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Follow on Google News | Australian Parliament denies Hindu prayer requestBy: USOH At the beginning of each sitting day, on taking the Chair, Senate President and Speaker of House of Representatives of Australian Parliament read Lord's Prayer, a well-known prayer in Christianity; Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, who wrote to Senate President and House of Representatives Speaker requesting that he be scheduled to read opening-prayer in one each of their sessions and received the denials; feels that it is simply a case of blatant unfairness, exclusionary attitude, discrimination; Adherents of minority religions and non-believers, who had made a lot of contributions to Australia and continued to do so and paid their share of the taxes, thus felt left out by this monopoly on prayer. Not allowing prayers of minority religions in the Parliament seemed like efforts at belittling these faiths under government patronage; Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, pointed out. Democratic governments should not be in the business of promoting one religion and excluding others and non-believers and thus infringing upon the human rights of minority religions and non-believers; Zed further said that Standing Orders handling the prayer in the Australian Senate and House of Representatives needed to be urgently changed as we were well into 21st century and Australia was much more religiously diverse now as compared to 1901, when Lord's Prayer reportedly took hold in Parliament. Rajan Zed's offers to read Hindu prayer after the prescribed Lord's Prayer; and Senate-President/ Zed suggested that it was time for the Australian Parliament to move to multi-faith opening prayers. Since Australian Parliament represented every Australian irrespective of religion/denomination/ Rajan Zed was of the view that existence of different religions was an evident symbol of God's generosity and munificence. Australian Parliament should quest for a unity that hailed diversity. The Australian Parliament, located in Canberra, consists of the Senate (76 members), House of Representatives (151 members), and the King (Charles III), represented in Australia by the Governor General. End
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