Nepal Rebels Mount Devastating Attacks

GO TO SOURCE NEPAL, February 18, 2002: About 100 people have been killed in two separate but simultaneous attacks by Maoist rebels on government installations in western Nepal. The victims of the raids on two towns in the remote district of Achham included police officers, soldiers and local government officials. The BBC’s Daniel Lak says the scale and ferocity of…

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Delhi Parents and Teachers Oppose Corporal Punishment

GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, February 12 2002: Corporal punishment may well be commonplace in schools, but teachers and academicians in their role as parents, strongly denounce the practice. This is the latest in a series of articles in the Hindustan Times denouncing corporal punishment. Vibha Parthasarthy, ex-principal of Sardar Patel Vidyalaya and ex-president of the National Commission for…

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Hindu Temple Next to Christian Church in Fiji Attacked

Source: Sun LABASA, FIJI, February 7, 2002: Police have interviewed some church members of Wamikoro town over their alleged involvement in desecrating a Hindu temple next to their church. The Sun reported last week that the temple, next to a Pentecostal church, was vandalized when its door was forced open and pictures of Deities removed from large frames and destroyed.…

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Terrorists Kill Eight Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir

Source: Hindustan Times JAMMU, INDIA, February 17, 2002: Terrorists shot dead eight Hindus and injured six others in a village in Rajouri district last night, an official spokesman said here today. Terrorists swooped on Nirala village in Dharamsal area of the district and fired on the minority community members, he said. A police team and security personnel have rushed to…

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Scarcity of Kumkum Lamented

GO TO SOURCE MANGALORE, KARNATAKA, INDIA, February 13, 2002: Even with so many temples and religious festivals, Karnataka State has yet to achieve self-sufficiency in sacred kumkum, the red powder used in worship. It is traditionally made of tumeric powder and lime, but many chemical imitations have appeared, some of them harmful to the body. The kumkum sold in the…

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South India Conference Protests Revised School Books

Source: The Hindu THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, INDIA, February 12, 2002: The 29th all-India conference of Dravidian Linguistics which drew to a close here today has urged India’s government to scrap any move to include in the country’s standard school curriculum the theory that the Indus Valley civilization was of the Aryans and not of the Dravidians. In a resolution adopted unanimously at…

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Tushar Gandhi Call Off Deal on Great Grandfather’s Name

GO TO SOURCE MUMBAI, INDIA, February 9, 2002: In December of 2001, Tushar Gandhi, a great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, was approached by an American company who wanted permission to use images of Gandhi to sell to one of their clients, a credit card company. According to Tushar he told the Indianapolis-based company, “I have no copyright over Bapuji. But they…

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Help Requested for Paper on Death and Dying

GO TO SOURCE UNITED KINGDOM, February 17, 2002: A PhD student living in the UK and currently working on a topic regarding “Hindu Philosophy On Death And Dying” needs some help with editing her draft. Any offer from a scholar will be gratefully accepted. Kindly contact Sibani Roy at “source” above.

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Indian Composer Sets Sanskrit to Western Harmonies

GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, JANUARY 16, 2002: “I was destined to do this. I grew sick of Sanskrit in school, but it’s caught me again,” says 74-year-old composer Vanraj Bhatia, of his newest double album Ananta. He was trained in Indian classical ragas as a child and later studied composition in Western classical music with Nadia Boulanger. The…

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The Importance of Mountain Ranges For Our Planet

GO TO SOURCE NEW YORK, USA, February 11, 2002: War, pollution and logging are despoiling the world’s mountain ranges. The Alps, the Rockies and the Hindu Kush are most threatened, according to a UN study released today. Mountains are the “water towers of the world,” supplying water to more than half the world’s population, said the report by the Tokyo-based…

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