00+00:00","author":"Vineet Chander","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html","name":"Obama on Rama - Om Sweet Om","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-10-16T19:15:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-10-16T19:15:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#\/schema\/person\/cf2056f344b6fa435169a0edd9e93d8b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/10\/obama-on-rama.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Obama on Rama"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/","name":"Om Sweet Om","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Sheetal Shah","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#\/schema\/person\/cf2056f344b6fa435169a0edd9e93d8b","name":"Vineet Chander","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/221\/221efe0b0631084cd4843bb843427584x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/221\/221efe0b0631084cd4843bb843427584x96.jpg","caption":"Vineet Chander"},"description":"Vineet Chander is a legal and communications consultant, writer, and teacher, specializing in the Hindu diaspora community. He is a Hindu Chaplain and the Coordinator for Hindu Life at Princeton University, and serves as the North American Director of Communications for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a worldwide organization representing the Vaishnava Hindu tradition. In previous incarnations, Vineet has been a New York City prosecutor, a cable TV show host, and a hospital chaplain. In his free time, he enjoys relaxing with his wife and his new baby, attending classes at The Bhakti Center, and teaching himself photography. As a second-generation, Indian-American, Vaishnava-Hindu, Vineet ponders new ways of further hyphenating his identity.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/author\/vchander"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}