Great story. Unbelievable photos.
Bharat Choudary's Photos of Young Muslims - NYTimes.com.
Bharat Choudhary has seen the power of religious hatred up close. After the 2002 sectarian riots in Gujarat State, India, Mr. Choudhary counseled victims who had been paralyzed or raped during the violence.
His clients were Muslims. Mr. Choudhary is Hindu.
“My job was to talk with them, to counsel them and try to convince them that everything was going to be fine, even though I knew that nothing was going to be fine with their life anymore,” he said. “That always stayed with me.”
He was painfully reminded of that a few years later while studying photojournalism in Columbia, Mo. Once while walking home from class, two white men in a pickup truck tailed him. As the truck drove past him, they hurled insults, shouting “Osama! Osama!” The truck made a U-turn and stopped in front of him. The barrage of insults continued.
The provocation? “I was brown and had a beard at that time,” Mr. Choudhary said.
The jarring encounter would prove fortuitous, becoming the topic for his masters project, photographing young Muslims who were born in the United States. He admits that at first, he didn’t know much about them.
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