Each morning, Rajeev Persaud arrives at the Emory Interfaith Center and unlocks a room filled with hand-carved Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist shrines that honor the four dharmic religions. He removes his shoes and takes a moment to offer prayers at each altar before blessing the space with a lit lamp — part of a Hindu ritual called aarti. He opens the room, he says, as if it were a temple.

“All of the shrines get a prostration from me, a full, flat-on-the-ground bow,” he says. “I consider myself their caretaker.”

As Emory’s Hindu chaplain, Persaud is also caretaker to the university’s dharmic faith community, providing pastoral care and programmatic support for students, faculty and staff. His duties are wide-reaching, and they begin anew each morning when he prepares the shrines — which he has festooned with welcoming lights and silk garlands — for use throughout the day.

Persaud joined Emory in August 2024, just a few months after earning a master of theological studies degree from Harvard where his mentor was a Roman Catholic priest. That experience primed Persaud for interfaith relationship-building, which is a core part of his position. While he primarily serves the dharmic community, his office is open to all.

“He’s a serious scholar,” says the Rev. Gregory McGonigle, Emory dean of religious life and university chaplain. “He is passionate about continuing to learn about South Asian traditions. I think students recognize that in him and are drawn to his charisma around both scholarship and devotion. It’s a perfect combination for an academic environment.”

For two summers, while home on break from Harvard, Persaud served as a prison chaplain in Toronto, the city where he was born and raised in a home with a long tradition of Hindu worship.

His parents immigrated to Canada from Guyana, which is on the northeastern coast of South America. The family’s roots go back to the Indo-Caribbean diaspora of the 1800s, when Europeans sent Indians to the Caribbean as indentured laborers to work sugar plantations following the United Kingdom’s abolition of slavery in 1833.

Persaud’s understanding of Hinduism, and love for spiritual music, took shape under that specific cultural lens. Even as a child, he knew he had a religious calling.

“My mom’s dad was a Hindu priest and my dad’s grandfather was a Hindu priest,” he says. “The first thing I ever remember wanting to do was be a Hindu priest.”

At Emory, he has brought that dream to life.

A fresh perspective

Persaud knows he’s younger than most university chaplains: at 24 years old, he is ahead of schedule. But he says his age offers a unique window of opportunity where he can closely relate to students’ experiences and perspectives. That won’t be the case forever, and that fact inspires him to stay present and intentional in all he does.

“It feels like my time right now is endowed with purpose,” he says. “I think that students are able to avail of my work in a way they might not be able to if I were doing this 10 years from now. It’s something I’m actively seeking to leverage while I can.”

Persaud supports a number of student groups across campus in both formal and informal roles. He also serves the Sikh and Jain communities and has worked with Emory Campus Dining to accommodate the dietary needs of Jain students, who are strict vegetarians.

As an adviser to the Hindu Student Association (HSA), he leads aarti worship services every Friday at 5 p.m. in Cannon Chapel. Recently, he has led gatherings highlighting South Asian sacred music, one of his main focuses as both a scholar and a practicing Hindu.

Anirudh Seshadri is president of the HSA and a senior studying biology. He was part of a student contingency that met Persaud during the interviews for the chaplaincy job.

“I immediately knew he was our guy,” Seshadri says. “I try to be a spiritual person, but it’s hard when you’re a student and you’re focused on a lot of other things. He is somebody who is super easy to talk to, and I get what he’s saying and he gets what I’m experiencing.”

“This age, 18 to your early 20s,” Persaud says, “is the time when you’re trying to figure out all this stuff, and the resources aren’t always there, especially for the Hindu community.”

Persaud adds that Emory is the “perfect forum” to build on his background in interfaith learning. His educational experience informs how he connects with students and guides him when answering difficult questions, whether about everyday struggles or controversial aspects of religious scripture.

“It’s like, if I’m having a hard time with this thing in my faith,” he says, “and I’m drawing a blank or I’ve hit a wall with how to get through it, well, maybe the Christians are having the same problem. Maybe the Muslims are having the same problem. Chances are, if we haven’t sorted it out then they might have sorted it out. So, how do I imbibe their work in my own tradition?”

That openness has been the foundation of his relationship with Matthew Veerasammy, a senior majoring in political science and religion, whose family also has Indo-Caribbean roots in Guyana. Veerasammy, though, is a Christian, and the two have connected across faiths.

Beyond the importance of feeling culturally represented, Veerasammy views Persaud as a spiritual leader. He says he attends the Friday aarti services in part because it connects him to his ancestry, but also because “the way he leads prayer deeply resonates with young people, and he fosters a personal and inclusive connection with everyone in attendance, Hindu or not.”

“I feel at ease knowing I can ask questions about life, faith and my personal interpretation of God within the Christian tradition and receive valuable insights from a Hindu priest,” Veerasammy adds. “He’s a man made to teach.”

Musical connections

Music has been at the center of Persaud’s spiritual life since childhood. After expressing interest in religious training at an early age, he learned sacred texts and prayers through the Hindu and broader dharmic communities in Toronto. When it came time to study music, his family’s preferred teacher specialized in Sikh devotionals, which have much in common with their Hindu counterparts.

Now, Persaud plays the harmonium and dholak and tabla drums. His main instrument, though, is his voice, which he uses for singing prayers, devotionals and chants at the Friday aarti service. He says those services have been a highlight of his time at Emory.

For each service, Persaud crafts his own prayer, projecting the words on a screen so the whole room can sing along. The prayers, he says, put him in his “natural state” and help students find “joy and peace.”

“The way he sings, it’s just a melodious voice and you feel the energy in the room,” Veerasammy says. Later in the semester, he plans to join Persaud in song at a service called “Hinduism Across Borders,” featuring music from their shared Indo-Caribbean heritage.

In February, Persaud brought his Sikh and Hindu influences together to lead the first of what he hopes are many South Asian sacred music nights at Emory. The service was hosted by the Sikh Student Association in partnership with the HSA and featured songs of the kirtan tradition, common to both religious backgrounds. The event was open to all.

Persaud’s musical practice also opens a door for interfaith connections across the university.

“The fact that he’s a sacred musician really adds something special to our chaplaincy team,” McGonigle says. “It’s something that can be unifying across different faith traditions and inspiring to people who are spiritual but not religious, or those who don’t see themselves as connected to religion but are drawn to the beauty of the arts.”

Music is integral to Persaud’s own spirituality because it “does away with hierarchy and distinctions in front of God,” he says. “Everybody can sing, and everybody can clap their hands and speak their own language. If you know a language, you’re already able to pray in it.”

Story and design by Daniel Christian. Photos by Avery D. Spalding, Emory Photo/Video, except where noted.