Tag Archive for 'Hinduism'

What happens when BR Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi look down from heaven?

Published on August 21, 2010 in Books. 0 Comments Tags: Ambedkar, Arzee the Dwarf, Caste system, Dalit movement, Hinduism, India, Mahatma Gandhi, The Flaming Feet.

In Mint Lounge, Chandrahas Choudhury reviews The Flaming Feet, D.R. Nagaraj’s book of essays on the Dalit movement:

It is 1997, the 50th anniversary of India’s independence—an independence about which both men were, from the very beginning and for different reasons, sceptical. Ambedkar and Gandhi occupy adjoining rooms in heaven, and look down somewhat disconsolately on an India that has moved on. Ambedkar speaks of his immense antipathy to religious superstition and myth-making, and acknowledges that “my intimate enemy, that Gujarati Bania Mr. Gandhi, also does not like these things”, even if Gandhi is always seen as a man of religion. Gandhi, meanwhile, is found contemplating “how Hind Swaraj would be if my nextdoor neighbour, the learned Babasaheb, had written it”, and thinks that Ambedkar, a trained economist and the quintessential rationalist, would have found an enormous array of statistics to improve the argument.

Nagaraj, a great lover of fiction and its ability to tell the truth about the world even more powerfully than reasoned argument or autobiographical testimony— unusually for an analyst of politics and society, his work is full of references to Indian novels—is found here taking the fiction writer’s licence to compose “two imaginary soliloquies”. Perhaps no one in the pantheon of Indian intellectuals has earned this right more than he. Although clearly written from a Dalit perspective, Nagaraj’s essays repeatedly dramatized the epic clash between the two titans over the nature of a 20th century India that would finally grant Dalits a life of dignity and self-respect. More

The magestrial clout of two Indian epics

Published on August 17, 2010 in Books, Culture, Entertainment, India and Movies. 0 Comments Tags: Abshishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Bollywood, Hindu epics, Hinduism, Mahabharat, Mahabharata, Mythology, Politics, Prakash Jha, Raajneeti, Raavan, Raligion, Ram, Ramayan, Ramayana, Sita, The Difficulty of Being Good, The Godfather.

Even as it modernizes, India has carved a place for its mythic past, as witnessed by recent films — Raavan and Raajneeti — that draw on the two great epics of Hinduism. Somini Sengupta in the New York Times:

Can an epic poem, composed more than 2,000 years ago and transcribed in an ancient language that only a handful of people can read, thrive in the age of Twitter?

In India, yes. And not just one epic but two.

The most talked-about movies in India this summer are based on the two great epics of Hinduism: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

It isn’t just Indian cinema that is smitten with those two works. “The Difficulty of Being Good,” a recent book that uses the Mahabharata to examine contemporary business and politics, has become an unlikely best seller here. This year India’s law minister, M. Veerappa Moily, who has written a new reinterpretation of the Ramayana, credited its chaste, long-suffering female protagonist, Sita, with having inspired a women’s rights bill. In Bangalore, India’s technology capital, a contemporary-dance company recently performed a piece based on the principal women of the epics. The myths are retold too, in children’s cartoons and comic books.

Indian modernity is beguiling. In this fast-churning, seemingly Westernizing, increasingly English-speaking nation, the mythic past is also very much present. For ages the epics have been told, retold, fiddled with. They still resonate, in new but recognizable ways.

“The Mahabharata and Ramayana, they sort of permeate our consciousness,” said Bibek Debroy, an economist who published the first of a 10-volume unabridged English translation of the Mahabharata in April. “The stories are deeply ingrained in the minds of Indians.” More:

Julia Roberts now a ‘practicing Hindu’

Published on August 7, 2010 in Entertainment, Faith, Movies and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: Eat Pray Love, Hinduism, Hollywood, Julia Roberts.

Julia Roberts, star of the new movie “Eat, Pray, Love,” which tells the story of a soul-searching character, is now a practicing Hindu.

In an interview with Elle magazine, Robert says she worships with her husband, cameraman Danny Moder, and their three children.

She was born to Catholic and Baptist parents.

From New York Daily News: “I’m definitely a practicing Hindu,” says Roberts, adding that she takes her entire brood – including husband Danny Moder and their kids Henry, 3, and 5-year-old twins Phinnaeus and Hazel – to temple on a regular basis.

More here in Mercury News, here at Elle and in TOI

Hindutva terror

Published on July 21, 2010 in Culture, India, Politics and Society. 0 Comments Tags: Hinduism, Hindutva, Islamic terror, Malegaon, Right wing.

Jyotirmaya Sharma‘s column in Mail Today:

The debate about `Hindu terror’ requires, firstly, a serious rectification and amendment. Just as there is nothing called `Muslim terror’ or `Islamic terror’, there is also nothing that corresponds to `Hindu terror’. The events of Ajmer, Malegaon and Hyderabad that have been linked to individuals with affiliations to what we know as the sangh parivar are sangh parivar terrorists or Hindutva terrorists. Therefore, the phenomenon that we associate with individuals, who happen to be Hindus, indulging in acts of terror is Hindutva terror or sangh parivar terror. Having stated this, Hindutva terror is a greater threat than any form of terror facing the country. The threat from the al-Qaida or the Lashkar is easily identifiable, it is external and these organizations fashion themselves as jihadi outfits. There is no camouflage or pretence about their goals, aims and methods. In sharp contrast, the legitimacy for Hindutva terror comes not merely from members that are formally part of the sangh parivar, but from a cross-section of Hindus in Indian society, but primarily Hindus from the ever expanding middle class.

From the nineteenth century onwards, Hindu nationalists have argued that retaliatory violence is a legitimate form of dealing with the `enemy’. In doing so, they argued that in order to protect dharma, which was conveniently translated as religion, Hindus needed to resort to violence when required. The question of the legitimacy of resorting to violence was always arbitrary. Reverting to models in the mythological past, where the antagonism between devas and asuras inevitably led to the violent vanquishing of the asuras, Hindu nationalists `democratized’ the right to label their adversaries as asuras and abrogated the right to vanquish these foes to themselves. Retaliatory violence was seen as the true embodiment of manhood or manliness and the ideal of the kshatriya was celebrated as exemplifying this principle. The writings of Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, V.D. Savarkar and the ideologues of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS are replete with arguments about the inevitability and the sanctity of violence in the overall project of Hindu nationalism. From the nineteenth century onwards, revolutionary terrorism had a sanction under the guise of fighting the colonial rule and secret societies were organized in order to impart training in use of arms and in guerrilla warfare to its members. Continue reading ‘Hindutva terror’

Rush hour for the gods

Published on June 9, 2010 in India and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: Bhopas, Bhutan, Brahman, Hinduism, Tanjore.

William Dalrymple at National Interest:

Last year, on a trip in southern India, I met a man who makes gods.

Srikanda Stpathy was both a Brahman priest and an idol maker: the twenty-third of a long hereditary line going back to the Chola bronze casters who had created some of the greatest masterpieces of Indian art at the beginning of the Middle Ages. His workshop was in Swamimalai, near Tanjore, from where the Chola dynasty once ruled the southern half of the subcontinent. There he and his two elder brothers plied their trade, making gods and goddesses in exactly the same manner as their ancestors: “The gods created man,” he explained, “but here we are so blessed that we—simple men as we are—help create the gods.”

His forefathers, explained Srikanda, had settled in Swamimalai in the thirteenth century after one of them accidentally discovered that clay made from the especially fine silt at the bend in the Cauvery River on the edge of the town was uniquely well suited to making the molds in which the bronze idols were cast. This business has now kept the family employed for nearly seven hundred years. “It is with the blessings of the Almighty,” he said proudly, “that we have taken this birth, and are able to make our living in this way, creating gods in the form of man.”

In fact, added Srikanda, business was actually very good at the moment, and the workshop had a backlog of orders that would take at least a year to clear. There was a growing market for what he called “show pieces” for tourists and collectors; but the family’s main work was idols created in exactly the manner laid down by the ancient Hindu religious texts, the Shilpa Shastras, and specifically designed for temple worship. These days most of the orders were no longer from southern India, their traditional market, so much as from the new temples springing up wherever the Indian—and especially Tamil—diaspora had settled around the world, from Neasden to New Jersey. Their largest order ever had been from ISKCON, the Hare Krishna headquarters in California. More:

What a cover-up!

Published on May 10, 2010 in Culture, Faith, India and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: Belgium, Burqua, Hinduism, India, Islam, Namita Bhandare, Women.

Belgium is planning to ban the burqua to “liberate” women. But coercion seldom results in change. Namita Bhandare in The Hindustan Times:

In large parts of secular India, Hindu widows, some of them no more than children, are constrained to wear white. Even if you’ve never been to Benaras where widows are reportedly dumped by the dozen in various ashrams, you have only to see Deepa Mehta’s Water or any of the dozens of photo-features that routinely pop up in newsmagazines, to see these women dressed in stark white, unadorned by jewellery, many with shaved heads, begging for a few rupees, a handful of rice, a rotting banana.

You know that they are widows by the talismans of their white saris. Just as you know that a woman in a burqa is Muslim.

Male-dominated society has for too long controlled what women should and should not wear. In Rajasthani villages, custom dictates what colour a woman’s dupatta should be if she is married, unmarried or a widow. In Kerala, lower-caste women fought for their right to cover their breasts. And in Punjab women routinely cover their heads as a sign of their modesty.

In 2005, an Islamic scholar issued a fatwa against Sania Mirza for wearing short skirts, un-Islamic according to him, while playing tennis. Sania refused to be drawn into the controversy, which in time blew over, with the venerable gentleman going back to the obscurity to which he belonged.

In urban India, even in the conservative north, many clothing taboos are breaking down. Where they wore saris a decade ago, they now wear salwar-kameez, where they wore salwar-kameez, they now wear pants, dresses, shorts even. Not everyone’s pleased: the moral police huffs and puffs about the ‘degradation’ of Indian culture. Regardless, women — even if they are a minuscule minority in urban India — are asserting their right to dress as they please.

Continue reading ‘What a cover-up!’

The rise of Islamo-erotica

Published on March 26, 2010 in Art and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: erotica, Hanan Tabbara, Hinduism, Islam, Muslim, Muslim artists, Nudity, Painting.

Betwa Sharma in The Daily Beast:

One of Hanan Tabbara’s most provocative sketches is a charcoal and pastel drawing of blood pouring out of a woman’s vagina. She made it after a close friend was raped, and later uploaded it as her Facebook profile picture. For two years now, the 20-year-old, political science student from Brooklyn has been drawing nudes. “I’m aware that it is prohibited but it doesn’t bother me,” Tabbara says.

While the Koran does not specifically ban nude art, the almost universal opinion of religious leaders is that Islam forbids it. However, a handful of Muslim artists have been daring to depict nudity. “This leads to moral consequences that are against Islam,” says Imam Shamsi Ali, the leader of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. “There is no justification to say it is allowed in the name of art.”

The prohibition principally stems from the taboo against entertaining sexual thoughts that a naked figure might provoke. In this light, Imam Ali also explains that it is “not desirable” for Muslims to view nude paintings, even if they are considered masterpieces. “Islam sees the harms of such exposure outweighing its benefits,” he says. “An artist can have an important message in his work without drawing nudes.” More:

The Tantric sex in Avatar

Published on March 8, 2010 in Movies. 0 Comments Tags: Avatar, Avatar sex, Buddhism, Eastern philosophy, Hinduism, Khajuraho, Na'vi, Neytiri, Tantra, Tantric sex.

Asra Q. Nomani at The Daily Beast:

A precursor to Hinduism and Buddhism, the ancient philosophy of Tantra dates back some 6,000 years to the Dravidian culture that flourished in the Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan, seeping later into the religious traditions of India, Nepal, and other parts of the region. Its tenets of goddess worship, self-discovery, and spiritual liberation resonate in Avatar, from the Neytiri’s deity-like qualities to Jake’s journey of self-identity. Avatar’s climax is actually not the Tantric sex of their consummation, but a moment that comes later, when they do something modern-day Tantric sex experts call “soul gazing,” and racier sexperts call “sex gazing.”

The Tantric theme in Avatar follows a tradition of Eastern philosophy in popular culture. Consider Star Wars’ iconic line, “May the Force be with you.” Writing the script for that film, director George Lucas became influenced by 20th-century thinker Joseph Campbell, whose encounter with Hindu aesthetic Jiddu Krishnamurti years earlier sparked a lifelong passion for Hindu thought. More:

Spiritual awakening

Published on January 1, 2010 in Books, Culture, Faith, India, Religion and Society. 0 Comments Tags: Ayodhya, Evangelism, Faith, Globalization, Hinduism, materialism, Religious extremism, Shrines, Spirituality, William Dalrymple.

William Dalrymple in the New Statesman:

On a foggy winter’s night in November 1998, Om Singh, a young landowner from Rajasthan, was riding his Enfield Bullet back home after winning a local election near Jodhpur, when he misjudged a turning and hit a tree. He was killed instantly. As a memorial, his father fixed the motorbike to a stand, raised on a concrete plinth under the shelter of a small canopy, near the site of the crash.

“We were a little surprised when people started reporting miracles near the bike,” Om’s uncle Shaitan Singh told me on my last visit. “Om was no saint, and people say he had had a drink or two before his crash. In fact, there was no indication whatsoever during his life that he was a deity. He just loved his horses and his motorbike. But since his death a lot of people have had their wishes fulfilled here – particularly women who want children. For them, he has become very powerful. They sit on the bike, make offerings to Om Singh-ji, and it is said that flowers drop into their laps. Nine months later they have sons. Every day people see him. He comes to many people in their dreams.”

“How did it all begin?” I asked. We were in the middle of a surging throng: crowds of red-turbaned and brightly sari-ed villagers gathered around the bike, the women queuing patiently to straddle its seat and ring the bell on the canopy. Nearby, two drummers were loudly banging dholaks, while chai-shop owners made tea and paan for the pilgrims. Other stalls sold plaques, postcards and statues of Om Singh and his motorbike. Pieces of cloth were tied to branches all over the tree and gold flags flapped in the desert wind. Everywhere buses and trucks were disgorging pilgrims coming to visit Rajasthan’s newest shrine. More:

God has left politics

Published on December 31, 2009 in Faith, India, Politics and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: Advani, Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, globalisation, Hinduism, Tirupati, Travel, Vaishno Devi, Vishva Hindu parishad.

There’s proof Indians are becoming more religious. Yet the days of politics based on religion seem to be over. What happened? Hartosh Singh Bal in Open:

Religiosity is on the ascendant in this country as never before. In the last five years, daily attendance at Hindu shrines has risen dramatically. At Tirupati, it has gone up from 20,000 to 35,000. At Vaishno Devi, annual attendance has gone up from 5 million in 2004 to 7.7 million in the first 11 months of this year. But the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), stuck in New Delhi debating the Liberhan report in the backdrop of what could have been, has found its vote share in consistent decline over the past decade. In the Indian general election held earlier this year, it dipped to its lowest level since the party shot to prominence in 1991. If today the party is in shambles, offering little hope even to its most committed supporters, it is because it has failed to ‘harvest the souls’ that according to conventional wisdom should have been the saffron party’s for the taking.

This paradox, India’s increasing religiosity and a right wing in terminal decline, is uniquely ours. Across the world, the growth of middle-class religiosity fuelled by consumerism has strengthened right wing movements. Countries such as Turkey, which have seen a boom in the economy, have responded by voting in right wing governments to power, and in the US, the growth of evangelism has benefitted the Republicans. More:

The unending holiday season in India

Published on December 29, 2009 in Faith, India and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: Basant Panchami, Buddha Purnima, Christianity, Communalism, Eid-e-Milad, Eidul-Fitr, Ganesh Chaturthi, Good Friday, Hinduism, Holi, Holidays, Islam, Janmashtami, Lunar Calendar, Lunar holidays, Mahavir Jayanti, Makar Sankranti, Moharram, Onam, Rakhi, Raksha Bandhan, Ram Navami, Seasons, secularism, Shia, Solar holidays, Sunni, Vasant Panchami.

Aakar Patel in The News, Karachi:

In India, secularism is inclusive. Europe’s secularism measures distance of the state from Christianity. Indians think of secularism as equal respect for all religions. This is supposed to reflect the Hindu belief in tolerance. One famous Sanskrit line is: Vasudhaiva kutumbakam. Vasudha is mother earth and kutumb is family and so the line means the whole world is a family. However, our recent record of religious violence shows that inclusive secularism isn’t always followed. Often unhinged views on religion are tolerated under this formulation of non-interference, and journalist George Verghese described Indian secularism as ‘equal respect for everyone’s communalism’.

But the doctrine of inclusive secularism is India’s constitution and perhaps at some point we will become good enough to deserve that fine document. Since the state tries to be inclusive, every religion’s celebrations are official holidays in India. Our calendar is the most colourful in the world.

Many urban Americans now greet each other this season with the words ‘Happy holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. This is typical European thoughtfulness of the feelings of others. The ‘happy holidayers’ want to share their joy but want not to offend Jews and others. Personally I like ‘Merry Christmas’ and see no reason why anybody should be offended that Christians are celebrating the birth of their saviour. In India, however, you couldn’t say ‘Happy holidays’ because we have them through the year. Let’s have a look. More:

Save the Maldives from fundamentalists

Published on October 1, 2009 in The Maldives. 0 Comments Tags: Hinduism, Islam, Sufis, Wahhabis.

From the Guardian’s Comment is Free:

On his recent visit to the Maldives, Salih Yucel, a Turkish Islamic scholar and lecturer at Monash University in Australia, was rejected by his fellow Muslims who deemed his beard too short and his trousers too long for him to be a bona fide Muslim. The response to the former imam came as no surprise, being symptomatic of the puritanical Wahhabism taking root in the Indian Ocean archipelago, a favourite haunt of honeymooners and A-list celebrities.

The country’s legislative architecture entrenches this intolerance, in a constitution that recognises only Muslims as citizens and a Religious Unity Act that stringently demarcates the type of Islam to be practised. Nor are the country’s non-Muslim expatriates, largely Buddhist Sri Lankans and Hindu Indians, permitted to practise their faiths in public as all places of worship apart from mosques are banned. The intolerance does not end here: for Wahhabis, even other Muslims, such as Shias and Sufis, are apostates. More:

Sea of stories

Published on September 10, 2009 in Books and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: Hindu, Hindu nationalism, Hinduism, India, Kamasutra, Shiva, The Hindus: An Alternative History, Wendy Doniger.

Ananya Vajpeyi reads Wendy Doniger‘s capacious study of the diversity of Hindu tales and traditions (The Hindus: An Alternative History, by Wendy Doniger, Penguin), which serves as a riposte to the self-appointed guardians of Indian culture by celebrating the multiple varieties of Hindu religious experience.

From ancient times men have dominated the world of Sanskrit scholarship. Originally those men were Brahmins; then they became Europeans, then Englishmen, and finally Indians. It is only in the past 50 years or so that women have begun to enter this esoteric field of study, and in this regard, Wendy Doniger has been a pioneer and a force to reckon with. Her new book, The Hindus: An Alternative History brings 30 years of her rigorous and innovative scholarly practice to a fitting climax – and I use the word advisedly. Doniger has studied Hinduism in its erotic, aesthetic and corporeal aspects, making her the target of envy as well as criticism from her colleagues. Her work, which includes a translation of the Kamasutra and extensive writing on Shiva, the Hindu god of cosmic destruction, who is worshipped in the form of a phallus (linga), is often seen to be titillating. She is interested in asceticism, but also in sexuality; in the spiritual, but also in the carnal.

Hindu traditions are diverse and heterodox enough to incorporate a number of parallel doctrines, theologies and belief systems, as well as an enormous repertoire of deities, symbols, rituals and concepts that contradict one another and yet coexist. Doniger’s openness to the varieties of religious experience permitted under the accommodating and multifarious rubric of Hinduism has upset all manner of people, from devout Hindus, to the votaries of Hindu nationalism (“Hindutva”), from American professors to German philologists. Nearly all of them misunderstand her work, particularly her creative ways of exploring how Hindu thought connects mind, body and soul, rather than placing them in conflict with each other. More:

Burger King apology to Hindus for advert

Published on July 10, 2009 in Religion. 0 Comments Tags: Beef, Hinduism, Lakshmi.

Fast food chain Burger King has apologised for running an advertisement in Spain that shows the Indian goddess of wealth Lakshmi with a Whopper burger. The caption of the ad read ‘La merienda es sagrada’ (The snack is sacred). Burger King quickly withdrew the advertisement from its stores in Spain after Hindus across the world complained over the denigration of their religion.

A people and their karma

Published on April 4, 2009 in Books. 0 Comments Tags: Hinduism, Rig Veda, The Hindus: An Alternative History, Wendy Doniger.

In The Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan reviews “The Hindus: An Alternative History” by Wendy Doniger (The Penguin Press):

When I first picked up “The Hindus” — a tome seemingly rich with scholarship and, at 780 hardbound pages, as hefty as the legendary demon Kumbhakarna — I was struck most of all by the author’s name on its cover: Wendy Doniger. A mist of apprehension spritzed my Hindu soul. Could this lady (a professor at the University of Chicago) be the same Wendy Doniger who wrote last year — in one of the more batty commentaries in an election season replete with unhinged scrivenings — that Sarah Palin’s “greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman”? If so, could this author really be trusted with a history of my people, the Hindus?

I should report that it is the same Wendy Doniger. But in the book in question, Ms. Doniger has eschewed the pamphleteering arts — perhaps because there is no trace of the Palin tribe in any Sanskrit yarn. She has, instead, concentrated her prodigious learning on making modern sense of the texts and tales of Hindu society, as well as of the rituals and symbols of the Hindu people.

Passages from India

Published on March 23, 2009 in Books. 0 Comments Tags: Hinduism, The Hindus: An Alternative History, The Wonder That Was India, Wendy Doniger.

In The Washington Post, Michael Dirda reviews Wendy Doniger‘s The Hindus: An Alternative History:

Any of us might make the same mistake: I didn’t really notice the subtitle of Wendy Doniger’s massive study, “The Hindus.” I knew that she was an eminent Sanskrit scholar at the University of Chicago, author of many books about cultural, religious and folkloric beliefs, and a translator of several Indian classics, including “The Rig Veda” and “The Kamasutra.” Her annotations to the latter, that notorious manual of sexual practice, are, I can attest, as entertaining and informative as the book itself.

However, “The Hindus: An Alternative History” is probably too scholarly and specialized for readers looking simply for an introduction to Indian philosophy and religion. In its notes Doniger suggests that her book could be used for a 14-week course, and I suspect that it originated as a series of class lectures. She herself recommends some more conventional histories and guides, including Gavin Flood’s “An Introduction to Hinduism,” John Keay’s “India: A History” and that old standby, A.L. Basham’s survey “The Wonder That Was India.”

India, exporter of priests, may keep them home

Published on December 30, 2008 in India. 0 Comments Tags: Christianity in India, Export of priests, Hinduism, Islam, Religion, Roman Catholic priests in India.

As families have fewer children and the Indian economy offers more career options, the West may need to look elsewhere to fill its empty pulpits. Laurie Goodstein from Aluva, India, in International Herald Tribune:

Students at St. Paul's Minor Seminary in the Irinjalakuda Diocese in India taking a ministry trip.

In the sticky night air, next to a grove of mahogany trees, nearly 50 young men in madras shirts saunter back and forth along a basketball court, reciting the rosary.

They are seminarians studying to become Roman Catholic priests. Together, they send a great murmuring into the hilly village, mingling with the Muslim call to prayer and the chanting of Vedas from a Hindu temple on a nearby ridge.

Young men willing to join the priesthood are plentiful in India, unlike in the United States and Europe. Within a few miles of this seminary, called Don Bosco College, are two much larger seminaries, each with more than 400 students.

As a result, bishops trek here from the United States, Europe, Latin America and Australia looking for spare priests to fill their empty pulpits. Hundreds have been allowed to go, siphoning support from India’s widespread network of Catholic churches, schools, orphanages, missionary projects and social service programs.

An artist in exile tests India’s democratic ideals

Published on November 9, 2008 in Art and India. 0 Comments Tags: Dubai, Hinduism, India, Indian artist, Indian painter, Maqbool Fida Husain, Muslim, Religious intolerance.

Maqbool Fida Husain’s case illustrates how freedom of expression has frequently come under fire in India. Somini Sengupta in the New York Times:

Maqbool Fida Husain in one of his homes in Dubai where he now lives. NYT photo

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Maqbool Fida Husain, India’s most famous painter, is afraid to go home.

Mr. Husain is a Muslim who is fond of painting Hindu goddesses, sometimes portraying them nude. That obsession has earned him the ire of a small but organized cadre of Hindu nationalists. They have attacked galleries that exhibit his work, accused him in court of “promoting enmity” among faiths and, on one occasion, offered an $11 million reward for his head.

In September, the country’s highest court offered him an unexpected reprieve, dismissing one of the cases against him with the blunt reminder that Hindu iconography, including ancient temples, is replete with nudity. Still, the artist, 93 and increasingly frail, is not taking any chances. For two years, he has lived here in self-imposed exile, amid opulently sterile skyscrapers. He intends to remain, at least for now. “They can put me in a jungle,” Mr. Husain said gamely. “Still, I can create.”

Buddhist art

Published on October 31, 2008 in Art. 0 Comments Tags: Afghanistan, Buddhism, Hindu sculpture, Hinduism, India, Religion.

From the Guardian‘s series, 1000 artworks to see before you die:

One of Buddhism’s earliest artistic inventions was the stupa – a shrine in the form of a building that was not designed to be entered but to be beheld. The early Indian stupa evolved from Hindu burial mounds and took the form of a hemispheric dome surmounted by a column. The sculptures carved to decorate the great stupa at Amaravati between the first century BC and the third century AD are among Buddhist art’s earliest treasures; their proliferation of narrative scenes strongly resembles Roman and Hellenistic art from the same period. They depict scenes from the life of the Buddha in his incarnation as Siddharta Gautama, a scion of north India’s warrior class who rejected his comfortable life and became an ascetic for seven years, then a teacher who preached the ultimate goal of escaping the endless cycle of rebirth.

Among the key works:

• Sculptures from the Great Stupa of Amaravati, India, now in British Museum (1st century BC to 3rd century AD)
• Sculpture of Yakshi or river goddess from Begram, Afghanistan, now in Kabul Museum (circa 1st century)
• Parinirvana, reclining colossal figure in Cave 26 at Ajanta, India (late 5th century)

Also in the series:

All about Hindu sculpture

Shiva dances. He balances on his right leg, his left raised in a gesture that signifies Release. He gestures with his arms too — all four of them. Each arm is elegantly posed in mid-movement with the flattened palm in a different position, each of which has symbolic meaning — he is saying, “Have no fear.” In one hand Shiva holds the flame of destruction, in another the drum of creation. Around him is a great nimbus of fire, symbolising the cosmos.

Among the key works:

• Stone figure of mother and child from Tanesara in Rajasthan, now in LA County Museum of Art (6th century)
• Relief of Shiva holding a trident and a snake, Malegitti Shivalaya temple, Badami, India (7th century)
• Shiva with Nandi, open-air sandstone sculpture, Durga temple, Aihole, India (8th century)

Fly me to the deity

Published on October 30, 2008 in India. 0 Comments Tags: Chandrayaan, Folklore, Hinduism, Moon as a god, Moon mission, Religion, Scriptures, Vedas.

Tunku Varadarajan in the New York Times:

Vivienne Flesher/NYT

AN unmanned spacecraft from India – that most worldly and yet otherworldly of nations – is on its way to the moon. For the first time since man and his rockets began trespassing on outer space, a vessel has gone up from a country whose people actually regard the moon as a god.

The Chandrayaan (or “moon craft”) is the closest India has got to the moon since the epic Hindu sage, Narada, tried to reach it on a ladder of considerable (but insufficient) length – as my grandmother’s bedtime version of events would have it. So think of this as a modern Indian pilgrimage to the moon.

India’s cremated leave ashes, carbon footprint

Published on October 9, 2008 in Religion and environment. 0 Comments Tags: Carbon footprint, Cremation, Electric crematoriums, Greenhouse gasses, Hinduism, India, Mokshda.

From Mint:

Even the dead are adding big time to the carbon footprint.

And the preference of Indian Hindus for conventional cremation in a country of 1.1 billion is only exacerbating the global problem.

If you want to burn a body completely, it will 400-500kg of wood, says Kalu Chaudhary, a body-burner at the Harishchandra ghat in Varanasi.

If you do the math, that means about 50-60 million trees, covering 1,500-2,000 sq. km of forest land, are cut every year to burn the dead in India, says Anshul Garg, director of Mokshda, a New Delhi-based non-governmental organization (NGO) that is developing a technology to make cremations more environment- friendly.

Are Indians rethinking the equality of minorities?

Published on October 4, 2008 in India. 0 Comments Tags: Attacks on Christians in India, Communalism, Faith, Guwahati Ward Memorial Church, Hinduism, Religion, secularism, Sunanda K. Datta-Ray.

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray in The Telegraph:

This latest development presents India with a stark challenge. The desecration of St James Church in Bangalore, the murder of a nun and priest in Uttarakhand, rape, lynchings, vandalism, and the bomb blasts only three days before Id-ul-Fitr in Muslim-dominated towns suggest one of two explanations. Either they reflect a spreading popular mood or they are the handiwork of criminals. The state must decide and respond accordingly.

Happily, there are still pockets of tranquillity left in the country. No echo of violence in Kandhamal or Karnataka or of explosions in Mehrauli, Malegaon and Modasa disturbs the serenity of Guwahati’s Ward Memorial Church. In a further manifestation of the secularism that Jawaharlal Nehru dreamt of but Indira Gandhi institutionalized with her controversial 42nd amendment, the pastor is called Aziz-ul Haque. Yet, recalling the charges that were levelled against missionaries during Assam’s “Bangal kheda” movement long before the illegal influx from East Pakistan or Bangladesh, the American Baptist, William Ward, after whom the church was named long after his death in 1873, might have met Graham Staines’s fate if he had been living today and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The testimony of one Indian Christian

Published on September 28, 2008 in India. 1 Comment Tags: Christianity, Communalism, Hinduism, Intolerance, Religion, Sectarian violence.

Julio Ribeiro, a former Indian police officer, in The Times of India following anti-Christian violence in several parts of India:

I am a Christian, a Roman Catholic to be precise. I have suddenly realised this. It is quite amazing that I did not think of myself as a Christian all these years! I was an Indian. Religion was in the private domain. No one made me feel that I was different and I never felt different. On one occasion in a temple in Punjab even the VHP’s Ashok Singhal seemed well disposed!

Why did it suddenly occur to me that I was a Christian? I really do not know the answer. I only know that I am sorely disappointed with the BJP for not reining in the VHP and Bajrang Dal, who like the SIMI and its offshoot, the Indian Mujahideen, feel that the best and only way to attain peace is to kill those who they think are different.

My ancestors, like those of most Christians in India, were Hindus. True, I have a strange name. It is Portuguese in origin, but neither I nor the numerous other Christians sporting Portuguese surnames like Fernandes (George is a friend of the BJP) have any Portuguese blood. Our ancestors got these surnames when they were baptised and the surnames were those of the different clerics who officiated at their initiation.

India’s remote faith battleground

Published on September 27, 2008 in India. 0 Comments Tags: Christianity, Faith, Hinduism, Religion, Religious conversion, Religious violence.

Anti-Christian riots have rocked several parts of India over the past month. The BBC‘s Soutik Biswas travels to a remote region in the eastern state of Orissa, where it all began, to investigate the complex roots of the conflict.

There is no railroad to this remote landlocked district dominated by tribes people. Here, they and a growing number of Hindu untouchables who have converted to Christianity have lived together for centuries, tiling its fertile land, growing vegetables, turmeric and ginger.

It is also the place which has been rocked by violence between Hindus and Christians over the past month. Events here have triggered off anti-Christian attacks in a number of other states.

Villages have been attacked, people killed, churches and prayer houses desecrated. Radical Hindu groups have accused Christian groups of converting people against their will. Christian groups say these allegations are baseless.

And click here for Reuters Q&A: Why are Christians under attack in India?

Temples where gods come to life

Published on September 20, 2008 in India and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: Faith, Hinduism, Journeys, Madurai, Religion, South India, Temples.

Few things in India express the continuous presence of the gods better than the ancient, massive temple complexes of Tamil Nadu. Edward Wong in The New York Times:

THE god was ready for his night of conjugal bliss. The priests of the temple, muscular, shirtless men with white sarongs wrapped around their thighs, bore the god’s palanquin on their shoulders. They marched him slowly along a stone corridor shrouded in shadows to his consort’s shrine. Drumbeats echoed along the walls. Candles flickered outside the doorway to the shrine’s inner sanctum. There, Meenakshi, the fish-eyed goddess, awaited the embrace of her husband, Sundareshwarar, an incarnation of that most priapic of Indian gods, Shiva.

Along with hundreds of Indians clustered around the shrine entrance, I strained to get a glimpse of the statue of Sundareshwarar, but green cloths draped over the palanquin kept it hidden. Worshipers surged forward in mass delirium, snapping photos with their cellphones, bowing to the palanquin and chanting hymns. They stretched out their hands to touch the carriage. Priests ordered them back.

A goat for the goddess

Published on September 12, 2008 in India. 0 Comments Tags: Faith, Hinduism, Religion, Tantra, Tarapith temple.

One of the most powerful holy places in India, Tarapith in West Bengal is home to a Tantric divinity whose worship promises protection and power. William Dalrymple witnesses a dark and bloody ceremony. In Financial Times: [via 3quarksdaily]

Tarapith is regarded as one of the most powerful holy places in India, the abode of the Devi’s Third Eye. Yet despite the reputed power of its presiding deity, compared with the other great pilgrimage sites of the region, Tarapith is little visited. A thin line of pilgrims were queuing to do darshan (pay homage) to the image of the goddess, but although it was approaching the time for the evening arti, the place was still surprisingly empty for such a famous shrine.

The reason for this, I had been told in Calcutta, was that Tarapith had a sinister reputation, notorious for the unsavoury “left-handed” Tantric rituals which are daily performed in the temple. Stranger things still were rumoured to take place in the nearby cremation ground after sunset. Here the goddess was said to live, and at midnight – so Bengalis believe – Tara can be glimpsed in the shadows drinking the blood of the goats slaughtered day after day in an effort to propitiate her anger.

India’s tribal lands, a factory of Hindu foot soldiers

Published on September 12, 2008 in India. 0 Comments Tags: Christianity, Hinduism, Poverty, Religion, Religious conversions, Religious violence.

By Krittivas Mukherjee/Reuters:

JALESPETA, India: Deep inside the thickly forested hills of eastern India, where ancient tribes live in huts of grass-and-mud cut off from modernity, a stealth electoral weapon is at work for India’s Hindu nationalists.

It is a sprawling residential school founded by a Hindu proselytiser, where girls from animistic tribes learn Sanskrit prayers and Hindu philosophy in between gardening and cooking.

Across India’s remote tribal belt, a zone of Christian missionary activity for decades, such tutelage is aimed at converting tribes to Hinduism and creating foot soldiers for Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, the political standard-bearer of India’s Hindu nationalist groups.

In search of Nepal’s living goddesses

Published on June 26, 2008 in Nepal. 0 Comments Tags: Buddhism, Faith, Hinduism, LIving goddess, Religion, Rituals.

A prepubescent deity of Hindu-Buddhist tradition is also a modern child of HBO and Barbie. From The Christian Science Monitor:

$Chanira Bajracharya (c.) is one of Kathmandu\'s kumaris – a living goddesses until she reaches puberty. Reuters$ Like any typical schoolgirl, 13-year-old Chanira Bajracharya struggles to finish hours of homework each day. That doesn’t stop her from stealing away to watch TV (she enjoys HBO; her younger brothers often change it to Nickelodeon) or use the computer. She even has Barbies, but now that she’s older, painting has replaced organizing tea parties as her favorite pastime.

The similarities end there. To start, no one – including her family – may scold her. Chanira eats whatever she desires, though she’s yet to abuse this power by demanding an endless supply of ice cream. And don’t even mention chores.

It may seem like she’s hit the jackpot, but in exchange for this life of relative luxury, she’s forbidden to leave her five-story home, save for religious holidays. She must also endure a constant stream of Hindu followers who come seeking her healing powers or to snap a photo of her.

[Photo: Chanira Bajracharya (c.), is one of Kathmandu's kumaris – a living goddesses until she reaches puberty. Reuters]

Temple in UK sues RSPCA over cow

Published on March 28, 2008 in Religion. 0 Comments Tags: Bhaktivedanta Manor Hindu temple, Cruelty to animals, Hinduism.

From The Guardian, UK:

Monks from the largest Hindu temple in Europe, angered by the RSPCA’s slaughter of its sacred cow, will serve the charity with legal papers today. Gangotri, a 13-year-old Belgian blue-jersey cross, was put down on welfare grounds on December 13 last year by RSPCA vets.

But campaigners from the Bhaktivedanta Manor Hindu temple in Hertfordshire claim that the “mercy killing” was illegal and took place while monks were at worship. Radha Mohandas, a spokesman for the temple, says the RSPCA entered the temple illegally with a false warrant.

Love Guru woos Hindu priests

Published on March 22, 2008 in Movies. 0 Comments Tags: Hinduism, Hindus, Hollywood, Rajan Zed.

Paramount Pictures, producers of The Love Guru – billed as the biggest Hollywood comedy this summer – will screen the movie for Hindu leaders before its June release. “The movie appeared to be lampooning Hinduism and Hindus and using Hindu terms frivolously,” Rajan Zed, Nevada-based chief of the Universal Society of Hinduism, and “America’s most savvy Hindu priest”, said after watching the trailer (see YouTube clip).

The movie features Mike Myers, Ben Kingsley, Jessica Alba and Justin Timberlake. Kingsley plays Guru Tugginmypudha, the ashram leader who teaches Myers how to love himself and wear a chastity belt. Iranian stand-up comic Omid Djalili enacts Guru Satchabigknoba. Myers plays Guru Pitka, an American raised in an ashram in India, who moves back to the US to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality. The movie also has a cameo by celebrated New Age guru Deepak Chopra.