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KATMANDU, NEPAL, March 10, 2008: After more than 15 years of waiting, the first Bhutanese refugees in Nepal have started to leave for a new life in other countries. More than 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese people have been in refugee camps in Nepal since the early 1990s. The mainly Hindu people were forced out of Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom which has a code of national conformity. Bhutan, which maintains that most left voluntarily, has never allowed any to return to the country.

Those who left Bhutan made up about one-sixth of the country’s population. Despite many rounds of talks none have gone back and India does not allow the refugees onto its territory which lies between Bhutan and Nepal. Some months ago the U.S. and some other countries agreed to accept tens of thousands of the refugees.

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SRINAGAR, INDIA, March 8, 2008: Soomyar Mandir, a Hindu temple at Haba-Kadal in the summer capital Srinagar was thrown open after 19 years. Before the onset of militancy in 1989, the Haba-Kadal had the maximum concentration of Kashmiri Hindus. After the turmoil, most of the Kashmiri Hindu families migrated to different parts of India and Indian troops set up a camp at the temple, which is still present there.

The temple on the banks of river Jehlum was re-opened the other day on the occasion of a Hindu festival. About a hundred Kashmiri Hindus attended the re-opening function of the temple.

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TAMIL NADU, INDIA, March 11, 2008: Two Christians died and many more were wounded when shot by police who intervened yesterday to stop clashes between Dalit Catholics and upper caste Catholics in the diocese of Pondicherry- Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu). Troubles started on March 7 when a group of Dalit Christians from the Villupuram district began a hunger strike to protest discrimination in a local parish by the Vanniyar. Three months ago Dalits from St Jabamalais Annai Church in Earyur built another church dedicated to Saghaya Madha (Our Lady of perpetual Help) and sought to have it erected as a separate parish with its own priest. They were backed in their demands by two political groups, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Vck) and Ambedkar Makkal Iyakkam (AMI).

According to Catholic Priest Fr G. Cosmon Arokiaraj, secretary to the Church’s Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the “confrontation in the area between Dalit and Vanniyar Catholics goes back quite some time. For years Dalits have been discriminated within the Church itself,” he said. “They cannot sit with upper caste members in the same church; they are buried in separate cemeteries. When the mother of a Dalit priest died in the 1990s the upper caste did not allow the funeral procession to use the main road; even the bishop failed to bring about a compromise.”

www.hinduismtoday.com

The modern Hindu struggles in vain to understand the religion of his forefathers, and gives up the quest altogether.
Swami Vivekananda, (1863-1902) summarizing the impact of Lord T. B.Macaulay’s education policy in India and the destructive success of the government Anglican schools for Hindus