The Statesman quoted Mr. Zed as saying of the protests: “We don’t mind. Hinduism is more embracing.”

KTVB-TV said that Mr. Zed noted “that most of the legislators welcomed him warmly” and said, “We all have different viewpoints, and that is wonderful, that is what makes our country great.” He added: “We are all looking for the truth. If we can join our resources together, we can reach there faster.”

Senators from both the Republican Party, which controls the Senate, and the Democratic Party shook the saffron-clad Mr. Zed’s hand and thanked him for coming, the Statesman said.

The U.S. does not have an official religion and the secular constitution prescribes strict separation of religion and state. However, federal and state legislatures open their sessions with prayers, even though prayers are prohibited in government schools because of the constitutional injunction.

In 2000, Venkatachalapathi Samuldrala of Shiva Hindu Temple in Parma, Ohio, made the opening invocation in the House of Representatives in Washington. Mr. Zed said the opening prayers at the federal Senate in 2007 when it was disrupted by protesters from the public gallery.

Idaho borders Washington State, where two Hindu temples were vandalised last month. The second attack occurred the same week that an influential Christian fundamentalist preacher, Pat Robertson, said on his TV show that Hindu prayer “sounds like gibberish.”

A former candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, he had earlier called Hinduism “demonic.”