Is the outraged Indian over-sensitive or culturally prudent?
Protests are as common in India as the ‘Singh’ surname in the national hockey team.
On the face of it, it’s one indicator of a free society where every citizen can get his voice heard. But agitations like the recent one against a film crew for recreating parts of Chandigarh to look like a Pakistani city seem to create an impression of misplaced priorities (and some would say too much free time for the protesters).
Hindu radicals decried the Pakistan link; and not to be left out, a Muslim umbrella body said the movie about the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden showed their religion in a bad light.
Apart from Pakistan and religion, one also has to be careful in making public comments on topics which touch on caste, class, ethnicity, geography and gender.
The straight-talking and self-professed forward-looking chairperson of the National Commission for Women, Mamta Sharma, discovered the gender minefield when she said at a seminar that girls should not be offended if someone calls them ‘sexy’.
Rights activists and politicians slammed her, saying the sexually suggestive word “promotes violence”.
But there are many liberals who defend the right to free speech and artistic freedom. Local artists in Chandigarh defended Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow’s film crew on their right to make a realistic movie set (even if it meant temporarily creating a mini-Pakistan), while the protests against author Salman Rushdie’s scheduled presence at the Jaipur Literary Festival in January was slammed by the media and many literary figures.
Of sex swamis, lies and videotape
The recent scandals over two spiritual gurus have shaken the collective faith of their followers in India.
The sanctity of religions or the people’s faith is not being questioned but these controversies put the spotlight on the uniquely Indian phenomenon of mortals given the status of gods.
Cities across the country teem with astrologers, tarot card readers or some self-proclaimed guru. Saffron silk robes, turban cloth and rosaries are available off the shelves in plenty.
It’s an irony that some of these gurus are courting controversies such as sex rackets, money laundering and child trafficking.
Spiritual gurus in India draw millions of men, women and foreigners to help bring them on a divine path. And there’s no denying that they have done a lot of good work and helped alleviate the sufferings of their followers.
But those who have renounced the world and embraced asceticism are expected to be completely detached from wealth and worldly affairs.
Reports of some seers travelling by choppers, air-conditioned cars and loaded with gold and precious stones speak otherwise.
This particular issue has its own Pros and cons. We have been inculcated the values, wherein we always respect and pay obedience to saffron clad people, and there are people who actually have enriched our lives with their blissful knowledge and work for the betterment for the people. Great personalities like Swami Vivekananda, not only preached but also made the Hindus proud by enlightening our culture and cultivating Yog in the form of Meditation. His recognition prevailed not only in India, but western countries also learned about Hinduism not only as a religion but as a culture. Even now, there are gurus, who help people for living their life on a spiritual path, with the teaching on perceiving life in a bigger manner. With this people are less stressed, and in a way we are able to control lot of Law and order issues, as sometime, it is easy to convince people to differentiate b/w good and bad in the form religious and nonreligious respectively. But when the same kinds of men depict them as GOD to people and spread superstitious things, they act as proxy for politicians for vote banks and do all illegal things in the shield of people’s belief; they not only diffuse ignorance, but also spoil the great essence of Hindu culture and its values.
India’s 26/11 – religion no bar
A year ago, after the three-day siege of Mumbai ended and people took to the streets with candles and banners, a group of young Muslim men, carrying a hand-written poster, walked quietly with the surging crowds.
Seeing them, people began to clap spontaneously, applauding their assertion that Islam was a religion of peace, and not terrorism.
Since then, people in Mumbai, which has witnessed some of the worst communal riots in the country in the past, have come together in their grief, crossing barriers erected by politicians in the name of religion.
Some have accused the media of not highlighting enough, the fact that the militants asked their hostages what religion and then killed non-Muslims.
Others have speculated that the few thousands of Jews left in India would leave the country because six Jews were killed in the attack on Chabad House.
But in Mumbai today, just days after the explosive report on the Babri Masjid demolition was made public, there is a sense of community and togetherness. A big difference from 1992, when riots between Hindus and Muslims that followed the demolition killed hundreds.
And so today, multi-faith prayer services are being held everywhere in the city and there are countless stories of inter-faith friendships that blossomed in the days after the attacks.
Great work.The examples mentioned show that the common man has little to do with the nuances created by politicians in order to save their seats and fundamentalists that wish to bring the world to an end.India stands united by the side of all those who have lost loved ones.Vande Mataram.
What makes a religious symbol conspicuous?
Last week, a college in Mangalore in India banned a student wearing a burqa from attending class. The principal told local media the college had a policy of not allowing symbols of religion.
The media did not say if there were students on campus with a ‘bindi’ (dot) on their foreheads or crucifixes around their necks or turbans on their heads, other symbols of religion one commonly sees in India, besides the ubiquitous “Om” scarves and t-shirts.
Mangalore, a cosmopolitan city, is no stranger to controversy; it was recently in the news for attacks on bars and women by a fundamentalist Hindu outfit that declared they were against Indian culture.
Nor is the controversy over headscarves and burqas limited to India. UK’s Jack Straw sparked a heated debate when he asked Muslim women in his constituency to remove their veils to promote better relations between people.
Turkey last year lifted a ban on women wearing headscarves at universities, ruling it violated the country’s secular constitution.
More recently, French president Sarkozy said burqas have no place in the country because they are a symbol of the subjugation of women. The issue has divided France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim minority, over how to reconcile secular values with religious freedom.
A 2004 French law bans students from wearing “conspicuous” signs of their religion in state schools, prompting Sikhs to launch a protest to allow them to keep their turbans on.
I would just like to make it clear that Muslim women are NOT forced to wear a hijab by their religion but by the way a country they live in is ruled. There is no rule in Quaran that tells you to ‘always cover yourself’! It is just if a country is quite strict, like Saudi Arabia, you will need to cover yourself, and if it is not, like Kuwait or Kazakhstan, women can dress in whatever they want! It just annoys me so much, when people say that ‘poor Muslim women need to wear the hijab all the time because of their religion’! It is not the religion, people, it is the way a country is ruled! I am a Muslim woman, from a Muslim country, but living in UK and I do not wear a hijab and do not cover myself up.
Is caste behind the killing in Vienna and riots in Punjab?
Why did the murder of a preacher in a Sikh temple in Vienna spark riots in the faraway Indian state of Punjab, in which thousands took to the streets to torch cars, trains and battle security forces?
The root cause may lie in India’s caste system that Sikhism officially rejects, but that still grips swathes of India’s billion-plus people, including in Sikh-dominated Punjab state in northwestern India.
“Via Vienna, Sikh caste war returns, sets Punjab aflame” ran the headline of the Hindustan Times.
The preacher, Guru Sant Rama Nand, 57, was killed in a gurdwara in the Austrian capital in an attack by six men armed with knives and a gun.
He was from the Dera Sach Khand, a religious sect separate from mainstream Sikhism that has a large support base of Indian Dalits, or “untouchables”, and other lower castes.
The leader of Dera Sach Khand, Guru Sant Niranjan Das, 68, was wounded in the attack.
The thousands who went on the rampage in Punjab on Monday were mainly Dalits. Authorities have imposed a curfew in parts of the state, in which three protesters died on Monday in clashes with security forces.
No it is not caste but it is organised terror . Certain individuals do not want peace to prevail . A handful of them are taking law into their hands and trying to blemish Sikhism , the mots tolerant of Religions .Online Books On Sikh History
from FaithWorld:
Holding back the “religion card” in India’s election campaign
Hindu nationalism, Muslim "vote banks", anti-Christian violence, caste rivalry -- Indian politics has more than enough interfaith tension to offer populist orators all kinds of "religion cards" to play. Coming only months after Islamist militants killed 166 people in a three-day rampage in Mumbai, the campaign for the general election now being held in stages between April 16 and May 13 could have been over- shadowed by communal demagoguery.
But in this election, the "religion card" doesn't seem to be the trump card it once was. It's still being used in some ways, of course, but the main opposition group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has played down its trademark Hindu nationalism in its drive to oust the secular Congress Party from power in New Delhi. A BJP candidate who lashed out at the Muslim minority saw the tactic backfire. During a recent three-week stay in India, I found religious issues being discussed freely and frequently in the boisterous election campaign. But they were usually not the main issues under debate and not isolated from the pocketbook issues that really concern voters. Click here for the rest of my report quoted above.
This is one of those stories where context is king. Thanks to the internet and India's lively English-language media, anyone around the globe can find Indian reports highlighting the religion angle. One of the news magazines, The Week, ran an interesting cover story about the "high priests of hate." On balance, I think it looks a bit overdone -- it was written at the height of the Varun Gandhi controversy -- but it had this classic anecdote:
"A former BJP minister once said that he had won five times in a row using a simple trick: his men would make an issue of a Muslim boy marrying a Hindu girl or the death of a cow in a Muslim area on the eve of elections. He lost the last Assembly election when he campaigned with a development agenda."
But religion isn't just on the politics pages. Outlook, another news weekly, reported that an American investor long associated with the Hare Krishna movement has offered to build a huge Hindu temple in a planned Himalayan ski resort as part of a project previously nixed by religious leaders who feared it would desecrate the mountain home of their gods.
The Economic Times reported on its property pages that "more and more Indians want to have homes in religious centres." Real estate developers and analysts differed on whether the financial crisis would hurt this trend, some seeing a lack of faith in the market while others firmly believed these investments were good. And the tabloid Mumbai Mirror had this story about a court defending religious names on clothes.
While in Mumbai, I went to see Asghar Ali Engineer to talk about the role of religion in politics in India. He explained the central role of communalism -- the use of religious, ethnic or other loyalties to mobilise social groups -- in Indian politics. A noted Muslim reformer, interfaith dialogue advocate and head of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, Engineer said:
Politics and films: An Indian affair
The Congress party has bought the rights to “Jai Ho”, the Oscar-winning song from “Slumdog Millionaire”, to use for its election campaign.
Although popular Bollywood song tunes have always been used after being set to new lyrics for canvassing votes, acquiring the rights to a song for election campaigning is a possible first.
Congress leaders said the song, whose title is Hindi for “Let There be Victory,” will be played during rallies in rural towns, villages and cities. But why did the party go so far as to get the song rights?
Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi cited the Oscar wins as a result of good governance and inclusive democracy under UPA rule.
Popular culture in India has politics, movies, cricket and religion as predominant ingredients and elections are a mix of all these.
The list of movie stars who have contested and won elections is a long one.
Occasionally a politician also forays into acting — like communist party leader Brinda Karat in the film “Amu”.
Hollywood can boast that it is the movie capital of the world but the movie industry in India is so intertwined with people at all levels of society that it is scary to think of this society devoid of its movie industry. Take away food, water, and I dare say air and a lot of people will complain but take away the movies and these movie buffs will become totally dysfunctional. Life for these people will come to a total halt and they would not know what to do and will move around like zombies. From cradle to grave movies provide a certain kind of entertainment to the addicted that it is like religion. Movie stars are worshipped like demigods in India. In terms of comparative clout of stars in India and the USA, Hollywood stars will have to move to the proverbial back of the bus. This is the country where temples are built for movie stars and huge cutouts of the stars bathed in milk and worshipped before the release of a movie starring the blessed ones. Though such activities are self promoting and cheap, the stars condone such celebrations. It is said that sometimes the producers of movies finance such celebrations as a marketing ploy to advertise their movies. Such exhibition of fan loyalty though sick, comes with the territory in Indian movie industry.
When these stars capitalize on their popularity and try to enter politics, a totally new and alien field for which they are not trained or equipped, the situation becomes pathetic. The common man and woman try to put them with great expectations at the top in a totally different field based on their performance in the movies. If such cross field success is the norm then I have the following recommendations. For the next Robot kind of movie, Mr. Narayanamurthy instead of superstar Rajni because the former has been very successful in putting India on the global map of technology. I think the character of the Robot itself should be played by none other than Mr. Azim Premji, another giant in the IT field. And who else can I recommend for Ms. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s role other than Ms. Indra K. Nooyi, the CEO of Pepsi International? Or how about giving the scalpel to a person who has been an eminent lawyer and ask him to perform delicate neurosurgery on your one and only child? I hope the absurdity comes through clearly.
Whenever the stars are felicitated at a function and you ask them about reasons for the success of a movie, they will shed their ego and in the spirit of the moment enumerate the producer, the director, the art director and a host of others including the lowly light boy as the reason for the success. Without their knowledge and under the intoxication of the festivities for a fleeting second they are being totally honest. Yes, the truth is that the movie was successful because of the team, not just the star. This being the case, these stars claim that they can do a wonderful job as a politician that the so called “stalwarts” haven’t been able to do. When an actor is asked if he would like to say anything about the prospects of his entering politics, the stock answer is “no comment at this time.”
I wish they would for once say, “No, I have no intention of entering politics, God has blessed me in my chosen field, I have made enough money, it is time I put my efforts in some small and simple grass root level social projects to help a village at a time.” He would have a built a temple for himself in everyone’s heart.
Mr. Amitabh Bachchan is a great actor and many want to emulate him. He was in politics but swears now that he will not touch politics with a ten foot pole. How about emulating Mr. Bachchan on this?
We should be remembered for our work. Smt. M.S. Subbulakshmi, a Bharat Ratna brought fame to the art she was blessed with leaving behind music for ages to come but with no other monument or an edifice to mark her tenure on earth. Humility, thy name is MS.
Presently, politics in Tamil Nadu is controlled by two dynasties. They both started with lofty goals like – loosely translated in English – Duty, Honor, and Restraint. These have been thrown by the wayside. The dynasty in power usually gets caught up in corruption and incompetency until the public forgets the corruption and incompetencies exhibited during the other dynasty’s tenure and realize that the previous dynasty’s shenanigans pale in comparison to those of the dynasty in power and elect the previous dynasty to power. This cycle repeats.
The government at the center is no gem either. The Nehru years from 1947 to 1964 were highlighted by inaction. After that the country has mostly been governed by the Nehru family to various degrees of “prosperity” along with scams and corruption galore. A single party majority government has become a thing of the past and coalition governments have been of great disservice to India.
There is a dearth of political stalwarts like Winston Churchill throughout the world. Ronald Reagan, a movie star turned politician is remembered better as the Governor of California than the President of the United States. George W. Bush is remembered better as the Governor of Texas than the President of the United States.
To put man’s insignificance on earth, let’s compress the 14-billion-year history of the Universe into one day, or 86400 seconds. Thus, the Big Bang occurred at t=0 and now is at 24 hours. Our Galaxy formed just a few hours after the Big Bang. Our Solar System formed at about 16 hours; in other words, two-thirds of the day passed before the Solar System formed. Homo sapiens appeared about 1 second ago, and a long lifetime of 100 years is 0.0006 seconds – less than 1/1000 of a second. Our lives are a blink of an eye in the history of the Universe.
If we had only intellectuals in our societies the choosing of our leaders will be less erroneous. In India, the movie stars instead of aspiring for elected offices can do the following with help from intellectuals and thinkers who put country in front of self.
1. Demand manifestos from the different parties and analyze them
2. Choose the best party and its candidates
3. Educate the public to vote for the best party and give it a majority mandate to avoid coalition governments which ends up in horse trading
4. Monitor the performance of the elected party and make sure the things in the manifesto are fulfilled
5. At the end of the tenure repeat the process.
I know it is easier said than done. Heck, we have tried everything else. Why not give this a shot?
U.N. report says real risk of Indian religious strife
It did not get great publicity but a recent U.N. report on religious freedom in India offers a stinging image of a country suffering from communal divisions and mob-inspired religious persecution.
It argues there is a very real risk of a repeat of a tragedy like the Gujarat riots of 2002, when more than 2,000 people, mainly Muslims,were killed by Hindu mobs.
The U.S. Special Rapporteur of religion or belief Asma Jahangir, a well-respected Pakistani human rights activist, travelled to India last March to prepare the report. It catalogues violence and discrimination faced by India’s religious minorities, whether Muslim or Christian or Sikh.
“Organised groups claiming roots in religious ideologies have unleashed all pervasive fear of mob violence in many parts of the country.” the report, released on Jan. 26, says.
“There is at present a real risk that similar communal violence might happen again unless political exploitation of communal distinctions is effectively prevented,”
Whether it is written by a Pakistani or Indian, there is some truth in the report. Although it does not address the reasons causing these tensions. The real situation is not always black and white. Though it doesn’t give the right to kill Christians in Orissa, doesn’t mean they are innocent. Christians have been enticing poor Hindus to convert to Christianity. This isn’t right either. Why don’t we hear about Buddhists, Jews or Sikhs being attacked by Hindus these days? Why is it just on Muslims and Christians? Makes me think about it….
Nothing holy in India’s temple tradition
I wonder whether news of Indian priests doing a purification ritual after a minister belonging to a lower caste visited a temple comes as a surprise in a country where religion plays a big role in politics?
While officials in Orissa said they will question the priests for throwing away holy offerings and washing the floors after the minister’s visit to the temple this week, the incident has left the controversial minister angry.
Pramila Mallick, the Orissa state minister for women and child welfare, said her political rivals must have been behind it because she had been to the temple a few times without any fuss.
Mallick is said to be partial to lower caste voters who have been instrumental in her winning elections, while ignoring upper-caste people who administer temples.
Upper-caste Hindus may have tried to get even with her this time around, she said.
In spite of India’s secular constitution banning caste discrimination, Dalits, who represent 16 percent of India’s 1.1 billion population are sometimes beaten or killed for using a well or worshipping at a temple reserved for upper castes.
Dalit political leaders are also accused of instigating caste wars to help shore up voter support.
I have one interesting interpretation of the caste system. If you take a look at a horoscope (the position of planets at the time and place of birth), it will contain certain details about the person if prepared thoroughly. A person could have a caste of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Shudra based on his horoscope, and perhaps this is how the caste system originated – by studying the planets and predicting whether the person would be best as a priest, warrior, trader or worker. Interestingly, although the caste system today is based on birth, even a brahmin’s son could have a sudra caste based on his horoscope and a sudra’s son/daughter could be a brahmin by nature as shown in the horoscope. The horoscope is a very thorough astrological indication of a persons nature based on the state of the universe – ie which planets were in what constellation at how many degrees…which is never the same once the moment is gone. Although the predictive value of the horoscope is only as good as the reader, it is my opinion, that the nature of the person – priest, warrior, trader and worker is indicated there, certainly if the astrologer knows his trade, by simple calculation he can tell the caste of person based on horoscope. What I am saying is that the caste system became an evil when it became based on your fathers caste. When it was (perhaps) based on astrological indications, it may have been helpful for a person to decide what profession to follow.
from FaithWorld:
GUESTVIEW: Mumbai violence brings New York faith groups together
The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. Matthew Weiner, the author, is the Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. He is writing a book about Interfaith and Civil Society.
When terror attacks like those in Mumbai occur, many people of faith want to stand together despite their differences to condemn them with one voice. Faith leaders in New York, having seen their own city targetted in 2001, quickly responded with a show of support for their sister city in India. Their news conference on the steps of New York's City Hall on Monday was an example of how faith communities in the world's most religiously diverse metropolis can join hands to speak out against such violence.
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, senior vice-president of the New York Board of Rabbis, Mo Razvi, a Pakistani-American Muslim and community organizer, and the Interfaith Center of New York organized the meeting while Councilman John Liu got the green light to use City Hall as the venue. Potasnick worked through Thanksgiving weekend to make it happen and insisted on having representatives from every faith. "It is very important to condemn the attacks...but it is imperative we stand together with one voice," he said.
Indeed almost everyone was there. Imam Shamsi Ali of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York spoke condemned the attacks by Muslim extremists as un-Islamic. Jaspreet Singh of the United Sikhs spoke on behalf of a community rooted in the Indian Subcontinent. Imam Syed Sayeed, a Muslim from India and longtime New Yorker, recalled his homeland has been a religiously plural place for thousands of years. Ven. Kondannya of the New York Buddhist Council called for a non-violent response to the attacks, as did Jain community representative Naresh Jain, who lost a friend in the killing. Members of Chabad, the Brooklyn-based Hasidic community who lost a rabbi in the attacks, were also present.
Dr. Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, said she had trained in a Mumbai hospital that treated many victims and remembered the discussions that students of different faiths used to have there. "In Mumbai now, they are getting back to work," she said. "This is all we can do. It is what the terrorists want to stop us from doing." Dr. Mysorekar had held a prayer service with Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn just hours after the attack and prayers have continued at her temple in Queens ever since.
"We know how hard it is to build relationships across difference in times of crisis, and our hearts go out to Mumbai," Said Rev. Chloe Breyer, the Executive Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. In fact, it was not easy to assemble members of all the main religions represented in Mumbai; in the rush to arrange the meeting, we could not contact the Zoroastrians in time. But how often do Hindu, Ultra Orthodox Jewish and Muslim leaders get together?
Actually, they get together more often than one would think. Potasnik and Mysorekar first met at an Interfaith Center news conference two days after 9/11. It was there that Mysoekar witnessed the courage of a dozen Muslim leaders denouncing those attacks and realized how interfaith contacts could help keep the peace. She invited a Muslim speaker to her Hindu program in Queens, which did not go over all too well among some of her more conservative members.
Jesus Christ never meant for His true followers to get involved in so-called “interfaith” groupings. That defeats the purpose for why He came 2,000 years ago in the first place…….Warnings About Antichristshttp://www.youtube.com/watch? v=R9mnRqQ-bRwMatthew 24:3-5 (NIV) — “As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.
What is the point your are trying to make? Indians protest left, right and center. At the drop of a hat. When a Hindu protests, there will be some muslim who will protest the fact that the Hindu is protesting. So on and so forth.
If that is not freedom of speech, what is?
Are you saying that India does not have freedom of speech because somebody will protest if an Indian speaks his or her mind? The second person protesting against the first person has freedom of speech too!
So what exactly are you trying to say here?