iN HIS 1905 book, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, Max Weber credited the Protestant ethic with giving rise to capitalism. Now it sometimes seems as if it is the Buddhist ethic that is keeping capitalism going. The Protestants stressed rational calculation and self-restraint. The Buddhists stress the importance of “mindfulness”—taking time out [...]
November 17, 2013
HHR
Analysis/Insights
The outburst by India’s leading rationalists back in 2013 over K Radhakrishnan’s visit to the famous Lord Venkateswara temple in southern India needs to be examined. Radhakrishnan is chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisationand the head of India’s space agency, in fact the man responsible for launching that nation’s mission to the planet Mars. [...]
November 11, 2013
Ranbir Singh
Archives, Atheist Irrationalism
Buddhist petitioners have successfully filed a case at the Indian Supreme Court seeking to overturn the Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949. That legislation had enabled a shared Hindu and Buddhist management of Bodh Gaya. Nehru sponsored this consensus arrangement in order to roll back the Saivite Mahant’s, until then, exclusive control over temple administration. [...]
October 28, 2012
HHR
India, News updates
Dr Koenraad Elst explores the truth behind the often made claim that Buddha was a caste reformist [...]
May 28, 2012
Dr Koenraad Elst
Analysis/Insights, Archives
No less a person than Mahatma Gandhi once estimated that nearly a quarter of Hindus had converted to Islam over the past on thousand years. How true is this statement ? [...]
March 28, 2012
HHR
Archives, History