Press Release CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, September 25, 2013: HPI Note: Following is a letter sent by Dr. Anantanand Rambachan and Anju Bhargava to the Council. Dr. Anantananda is Chair of the Department of Religion at St. Olaf’s College, Minnesota; Ms. Anju Bhargava is Founder of Hindu American Seva Charities and a member of President Barack Obama’s inaugural Advisory Council on Faith…
Source CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, September 25, 2103: HPI Note: The following is a press release from the Parliament of the World’s Religions. In the last week there has been some news about the Parliament’s withdrawal from an event which we had initially endorsed. To clarify the Parliament’s position, the Board of Trustees unanimously approved the following resolution recommended by the Executive…
Source “Following the path of knowledge without love and devotion is like eating stones.”— Mata Amritanandamayi
Source NEW YORK, U.S., September 23, 2013 (Times Ledger): Although Queens residents of all stripes are guilty of littering or dumping in Jamaica Bay, Hindu religious rites get some blame for some of the more visible debris. The Hindu rite of Ganga Pooja involves making an offering into a body of water as a way of cleansing one’s sins. Unfortunately,…
Source KEDARNATH, INDIA, September 23, 2013 (Times Of India): More than three months after flash floods, landslides and rain destroyed large parts of Uttarakhand the tortuous exercise of rebuilding shattered lives is on. The immediate task of evacuating thousands of pilgrims and tourists is over. But the residents suffer, each day a grim battle to tackle the fallout of a…
Source They have “Dial-a-Prayer” for atheists now. You call it up, it rings and rings, but nobody answers.
Source MUMBAI, INDIA, September 21, 2013 (Manthan K. Mehta, TNN): The 10-day Ganapati festival brought a major revenue boost to Central Railway (CR) and Western Railway (WR), with the two collectively earning US$1.6 million more than usual. The suburban railway network saw an average of 430,000 passengers more per day during the just-concluded Ganeshotsav festival. On Monday, September 16, the…
Source UNITED KINGDOM, August 15, 2013 (BBC): The lives of Burma’s (Myanmar’s) Tamil minority are in the centre of a 12-part weekly series launching on BBC Tamil radio on Sunday 18 August. “The Tamils Who Stayed Back In The Golden Land” (Thanga Mannil Thangiya Thamizhargal) explores the conditions in which Burma’s ethnic Tamils live today and talks about their collective…
Source In a statement issued on Tuesday, the Ministry of External Affairs said Robert Schrimpf, a private art collector in Paris, had acquired the 400-kg stolen sculpture of Vrishanana Yogini, a Goddess with a buffalo-shaped head. After his death, his wife Martine Schrimpf donated it to the Indian Embassy in Paris in 2008.Indian Ambassador Arun Kumar Singh told The Hindu…
Source KATHMANDU, NEPAL, September 21, 2013 (Niti Central): The Indian chief priest of Nepal’s fifth-century Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu submitted his resignation after 21 years of service for personal reasons. Mahabaleshwor Bhatta, who hails from Tamil Nadu, gave his resignation to the Pashupati Area Development Trust, the body that looks after the Hindu temple’s affairs. The board of the trust…