Source

INDIA, May 8, 2012 (pib.nic.in): The Minister for Culture and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja has said that the Ministry of Culture has entered into an agreement with the University of Chicago, USA for establishing "The Indian Ministry of Culture Vivekananda Chair."

In a written reply in the Lok Sabha today she said, the Chair will commemorate the legacy of the spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda, who helped to raise awareness about Indian culture in the USA. The professorship includes a teaching commitment as well as an annual public lecture, thereby enriching the University of Chicago's program for the study of the Indian subcontinent.

The Chair would honor the life and legacy of Swami Vivekananda by promoting the fields of study most relevant to his teachings and philosophies such as human values, Indian philosophy and movement for social change to further the study of Indian culture in the United States, to advance the understanding of the history, culture and people of India, to create more knowledge about Indian Society and to instruct new generations of students.

Source

KOTA KINABALU, MALAYSIA, May 6, 2012 (The Borneo Post): Two Indian temples and three organisations received a shot-in-the-arm following the distribution of RM200,000 (US$65,000) allocation from the state government, yesterday.

Presented by the Sabah Malaysian Indian Congress chairman Datuk V. Jothi, the allocation, he added, is part of the party's continuous effort in championing the cause and interest of the Indian community in the state. The beneficiaries are the Tawau Sri Murugan Temple US$32,600, Sabah Hindu Sangam US$16,300, Sandakan Indian Association US$6,500, Sandakan Hindu/Sikh Crematorium US$4,900 and the Kota Kinabalu Hindu/Sikh Crematorium US$4,900.

Source

INDIA, April 28, 2012 (India Today): The Indian system is fair and best in the world when it comes to acknowledging the contribution of women, India's top diplomat to the U.S. has said.

This is amply demonstrated in the very fact she being a women rose to be the highest position in Indian diplomacy, Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Nirupama Rao told students of the University of Florida in her Commencement Address.

"In the years since when I came to be a diplomat, the impact that women have on public life in India has also grown from strength to strength. For example, I was privileged to head India's Foreign Service as the Foreign Secretary for two years from 2009 to 2011. It was a unique experience in every way," she said.

Diplomacy, the field to which she belongs, Rao said was for long the exclusive preserve of men and this was very evident when she became a Foreign Service officer in 1973. "Of course, the fact that we had a woman Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi at the time, was a revolutionary development not only for India, but for the world. It made our ascent as women much more acceptable to society, at large," Rao said.

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON, MAY 2012 (RNS): One of the biggest growth areas in political activism around religion is coming from an unlikely source: the nonreligious. The Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella organization that represents 11 nontheistic groups including American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, is looking to take its secular-based activism out of the nation's capital and into the states.

Beginning in June, the Washington-based SCA will install directors in 18 states including Hawaii, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Alabama. State directors will meet with local politicians and train and mobilize local nontheists to lobby on behalf of secular issues and causes.

Activists say the most important policies that affect nonbelievers don't come from Washington. "The majority of erosion to church-state separation is at the local level," said Serah Blain, the SCA's first state director, appointed in Arizona in January. "It's in city councils and school boards and statehouses. And that's where these things really affect people's lives, with laws on bullying and abortion and access to health care. And they are passing without much opposition because it isn't seen as glamorous to lobby locally."

The announcement is the latest indication that nontheists -- atheists, humanists, skeptics and others who hold no supernatural beliefs -- are working to become a political force in their own right. Amanda Knief, who recently joined American Atheists after working as the SCA's government relations manager, said nontheists must "show elected officials that we are a political movement that needs to be recognized. That kind of recognition has been lacking because it is not politically savvy. So we need to show them that we are there and that we count."

Source

If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.
-- French scholar Romain Rolland