Religion Dispatches
….” Gandhi had the luxury of facing one huge evil—the British occupation of India—just as earlier U.S. social movements organized around resisting racial segregation or the war in Vietnam. One big target does have its advantages. But Gandhi saw his opposition to British rule as merely one part of his larger program of “constructive work.” (Here again Desai errs, claiming that “the more mature” Gandhi shifted his focus from politics to constructive…
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…ansa Yogananda, founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship, was the second Indian guru (Vivekananda was the first) to travel from India to the United States and to attract a large following of Americans interested in yoga. These gurus taught renditions of yoga that were radically different from the systems of stretching and muscle-building postures meant to function as fitness routines that we so often associate with yoga in the United States toda…
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…the Mormons of Islam by some) was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Qadian, India in 1889 during the British Raj as an effort to reform Sunni Islam. Most traditional Muslim ulema declared Ahmadis kafir (i.e., non-Muslim, or heretics in Christian parlance) because Ahmad’s claim to prophecy after Muhammad was seen as violating the traditional belief in the finality of prophet Muhammad. When the British left India in 1947, Ahmad’s son and successor (“…
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…(for the full moon). Returning to my point, namely that the UAE is a more Indian Ocean-oriented, and South Asian, society than a stereotypically Arab one, this mosque clearly continues in the vein of Mughal and Indo-Islamic architecture and owes far less to traditionally Arab-Islamic architecture. Compare to the Taj Mahal, and Badshahi and Jama’ Mosques of South Asia (India and Pakistan.) Another argument for Shah Rukh Khan as Caliph. ⬆ The…
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…s its expertise in high-tech. Yet the fact of the matter is that China and India, with their massive populations, have a much bigger human resource pool to draw upon than Israel. If the instability created by constant conflict continues, Israel will continue to see an exodus of innovators and venture capitalists-the very population it needs to retain its market. I say “continues” because the brain drain has already begun. Though Israel experience…
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…many Hindus living under Christian contexts face. For example, in southern India, where Sankaran (and my parents) hails from, many poor Hindus couldn’t receive an education unless they converted to Christianity. The same applied to countries like Guyana, where my wife’s dad and others of his generation took Christian names for schooling purposes. It was based on the idea that one couldn’t get educated—or enlightened—unless they rejected their iden…
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…hat the hair cut for temple sacrifices is now the number-one export out of India. The fact that tonsure, a religious act, has turned into a profiteering scheme is remarkable. But there also exist unscrupulous people who are stealing women’s hair, either while they sleep or in movie theaters where their braids or hair hang over the seats; while a woman is enjoying the latest from Bollywood, someone is cutting her hair and exporting it to be sold in…
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…rcent of the population, as opposed to the more sizable Muslim minority in India—as an example of the commission’s particular concern over anti-Christian propaganda and legislation. While Obama-era appointees introduced a broader spectrum of ideological stances and religious affiliations to the commission, its membership nevertheless remained largely Christian and conservative enough to maintain the commission’s status quo. “I think the legislativ…
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…shall come up in her palaces,” so missionaries saw the built landscapes of India and China as decrepit and decaying beneath their gilded surfaces. One missionary described his impressions of India as “disgust[ing]” to “every sense”: “I thought, Surely it can get no lower without opening the mouth of hell.” According to nineteenth-century missionaries, it was because “heathens” spent their time worshiping the wrong deities—spirits in nature, ancest…
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…h sacred texts as the Kama Sutra and Krittivasa Ramayana. It was not until India came under British colonial rule—with its Christian assumptions about sex—that Section 377, the first Indian law banning “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” was passed, in 1860. The efforts of modern-day Indian activists—both Hindu and non-Hindu—for sexual rights finally led to the overturning of Section 377, in 2009. A religion is not practiced in a vac…
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