india

WASHINGTON: The first ever Diwali festival was celebrated at the US Congress today amidst chanting of Vedic mantras by a Hindu priest .Over two dozen influential lawmakers along with eminent Indian-Americans gathered at the Capitol Hill to lit the traditional ‘diyas’. The event — the first of its kind event at the Capitol Hill — [...]

Western society today believes only in “exploitation,” “expansion,” “efficiency,” “competitiveness”—and seeks to transform its members into unthinking cogs in a huge Machine. We will certainly find some remarkable individuals here and there, but the mass is left to live from day to day, with, now and then, the luxury of a fit of depression, when [...]

  “Several Hindu organisations have taken up the issue and are protesting the setting up of this university. Interestingly, they have been receiving a lot of support from the local Muslims who say that this university is bad news. The Muslims who pray at the Tirupati temple feel that the town was peaceful and now [...]

In the classic children’s story Goldilocks went into someone else’s house to eat and sleep uninvited. To her horror she was confronted by the owners, which happened to be three bears. Discovered she fled.  At no point were negotiations on the agenda. It was after all pretty indefensible. This is a bit like the manner [...]

One not uncommonly comes across the opinion today that India was never really a nation but that its nationhood was only recently invented by the British through their definition of the region as part of their empire. Similarly we are told that Hinduism was up to recently not a religion at all but merely various [...]

The world, perhaps as usual, is in a state of crisis. Yet unlike previous crises, which were local in nature, the fate of the globe itself is now at stake, not only humanity but all life on Earth is threatened.  And in this extremity no nation has yet arisen as a defender of the Truth [...]

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on idol worship, music, art and ethics in Bollywood and politics. [...]

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, [...]

RANCHI: Members of the Sarna faith have decided to forcefully remove the statue depicting a ‘tribal’ Virgin Mary which was unveiled in May this year at Singpur village in Jharkhand’s Ranchi district unless it’s attire is changed. Talks between church representatives and the Sarna faith have broken down and the Sarna elders have set August [...]