‘You Don’t Look Hindu’: Indian-Origin Scientist Turned Away From US Garba Event

Karan Jani and his friends were denied entry on the ground that they were “Ismaili, Vohra and Sindhis”.

New Delhi: An expat scientist from Gujarat has alleged that he and his friends were denied entry into a “garba” dance event in Atlanta in the US after organisers said that their last names and the way they looked weren’t “Hindu”.

Karan Jani (29), who hails from Vadodara, is an astrophysicist in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), a large-scale physics experiment and observatory operated by Caltech and MIT to detect cosmic gravitational waves. He took to social media to narrate his experience.

“An incident yesterday night left us so shocked and embarrassed as Indians that we may never attend Navratri in the US,” Jani wrote in a Facebook post. 

“Year 2018 and 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 don’t sound Hindu,’“ Jani alleged in a tweet on October 12 after the incident.


He and his friends were denied entry on the ground that they were “Ismaili, Vohra and Sindhis”, Jani said.

Meanwhile, his father Pankaj Jani, who lives in Vadodara, told media persons that Karan spoke to him after the incident and sounded nervous.

“Volunteers stopped him and told him he does not look like a Hindu and even his surname does not appear to be that of a Hindu. They checked his ID which had the national emblem on it. Despite that, he was asked to leave. Later, he talked to me over phone, sounding nervous,” Pankaj Jani said.

“He has been going there since years for the event,” Karan’s father further said.

According to a Times of India report, Karan Jani, who has been attending the garba event at Shakti Mandir for the last six years, spoke to the event organisers in Gujarati, but to no avail. He went on to say that he had not faced such kind of discrimination even from Americans during his time in the country over the last 12 years.

In his tweet, Karan Jani narrated a conversation between one of the organisers and his friend.

He said: “My Konkani friend who came to Garba for the first time due to enthusiasm of us Gujaratis was pulled out of line and told, ‘We dont come to your events, you are not allowed to ours’. She: ‘My last name is Murdeshwar. I’m Kannada-Marathi!’ Him: ‘What is Kannada? You are Ismaili’.”

“My other friend’s last name had ‘Dangarwala’. We spoke in Gujarati to them. They still said we were ‘Vohra, Sindhis’. They actually kept stating other religions!! They ganged up and told us to leave, while we saw other non-Indians entering (which they of course should!),” he further tweeted.

“Our IDs had the Indian Emblem. Yes, the emblem with ‘Satyamev Jayate’ right? Apparently, it didnt have our religion. Our caste. It was embarrassing. I had tears in my eyes saying them: I’ve come here to play garba for last six years. How could you not let us in because of last name’,” Jani mentioned on the microblogging site.


Karan Jani said that he had been attending the event at the venue for the last six years “to celebrate Indian culture” and the incident had left him “shocked and embarrassed”.

However, post the incident, the organiser of the event reportedly apologised to him: “I havent got an official statement [of apology]. The chairman had called to apologise and blamed it on the volunteer. Raj Patel and Bobby Patel – these are the ones who called. But I don’t know what their exact status is in the temple [that was hosting the Garba],” Karan Jani told the Indian Express.

(With agency inputs)