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Thousands of pagans and druids gathered at prehistoric Stonehenge at dawn on Saturday to celebrate the winter solstice. Worshippers started arriving at the stone circle in Wiltshire at about 5.30am, and by the time the sun rose at 8.09am, there were 3,500, many dressed in ceremonial robes and masks, with chief druid Arthur Pendragon leading [...]

Back in 2013 India was involved in a heated verbal exchange with America over the treatment meted out to Devyani Khobragade, Deputy Consul General in the Consulate General of India in New York. Khobragade hired Sangeeta Richard, an Indian national, in November 2012 as a nanny and domestic servant. She was charged on 11 December [...]

  The Origins of Christmas The origins of Christmas go back before Christianity where  many ancient cultures celebrated the changing of the seasons. In the northern hemisphere in Europe, for example, the winter solstice, which was the shortest day of the year, occurs around Dec. 25th. These celebrations were based on the decline of winter. [...]

Ramanathapuram district, 527 km south of Chennai, which houses Rameswaram Temple and many holy shrines, is getting out of bound for outsiders. Local Jamaath Councils have issued ‘fatwas’ declaring Muslim-majority villages out of bound for people even from the district itself. Entrances to Athiyuthu, Puthuvalassai, Panaikulam, Azhagankulam and Sitharkottai sport such boards, all put up [...]

‘Thus, Maya is not an ignorance, a separation from the totality of the truth, but a transcendental power that is the expression of a divine integral knowledge, where each and every force and form that manifest is united in a totality of truth.If I see a beautiful painting, it is not an illusion that separates [...]

In the framework of Europalia India, a string of institutions including my Alma Mater, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, hosts a series of exhibitions, performances, films showings, conferences and lectures. Last Tuesday and Wednesday, Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal was to speak in Brussels and Leuven, but he didn’t show up, being detained in a sex scandal. [...]

Perhaps surprisingly in a country where so many people view cows as sacred, India could soon become the world’s biggest beef exporter, according to the USDA. DELHI/MUMBAI: Symbols of India’s emergence as an economic powerhouse line the four-lane highway to Jaipur out of New Delhi: a factory owned by the world’s biggest motorbike maker, glass [...]

A Bangladeshi Islamist leader convicted of mass murder and rape during the country’s 1971 independence war will be hanged just after midnight Tuesday, the prisons chief said. “Yes,” Main Uddin Khandaker told AFP when asked whether Abdul Quader Molla, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islamiparty, would be executed after midnight(1800 GMT Monday).On Sunday, a tribunal [...]

When Nelson Mandela spent almost three decades in solitary confinement he was not alone — he had the pictures of a few Indian deities and the writings of William Shakespeare for inspiration.  Locked in jail on Robben Island, newspapers were banned and letters from loved ones a rare treat. Where did he find the inspiration [...]

In what should be an eye-opener for India, over 9 hundred thousand Bangladeshi Hindus have vanished from the country during the past decade. This has been reported officially by the Bangladesh Statistical Bureau (BSB) and the National Population Research and Training Institute (NPRTI) of the neighbouring country. Widely reported in the Bangladeshi media, the issue [...]