Denied Entry Into US 'Garba' Venue as We Didn't Look Hindu Enough, Alleges Gujarat Scientist

Ahmedabad: An expat scientist from Gujarat has tweeted that he and his friends were denied entry into a ‘garba’ dance event in Atlanta in the US after organisers allegedly said their last names and look weren't “Hindu”.

Karan Jani, 29, hailing 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.

"Year 2018 and Shakti Mandir in Atlanta, USA denied me and my friends entry from playing garba because: 'You dont look Hindu and last name in your IDs dont 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 and sounded nervous," Jani said. "He has been going there since years for the event," the victim's father further said.

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 1st time due to enthusiasm of us Gujaratis was pulled out of line and was told: 'We don’t come to your events, you are not allowed to ours' She: 'My last name is Murdeshwar. Im Kannada-Marathi!' Him: 'What is Kannada? You are Ismaili'."

"My other friends 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 being entered (which they of course should!)," he further tweeted.

"Our IDs had Indian Emblem. Yes 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 come here to play Garba for last 6 years. How could you not let us in because of last name'," Jani mentioned on the microblogging site. Jani said 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”.