Search results for "western media"

When Nina Davuluri of New York won Miss America 2013, she said in her first press conference after the victory:  “I’m so happy this organization has embraced diversity. I’m thankful there are children watching at home who can finally relate to a new Miss America.” However  this crowning of the first Miss America of Asian [...]

Religious fundamentalists are on the rise and that is bad for our societies. Most people will agree on this. Yet few examine who religious fundamentalists are. Obviously, such persons would want to stick to the fundamentals of their religion. They want to live a life that is advocated in their holy books and would please [...]

  Abstract Since 2003, the International Council for Cultural Studies has organized a five-day “International Conference and Gathering of Elders of Ancient Traditions and Cultures” every third year. Participants include spokesmen of the Maori, Yoruba, Maya, Lakota etc. religions, as well as neo-Druids, Romuva Lithuanians etc. Each of the conferences took place in India, with [...]

Hinduism is the religion where women are honoured as sacred. Lakshmi bestows wealth. Durga vanquishes evil. Yet since the brutal rape of Jyoti Singh in December 2012 there has been a sustained campaign by various organisations to lay the blame of this and other manifestations of sexual violence at the door of Hinduism itself. The [...]

On 27 August 2013, the Jesuit think-tank UCSIA inside Antwerp University (Universitair Centrum Sint-Ignatius Antwerpen) hosted, as part of its series on “Religion, Culture and Society”, a lecture by the sociologist of religion, José Casanova of Georgetown University. He spoke with a heavy Spanish accent about “Types of Secular States and Regimes of Religious Pluralism: [...]

A defeatist tendency exists in the psyche of modern Indians perhaps unparalleled in any other country today. An inner conflict bordering on a civil war rages in the minds of the country’s elite. The main effort of its cultural leaders appears to be to pull the country down or remake it in a foreign image, [...]

A common tenet of Hinduism is “Sarva Dharma Sambhava, which literally means that all Dharmas (truths) are equal to or harmonious with each other. In recent times this statement has been taken as meaning “all religions are the same” – that all religions are merely different paths to God or the same spiritual goal. Based [...]

The central argument of the RK Mission for its non-Hindu character was that, unlike Hinduism, it upheld the ‘equal truth of all religions’ and the ‘equal respect for all religions’.  The latter slogan was popularized by Mahatma Gandhi as sarva-dharma-samabhâva, a formula officially approved and upheld in the BJP’s constitution.n 1983, RK Mission spokesman Swami [...]

To Hindus such imagery is not trivial but has meanings which the western mindset rarely fathoms. These icons and images are not chosen at random but have specific purpose. As Hindu author Stephen Knapp writes: Vedic paintings or symbols are unique in that they can deliver the same spiritual energy, vibration and insight that it [...]

To the British Museum, The British Museum is treasure trove and educational centre of international repute. Daily, visitors stream into its environs to marvel at relics, some dating back millennia. Without a doubt the reputation which the institution has is justly deserved. After all, there are few such places where one could find such a [...]