202.131.142.25 MUMBAI, INDIA, September 6, 2005: Around 8,000 Ganesh mandals (temporary temples set up on the side of, or in, the street) have been decorated and lit up across the city to welcome the Elephant God. Decorations at most big mandals are theme-based and themes vary from the religious to the glamorous. The Tejukaya Sarvajanik Ganeshotsava Trust, Lalbaug, extols the…
www.ndtv.com MUMBAI, INDIA, September 7, 2005: Mumbai and Konkan are facing a shortage of pandits with thousands of pujas everywhere. “Now we have to buy cassettes. We have to be careful that the cassettes we buy are keeping up with the correct religious tradition,” said Raju Bhagwat, Resident, Chiplun. For the last 20 years during Ganeshotsav, Pandit Padmanabh has been…
www.newindpress.com MUMBAI, INDIA, September 8, 2005: As this mega-city ushered in this year’s Ganapati festival on Wednesday, not just Hindus but also Muslims, Christians, Parsis and other religious groups were preparing to join in the 10-day revelry. With thousands of small and big icons of Ganesha, the elephant-headed God, being installed in almost every nook and corner of the city,…
www.ekklesia.co.uk September 5, 2005: As relief finally arrives in places devastated by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi, Christians have been reminded that they should not use aid as a cynical tool for winning vulnerable people over to their religious convictions. Tom Palakudiyil, who has run the international agency Christian Aid’s response to several emergencies in Asia, says in Third…
www.ekklesia.co.uk USA, September 5, 2005; A group in the US which distributed leaflets to tsunami survivors telling them to prepare for death, has produced a controversial new tract aimed at survivors of hurricane Katrina. Their tracts, which often describe in detail famous disasters and tragedies from around the world, suggest that people can be ‘saved’ if they confess their sins.…
news.webindia123.com MUMBAI, INDIA, September 6, 2005: The 10-day Ganpati festival that falls on September 7 is only weeks after this city was battered by a series of disasters shows why Mumbai is called irrepressible. It marks Lord Ganesha’s birthday on the fourth day (chaturthi) of the Bhadrapada month of the Hindu calendar. The Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Samanvay Samiti, a body…
www.hindustantimes.com SRINAGAR, INDIA, 6 September 2005: Jammu and Kashmir government is going ahead with plans to rehabilitate displaced Kashmiri pandits in their homeland. “The first batch of 350 families of pandits living in different camps at Jammu and Udhampur is returning to Kashmir in October,” said Revenue and Rehabilitation minister Hakim Mohammad Yaseen. About 60,000 families had fled from Kashmir…
Indo-Asian News Service NEW DELHI, INDIA, September 6, 2005: In a significant turnaround from the days when it accepted foreign aid to cope with natural disasters, India is rushing 25 tons of relief materials to parts of the US devastated by Hurricane Katrina. An Il-76 transport jet of the Indian Air Force (IAF) will carry the relief supplies to New…
www.hindustantimes.com JAIPUR, INDIA, 6 September 2005: Rajasthan’s age-old art of sculpting beautiful mud toys once considered the most lucrative economic activities in the state because of the extensive use of mud products like water pots, utensils, toys and other ceremonial items is fast receding into oblivion. But potters now say their future is uncertain as demand for their products has…
www.nytimes.com SHANGHAI, CHINA, September 7, 2005: Call it Zen and the art of business management. Proving that in China’s booming commercial hub of Shanghai, even Buddhism is big business, a group of 18 Buddhist monks and lay people are taking MBA classes to better manage their temple, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday. The course, specially designed by Shanghai’s…