Religion Dispatches
…sh rule and what sociologist M. N. Srinivas called the “Brahminization” of Indian culture. Colonizing British deemed those religious activities in India that were closer to their own as more evolved and genuine than others. These were the hierarchical, centralized and vaguely monotheist (or deist) theologies of Saiva and Vaisnava Brahmins. The Brahmins themselves had been struggling with armed tantric monastic orders on one front, unsubordinated f…
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…nly as being holy, of one people as specially chosen. Then he sets out for India. What happens there is predictable enough: “The common people were his friends, believed in him, and followed him in throngs. The priests and rulers were afraid of him” (31: 2-3). Already, it would seem, Jesus is the teacher, not the student; which raises an important question for this Gospel and for this whole spiritual style. Why does Jesus travel the world? To stud…
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…ately is not just this towering search engine that heals the wounds of the India-Pakistan partition: it is all of us who contribute to Google’s base of knowledge. We love them for it. This affective pull is exactly why we need to interrogate the premise and context of the advertisement and so many others like it. But when we take a step back, questions arise. Do we truly think that worldwide corporate expansion creates the conditions for interfait…
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…anization is the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation, in which India plays a dominant role but the group also includes Afghanistan along with Pakistan. Equally relevant is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), consisting of China, Russia, and four Central Asian countries; Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and India have membership as observers. At a recent meeting of the SCO, Russia proposed an interesting solution to stabilize the A…
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…legation spoke for nearly an hour about the so-called crisis of 1948, when India and Pakistan had been partitioned. In fact he was confusing the subcontinent for mandatory Palestine, as India and Pakistan were partitioned in 1947. He railed on and on about British imperialism, and the nefarious designs of the English monarchy upon South Asia—you can’t make this stuff up—and concluded by suggesting that India and Pakistan, which were apparently on…
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…portant than the story he tells. His admirers don’t need proof of where in India he went or how long he stayed, because the image of India and spirituality is so intertwined that any amount of time spent there is enough to transform your life and worldview. Shetty has retained the soft voice and the aura of the calm oriental monk, but he’s ditched the beard and robes for a clean-shaved face and trendy, stylish clothing in an attempt to appeal to t…
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…imated at about 9 percent, and decreasing almost daily due to migration to India and abroad. The lack of U.S. involvement in Bangladesh is multi-fold. Though the country is a trade partner with the United States, it lacks the strategic significance of its South Asian neighbors India and Pakistan. Additionally, the attacks against the bloggers are often presented in U.S. media without context. Perhaps more problematically, many Bangladeshis, partic…
Read More…ty that the definition of marriage is protected, sustained and supported.” India: Couple’s high-profile marriage in defiance of anti-gay law BuzzFeed reported last week on a gay couple that was married in a religious ceremony at the end of January. “A Sanskrit teacher conducted the ceremony in a traditional Marathi fashion,” the couple told BuzzFeed India. “And all the ceremonies including Mehendi, Haldi, Sangeet were performed….The couple faced a…
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…o the Goddess Kali in Jaipur at which a special offering was presented. My Indian host family told me to not come home without the offering, sweatmeat, available in stalls near the temple. As I ascended the stairs to Kali’s image, I observed the devotees ahead of me. Tenderly addressing Kali as “mother,” they were not bringing sweatmeats as I was. Instead, they were carrying expensive bottles of foreign scotch. My host family in India would be qui…
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…le to live their life the way they want to,” he said. AP reminds us of the Indian legal context: Indian law makes gay sex punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Matiyani said the law is often used by the police and community members to threaten people or extort money from them. In 2009, the New Delhi High Court declared the law unconstitutional. But that was overturned four years later when India’s Supreme Court decided it should be a decision fo…
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