Archive Posts

Last Tuesday, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 9 to 0 in favour of allowing the demolition of a building near the World Trade Centre site to make way for a 13-storey Islamic cultural centre and mosque.

Plans for the construction of the proposed mosque drew strong criticism from American politicians such as Sarah Palin who last month Tweeted to say: “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing”.

She Tweeted again later saying to New Yorkers: “Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused  Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.” Palin was not the only one opposed to the building of the mosque.

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 Relevance of Bhagavad-Gita in contemporary world was discussed when Radhanath Swami, an International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) guru; and Rajan Zed, noted Hindu statesman; met at Reno (USA) on August three. Other topics discussed were spirituality, harmonious co-existence, salvation, bhakti-yoga, vegetarianism, Hinduism in Europe, charity, world peace and unity, Vedanta, service, rituals and their meaning, etc.

Zed stressed that Hinduism, oldest revelation available to humans, offered a rich philosophical thought very relevant to the current issues facing the world, and world had come to appreciate its interpretation of the nature of reality.

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The Rice controversy has offered many frustrated progressive Christians an entry point into a crowded conversation about faith. I think it's more than just coincidence that in the days prior to Rice's post.

Facebook was dotted with "likes" for the group  "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car." There's something in the air about this.

Interestingly, Rice is running out for all the reasons that I'm running back in, called to a fiery, deeply felt place where rage and devotion intersect. I, too, resent the way homophobic, misogynist, hypocritical and otherwise unbearable people are laying claim to "true" Christianity.

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Her parents were Baptist and Catholic and she was born in Georgia, part of the US Bible Belt. But Hollywood superstar Julia Roberts says she is now a practising Hindu. Speaking to the September issue of Elle magazine, Roberts said she goes to the temple to "chant, pray and celebrate."

The 42-year-old actress, who won a million hearts with Pretty Woman and an Oscar with Erin Brockowich, took to Hinduism during the shooting of her upcoming film, `Eat, Pray and Love' last year.

In the movie, she plays a divorced woman who travels to Italy for food, India for spirituality and Bali, where she finds love. In the interview, Robert also spoke of reincarnation. "I've been so spoiled with my friends and family in this life. Next time I want to be just something quiet and supporting," she said.

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India has long relied on quotas, or what are known locally as ‘reservations’, to help redress the profound inequalities generated by Hinduism’s caste system, which divides society based on traditional occupations, both high and low, to which individuals are supposed to be born - and never aspire to escape.

But the system - which has so far been confined to the state - could be pushed onto the private sector. To boost communities on the lower rungs of the caste ladder - and overcome any institutional discrimination they may face, India has set aside quotas for so-called ‘backward castes’ in the public sphere, including for jobs in government and state-owned enterprises, and places in universities and other educational institutes.

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RSS ideologue M G alias Baburao Vaidya on Sunday expressed concern about the usage of newly coined term "Hindu Terror" appealing Hindu leaders to remove the blot. "The word Hindu Terror has earned its place in the media and no one knows who invented it. Though somebody gives credit to NCP president Sharad Pawar and others says it was Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh who has coined the concept," Vaidya wrote in his weekly column in a local Marathi daily in Nagpur.

He said the government has accused Abhinav Bharat and Sanatan Sanstha, Goa based right wing Hindu organisation, of being involved in violence and some arrests have been made in this regard but none of the accused have been convicted by the courts till date.

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In protest of what it calls a religion "of the devil," a nondenominational church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an "International Burn a Quran Day" on the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. The Dove World Outreach Center says it is hosting the event to remember 9/11 victims and take a stand against Islam. With promotions on its website and Facebook page, it invites Christians to burn the Muslim holy book at the church from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

"We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it's causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times," Pastor Terry Jones told CNN's Rick Sanchez earlier this week.

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Kabirdas (A.D. 1398-1518) was perhaps the greatest saint of northern India during the 15th century. A rebel against all that was nonspiritual in religion, Kabir — rightly called the Luther of India — helped to reform both Hinduism and Islam.

Like a true messiah, he spoke of God with authority. He taught the common people in their own mother tongue, Hindi.Kabir spoke of the 'living God' in every man and woman which has been the perennial message of India to the world.

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The Hindu concept of God goes beyond considering Him as the supreme, all mighty and omniscient figure. According to Hindu teachings, though God governs the whole universe, every human being can develop a personal relation with Him. One can worship God out of love and not only out of fear. Devotion or bhakti is a form of love that the followers of Hinduism have for God. It is often referred to as a key principle of Hinduism, even by the philosophically inclined people.

According to Hindu scriptures, God is beyond any attributes of form, color and shapes. He does not have any specific form or name and is referred to as Nirguna brahman (attribute-less god). However, God can take any form. He can be strong and powerful, the provider of boons, the destroyer or the savior. These forms provide a basis for the Hindu worshipper to easily pursue the otherwise inconceivable supreme deity. In general, Hindu followers believe that God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent.

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The contemporary Indian novel might be said to have two strains. The first is the Indian novel in English, and its best-known representatives are household names: Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Chandra, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga. The second is the Indian novel in languages other than English, and who the great names are in this space depends very much on the language and geographical location of the reader. The English-speaking reader, relying solely on translations and looking down again from a pan-Indian perspective, might say that currently these are the Bengali novelists Sankar and Mahasweta Devi, the Tamil writer Salma, the Hindi writer Alka Saraogi, the Oriya writer Chandrasekhar Rath, and the Rajasthani folklorist Vijay Dan Detha.

One remarkable aspect of the Indian novel is that both these strains trace their origins in the work of one man, Bankimchandra Chatterji (1838-1894). The first Indian to take a BA under the new English-medium educational system set up by the British, Chatterji thereby came under the influence of the novel, then a prose form unknown in India. Chatterji’s first novel, Rajmohan’s Wife (1865), written while he was a young deputy magistrate in the newly established Indian civil service, was composed in English.

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