HPI KAUAI, HAWAII, February 11, 2006: As our thousand subscribers with yahoo.com email accounts have surely noticed, your HPI reports were missing through most of January and into February. This issue has not been fixed with yahoo.com and you will receive reports regularly. To catch up back issues, go to the January archives here and February here.
thestar.com.my PENANG, MALAYSIA, February 11, 2006: Five elephants made their debut at the Thaipusam celebrations here making this year’s festival even more meaningful. Devotees were seen bowing their heads before the elephants at the carpark of the Penang Municipal Park to seek blessings from Lord Ganesh, often referred to as the Elephant God. The one bull and four cow elephants…
www.hindulife.nl NETHERLANDS, February 9, 2006: After the unveiling of the national Indian immigration monument in June, 2004, the Sarnami Institute has now succeeded with its second important achievement: the opening of the Sarnami House. The Sarnami House is a center devoted to the immigration history, language and culture of the Hindustaanse, the Dutch Indian immigrants from Surinam. It also functions…
www.csmonitor.com DELHI, INDIA, February 9, 2006: India’s centuries-old traditional knowledge, preserved and orally passed down through generations of households, is now going digital. Over the coming months, India will unveil a first-of-its-kind encyclopedia of 30 million pages, containing thousands of herbal remedies and eventually everything from indigenous construction techniques to yoga exercises. The project represents a 21st-century approach to safeguarding…
www.milarepafilm.com BERLIN, GERMANY, February 10, 2004: With funding from The Autumn Moon Film Fund Initiative, a collaboration of the International Buddhist Film Festival and the Conservancy for Tibetan Art and Culture, Milarepa: Revenge has been completed. It tells the story of the first half of the life of the eleventh-century Tibetan poet and yogi. Born into an affluent and compassionate…
www.nytimes.com BOSTON, MASSACHUCETTS, USA, February 9, 2006: (HPI note: This article describes a nonprofit organization set up to care for the elderly of a Boston neighborhood in their own homes. It could provide a pattern for Hindu communities in the West who who want to avoid placing the elderly in special care homes.) Alone in his row house on Beacon…
news.webindia123.com JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, February 8, 2006: There may be no crops to harvest in Johannesburg but that did not deter South Africa’s Telugu community from hosting their annual Ram Bhajan thanksgiving function for the 10th consecutive year. The event was organized by the Transvaal Andhra Sabha, the representative body for Telugu-speaking people, in the sprawling mainly Indian area of…
www.bernama.com.my PENANG, MALAYSIA, February 8, 2006: More than 500,000 people, including foreign tourists, are expected to throng the Arulmigu Balathandayuthabani Temple near the Botanical Gardens here on Saturday in conjunction with the Thaipusam celebration. Temple Chairman Chandra Kanthan said Wednesday the large number of people was anticipated because the festival falls on the weekend. Hindu devotees would carry various kinds…
HPI KAUAI, HAWAII, February 9, 2006; Readers send two corrections to recent articles. First, the new Hindu temple in Indiana is actually the second for that state, not the first. The first, dedicated in September, 2005, was the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Temple in Avon, here. Second, in our article on the Sanskrit-Catalan dictionary, it was wrongly stated Catalan language is…
www.hindu.com TIRUPATI, INDIA, February 3, 2006: Three massive pilgrim accommodation complexes would soon be built at a cost of US$11.6 million at Tirumala, the famous hill shrine of Lord Venkateswara. In its monthly meeting held on the hills today, the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam Board that administers the hill temple has also decided to install the granite deities of Astadikpalakas at…