Candelight Vigil Mourns Terror Victims

Standing in a circle three rows deep across the stage of Tercentary Theater, over 100 students, professors, and friends of the Harvard community turned to their neighbors last night and lit candles in a vigil for victims of the last week’s terror attacks in Mumbai.

The mourners stood in silence listening to almost an hour of speeches, poems, and religious songs at the event hosted by the South Asian Association.

Sugata Bose, a History professor and a native of India, set the tone for the evening with a personal reflection: “The lamps that you have lit here in Harvard Yard will help to dispel the darkness that has been threatening to envelop us in South Asia.”

Many of the mourners gathered on the steps of Memorial Church said they were struck by the diversity and support they saw in the crowd. “We all have our differences, but what ultimately comes down from this is that we must move forward as humans,” said Harvard Dharma co-President Ameya A. Velingker ’10, who also read a poem in Hindi during the vigil. “We are first part of humanity, not Muslims, Hindus, Indians, Pakistanis. I think that’s what this highlighted.”

Seth A. Pearce ’12, a Jewish student who watched from the crowd, stayed afterwards to talk with fellow mourners. “It’s an astonishingly beautiful thing to see so many people come together and to hear so many songs,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that it takes a situation like this to bring us together, but in a way it’s all we know.”

Last night’s gathering, hosted by the SAA, was co-sponsored by 13 other student groups with different religious and ethnic affiliations, in response to the Mumbai attacks that killed over 200 people.

University President Drew G. Faust, who was traveling yesterday evening, shared her sentiments through a letter read by SAA president Joseph G. Thumpasery ’10. “Harvard is a University of the world,” Faust wrote in the letter, “and we must come together.”