Maria Wirth

when it comes to India, that white messiah complex is not just dominant, but the prevailing narrative. Just like the missionary David Livingstone who spoke of coming from a superior race to uplift heathen Africa with the Bible, this White Man’s Burden is the only allowed narrative with regards to Hindus. While the racist Hamitic [...]

While in India progress and modernity are defined as disowning one’s ancient roots from its Hindu culture and instead aping the West blindly, this comes across as both artificial and laughable, in the monstrous chimera it creates by that aforementioned process of deracination. [...]

For the first time, an International Yoga Day will be celebrated on 21st of June this year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had suggested this honour for yoga and his suggestion got overwhelming support from 177 countries. Yoga has indeed become popular all over the world. Many millions practice it – from schoolchildren to senior citizens [...]

A very interesting debate hosted by Dr Manish Pandit discussing secularism, monotheism, Narendra Modi and general Hinduphobia with Panelists: Maria Wirth, Dr Gautam Sen, Saiswaroopa Iyer and Prakash Shah. [...]

The topic of conversion has become centre stage in India – not because millions have been converted from their Hindu faith to Christianity and Islam in recent years, but because some 50 Muslim families came back to Hindu Dharma. ‘How dare Hindus do what only Christians and Muslims are entitled to?’ seems to be the [...]

Observations by someone who grew up in the stifling atmosphere of dogmatic Christianity and appreciates the freshness and freedom of undogmatic Hinduism– and wonders why a section of Hindus are so apologetic about their religion when it actually is the best bet for a fulfilling life. Hindus used to say, “All religions are equal”. They [...]

A national newspaper carried an article on July 1st that bemoaned (rightly so) the disparity in education between the haves and the have-nots, between the 20 per cent who study in English medium private schools and the 80 per cent who study in vernacular government schools. The author proposed an outlandish solution to bridge the [...]

Whenever news about India make it to the local Nuremberg newspaper, my mother reads them out to me on phone. Usually, those news portray India in a poor light, like ‘people died from cold on the streets of Delhi’ or, especially in the past year ever so often, ‘another gang rape’, conveniently ignoring the gang [...]

“When Germany is Christian, is India Hindu?”  got amazingly good response with thousands of facebook likes. However, some readers felt I made a mistake by not distinguishing between good, tolerant Hinduism, which is a private belief, and bad, intolerant Hindutva, which stands for the ‘communal agenda of an extreme right Hindu party’ that wants to [...]

“Can you imagine – in Europe there are people who believe there is no Bhagawan (God)!” Baba Ramdev, a highly popular yogi, said this to a sea of thousands of Indian schoolchildren with an expression of genuine wonderment on his face. I saw it on TV and it made me smile. He is right. In [...]