Religion Dispatches
…[Editor’s Note: After this post went up I received an email from Focus on the Family’s newsletter, Citizenlink, telling the story of a woman whose former wife is seeking custody of their daughter, Isabella. Citizenlink…
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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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…e or transgressive and how did they serve to empower her in her pursuit of India and eventually yoga? MG: I think Devi was transgressive and conservative all at once. Clearly, she was a proto-feminist and a fiercely independent, adventurous woman. She forged her own identity at a time when that was much harder than it is today. She took off for India on a spiritual quest, alone, in 1927. When she was nearing 50, she moved, again on her own, to Hol…
Read More…hael Page, was motivated by xenophobia. On the other hand, the massacre in India 28 years ago was a culmination of tensions between the Indian state and the Sikh community. The most sacred of all Sikh places of worship or gurdwara had been occupied by the Indian army under state surveillance in June 1984. The anger at the desecration of the gurdwara found an extreme response when prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bod…
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…felt that “they are not morally obliged to help somebody in severe need in India, even though to do so wouldn’t cost them much, compared to only 22% of Christians who respond the same way (a difference that is easily statistically significant).” He continued: In other words, the data shows that people who self-identify as Christians are considerably more likely to think there is a moral obligation to help somebody in severe need (in India) than p…
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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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…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…
Read More…GBT people are converting others into their “ways against nature and God.” Indian High Court Declines to Review Decision Re-Criminalizing Homosexuality On Tuesday, the Indian Supreme Court dismissed petitions that it review its recent decision that reinstated a colonial-era anti-sodomy law. A “curative petition” by the government is still pending. Cyprus: Last European Law Criminalizing Homosexuality Repealed Thirty-three years after the European…
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…traditionally varies according to the Tibetan lunar calendar, in order to promote tourism. Of the various policies implemented by Chinese governmental agencies in recent years two have been the greatest source of friction between the clergy and the government. The control of the number of monks and nuns in monastic institutions, and the implementation of “patriotic re-education.” Since it is largely these policies that have brought the clergy int…
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….” 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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