Across faiths, U.S. volunteers mobilize to help India in crisis

Volunteers at Hindu temples, Muslim groups and Sikh relief organizations across the United States are mobilizing to support India as the world’s second most populous country struggles to handle a devastating surge of the coronavirus.

From coast to coast, faith groups tied to the Indian diaspora have collected hundreds of oxygen concentrators and electrical transformers to ship to overwhelmed hospitals, raised millions for everything from food to firewood for funeral pyres and gathered in prayer for spiritual support for the Asian nation.

“This is a human tragedy, said Manzoor Ghori, executive director of the California-based Indian Muslim Relief and Charities, which has donated more than $1 million for purposes including supporting teachers and providing families with thousands of medical kits and more than 300,000 meals.

Ghori said he has had five loved ones, including two nephews, die in India from COVID-19 — “so, it is a personal tragedy” as well.

He’s one of many in the U.S. diaspora to have lost relatives to the virus in India, where total confirmed infections and deaths have surpassed 22.6 million and 246,000, respectively, though the true numbers are believed to be much higher.

Kashyap Patel, an Atlanta-based physician, said the pandemic has been “catastrophic” for him, with about a dozen members of his extended family in India contracting the virus, from teenagers to octogenarians, and his 73-year-old uncle dying from it.

He volunteers for the North America branch of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha Hindu organization, which has provided 250 oxygen concentrators and several hundred thousand dollars in COVID-19 relief to help with India’s overwhelmed health system.

“It is challenging to find hospital beds,” Patel said. “It is challenging to find oxygen, to find contemporary medicine.”

India’s Supreme Court recently said it would set up a national task force consisting of top experts and doctors to conduct an “oxygen audit” to determine whether supplies from the government were reaching states in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people amid widespread complaints of shortages.

The U.S. branch of Khalsa Aid, a U.K.-based Sikh humanitarian organization, is sending another 500 concentrators and 500 electrical transformers this week to New Delhi, where the group’s team is already helping COVID19 patients, hospitals and NGOS with essential supplies as well as wood for cremations.

At a warehouse on New York’s Long Island, workers busily packed, sorted and labeled dozens of boxes containing transformers on a recent day ahead of their shipment.

“In these last two weeks, many of us haven’t slept. We’ve been running our day jobs at the same time,” one of the group’s directors, Manpreet Kaur said.

“It’s been an intense period of time, but for us, it’s about giving back to the community,” Kaur continued. “And the people in India definitely need that support.”

Khalsa Aid’s India relief effort has gotten grassroots support from individuals all over the country, such as Tahil Sharma, a Los Angeles-based interfaith activist born to a Hindu father and a Sikh mother. He raised nearly $3,000 on Facebook for the initiative.