GO TO SOURCE USA, September 15, 2002: Rajiv Malhotra, prolific contributor to www.sulekha.com, gives a provocative look at castism in America. Malhotra’s very long article concludes with the belief that American society has its own caste system. A key difference, he says, is that in India, castism is explicitly codified; whereas in America, social structure by ethnicity or family lineage…
GO TO SOURCE LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, September 14, 2002: A California state appellate court ruled Friday that vegans can’t sue for religious discrimination. In the nation’s first known ruling on the issue, the three-judge Court of Appeal panel in Los Angeles threw out a lawsuit by Jerold Friedman, a vegan, who claimed he was denied a job because he refused…
GO TO SOURCE JAIPUR, INDIA, September 1, 2002: The expression “fit for a king” comes to mind when it is realized that Lord Krishna has more than 10,000 sets of clothes that the priests of Jaipur’s Govind Devji temple can use to adorn the Lord. Anjan Kumar Goswami, the head priest of the temple, says, “Govinda blesses his devotees with…
GO TO SOURCE BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, September 12, 2002: Nearly two dozen Muslim businessmen and their families have been performing Ganesha puja for the last 10 years in Bhubaneswar, capital of Orissa. They organize the puja by constructing a huge pandal and installing an idol of Lord Ganesha in keeping with Hindu rituals. “We have formed an organization called the ‘Jawan…
Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur YOGYAKARTA, INDONESIA September 3, 2002: Restoration work on Yogyakarta’s world-famous Buddhist/Hindu temples — Borobudur and Prambanan — may take decades to finish given Indonesia’s continuing economic crisis, experts say. Some work on Prambanan, 33 kilometers east of Borobudur, was completed in 1990. In 1991 both temples were declared World Heritage Sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific…
GO TO SOURCE PLANO, TEXAS, September 4, 2002: A circle of 12 parents and children sit cross-legged in a yoga position, begins this report in the Dallas Morning News. They take a deep breath. As they exhale, they say, sonorously, “Ommmmmm.” The syllable fades to silence in the conference room at Plano Station, and the circle is still. “Who wants…
GO TO SOURCE LONDON, ENGLAND, September 8, 2002: The Hindu community here responded overwhelmingly to various job opportunities in the British police force. This was reflected at a specially organized recruitment center at the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Neasden, London, last night where a sea of hands went up from among the 3,000 people gathered to join the police force. Assistant…
GO TO SOURCE CHENNAI, INDIA, September 12, 2002: DMK party president M. Karunanidhi on Thursday condemned the criticisms for conducting the temple consecrations by chanting mantras in Tamil. “Those who criticized conducting the consecrations with mantras being chanted in Tamil have no place in Tamil Nadu,” he said while participating at a marriage function. At a recent temple consecration at…
GO TO SOURCE CHENNAI, INDIA, September 11, 2002: On the occasion of the commemoration of the 9/11 attacks on America, Swami Gautamananda, president of the Ramakrishna Mission in Chennai was requested to address the gathering. His remarks read in part, “Though we are yet to find out what all ideas worked behind that tragedy of September 11, 2001, we can…
GO TO SOURCE VADODARA, INDIA, September 10, 2002: Nearly 250 Ganesh icons were damaged mysteriously at Ranchhod Rai temple near Madan Zampa here on Sunday. All of the icons prepared for Ganesha Chaturthi celebrations were on display at the temple. They all cracked within seconds of each other. The event was being largely construed as a bad omen even as…