NEW DELHI, INDIA, February 6, 2011: In order to stop yoga gurus from claiming copyright to ancient asanas, like Bikram Choudhury’s Hot Yoga — a set of 26 sequences practiced in a heated room — India has completed documenting 1,300 asanas which will soon be uploaded on the country’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), making them public knowledge. According to…
On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, who walked on the Moon in 1971 Source
[HPI note: This is not a summary, but the full report from our correspondent; you will not find this article elsewhere on the web.] NEW DELHI, January 11th, 2011 (By Rajiv Malik, HPI Correspondent): ‘It is a book intended to be an eye opener, a warning to us,’ said jurist and former Law Minister of India, Shri Ram Jethamalani, while…
UNITED STATES, February 2011: The world’s Muslim population is likely to increase by about 35 percent in the next two decades, going from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion, according to new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Globally, the Muslim population is projected to increase at about twice the rate of the…
HOUSTON, TEXAS, February 9, 2011: On a cold Saturday morning, I was gathered among Hindu youth from various colleges within Texas partaking in havan, a Hindu ritual that involved saying prayers and offering food to God while sitting around a ceremonial fire. The havan was part of Hindu Students Association’s second annual Gateway, a retreat where Hindu youth from Texas…
MUNDUR, KERALA, INDIA, January 25, 2011: In this rapidly modernizing country, new money is also reviving old traditions. A group of mostly urban professionals has teamed up to help conduct the fire ritual this spring in a village that last witnessed it 35 years ago. ‘We want to do our bit to ensure that Indian culture survives,’ said Neelakantan Pillai,…
[HPI note: The first paragraph of this article was missing on the last edition of HPI.] KAUAI, HAWAII, February 9, 2011: Hinduism Today is planning an article on the nine Hindu sacred sites that are designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites ( http://whc.unesco.org/ ). These include: Hampi, Pattadakal, Kajuraho, Ajanta, Ellora, Elephanta, Sun Temple, ‘Great Living Chola Temples’ [e.g. Thanjavore ‘Big…
NEW DELHI, INDIA, February 7, 2011: India’s tradition of one giant extended family living under the same roof is breaking down, with 90 per cent of people in the capital now living in western-style nuclear families. The large ‘joint family’ of brothers living together with children, daughters-in-law and grandchildren is splitting up, according to a government survey in New Delhi.…
ALLAHABAD, INDIA, February 2, 2011: More than 3.5 Million pilgrims and devotees from different walks of life took a holy dip at Sangam on the occasion of the Magh Mela here on Tuesday. Devotees mainly from Maharashtra and Gujarat took the holy dip in wee hours of Tuesday. Ratna, a student from Satara (Maharashtra) says that along with her, parents…
INDIA, February 9, 2011: Statues of Deities created for immersion will no more be made out of plaster of Paris, the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay high court has ruled. In a landmark verdict on Tuesday, the bench imposed a permanent ban on use of the material in statues, spreading cheer among environmentalists. The bench said henceforth all statues must…