Hindu statesman to lead invocations at 3 Utah meetings as part of effort to foster understanding

FARMINGTON — Hindu religious leader Rajan Zed may be based in Nevada, but he's spent a lot of time in Utah.

Since at least 2008, he's led invocations to start more than 120 public meetings around the state, and he'll add to the list on Tuesday, opening meetings of the Davis County Commission in Farmington and the Provo and American Fork city councils. As he sees it, it's about fostering understanding and dispelling misconceptions.

"I believe that invocations like mine strengthen society, display respect for religious liberty and pluralism, offer opportunities for creating harmonious communities," said Zed.

Based in Reno, Nevada, and head of the Universal Society of Hinduism, he's led invocations at 361 legislative bodies in all in the United States and Canada, including the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. In Utah alone, he's helped open meetings of 124 legislative bodies — most of any state he's visited — and that number will grow with the planned invocations on Tuesday. He's provided 85 invocations in California, second on the list.

Efforts like his "provide scope for positive dialogue, which brings us mutual enrichment, assists us to see interconnections and interdependencies, helps us overcome the prejudices, stereotypes, caricatures and create bridges of understanding," said Zed, a self-described Hindu statesman.

Moreover, he thinks there's something universal about prayer, regardless of the person's religion. He helped open meetings of the Utah House of Representatives on March 13, 2019, and the Utah Senate on Feb. 13, 2008.

"Petitioning/pleading the God through prayer for common good helps us to grow in holiness, whichever religious perspective the prayers come from. Since all life comes from God, prayers help to link us to God, with the expectation that God hears us and blesses us," he said.

He's been "heartily welcomed" at his various stops around Utah and receives a positive response at the vast majority of them. But that's not always the case.

In 2024, the American Falls City Council in Idaho canceled his plans to deliver the invocation at a meeting after public backlash. "It's just one of those difficult parts of leadership and representing the constituents of the city and trying to do right by them," Mayor Rebekah Sorensen said at the time.

In 2019, when he offered prayer at the start of a session of the North Dakota House of Representatives in Bismarck, a handful of lawmakers moved to the rear of the chamber as a show of protest. "I don't want to be compelled to pray to a false god," one of the lawmakers, Rep. Jeff Hoverson, a Republican, said at the time.

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In his planned invocations on Tuesday, Zed will read from Hindu scripts. He's frequently the first to recite a Hindu prayer at his appearances before legislative bodies. He said Hinduism is the world's oldest and third-largest religion, with some 1.2 billion adherents, including 3.2 million Hindus in the United States.

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