(Image source from: News18.com)
An Indian-origin astrophysicist, along with his friends, was prohibited entry from a garba venue in Atlanta on Friday after the organizers said that their surnames or family names did not "appear to be Hindu".
A 29-year-old Karan Jani, from Vadodara, recounted on his social media handles over how he and his friends were "thrown out" of the venue by the organizers at Sri Shakti Mandir.
Jani said that despite talking to the organizers in Gujarati, he was asked to leave.
Jani had made it to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) team in the United States earlier in 2016. He said that he never experienced any such trouble over the years.
"Year 2018 & Shakti Mandir in Atlanta, USA, denied me and my friends entry from playing garba because: 'You don't look Hindu and last name in your IDs (Identity Documents) don't sound Hindu'," Jani wrote on social media and posted a video narrating the incident.
Year 2018 & Shakti Mandir in Atlanta, USA denied me and my friends entry from playing garba because:
— Dr. Karan Jani (@AstroKPJ) October 13, 2018
“You don’t look Hindu and last name in your IDs don’t sound Hindu”
-THREAD- pic.twitter.com/lLVq4KhJtw
When one of his friends gave the volunteers' ID proofs, they said that they would not be permitted as his surname ended with 'wala' and it did not appear to be a Hindu surname, Jani claimed.
One of the volunteers told his friend, "We don't come to your events, you are not allowed to ours," Jani alleged.
The friend, Jani said, was a Konkani and had come to the garba event for the first time. When she said that she was a Kannada, the volunteer refused to accept it and said that she was an "Ismaili"
By Sowmya Sangam
