Source: www.sundaytimes.lk JAFFNA, SRI LANKA, August 16, 2009: Jaffna’s annual Nallur festival is a major religious and social event which draws devotees from the far corners of the world to this famous Hindu temple in northern Sri Lanka. Rain or shine, even through the dreadful war years, the Nallur festival has been held every year without a break. Although attendance…
Source: belizenews.com WASHINGTON, DC, USA, June 12, 2009: President Barack Obama has chosen Indian-American businessman Vinai Thummalapally as the new United States Ambassador to Belize. The two are long-time friends, having been college roommates in 1980. Vinai attended Obama’s wedding in 1982 and was in Illinois in 2007 when Obama announced that he was running for President. Originally from Hyderabad…
Source: www.thaindian.com DHAKA, BANGLADESH, August 13, 2009: Bangladesh’s Hindu community celebrated Janmashtami on Thursday, marking the birth of Lord Krishna with functions organised in the national capital and other parts of the country. It is a public holiday and President Zillur Rahman will host a reception for leaders of the community at the president’s house Banga Bhaban. Different socio-cultural and…
Source: www.hindustantimes.com INDIA, August 16, 2009: Namo, a design house launched in 2007 which specializes in the devotional space, is the brainchild of Delhi-based Pankaj Verma and his wife, Julie Bose. Verma is a 40-something NID graduate who worked as an interior designer for two decades before starting his own company. He explains, “Apartments are getting fancier, but we still…
Source: HPI KAUAI, HAWAII, August 17, 2009: An HPI reader points out that the Indian school textbooks are most written from a Marxist point of view, with an emphasis on economic strife, disparity between rich and poor and the alleged evils of the capitalist system as major forces in shaping Indian history. One needs to keep in mind this particular…
Source: www.hinduismtoday.com An old Native American wise man once said there were always two dogs inside of him fighting–a good dog and a bad dog. When asked, Which one wins, he replied, The one I feed.
Source: www.ptinews.com WASHINGTON, DC, USA, August 12, 2009: Appointed by the US President Barack Obama as a member of a faith-based advisory council of the White House, Anju Bhargava, a banker and a Hindu priest, hopes to remove the ignorance about Hinduism and spread the “real meaning” of the rituals associated with the religion. Forty two-year-old Bhargava, president of the…
Source: www.hindu.com CHENNAI, INDIA, August 6, 2009: The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has requested the public to use only Ganesha statues made of raw clay during Vinayaka Chathurthi festival on August 23. The recent trend of immersing Ganeshas made with plaster-of-Paris, chemicals and paints has resulted in pollution of the water bodies. While the Board’s powers only apply to…
Source: news.bbc.co.uk RAWALPINDI, INDIA, August 11, 2009: For the last five decades, 80-year-old Indu Mitha has been teaching the beautiful and deeply religious Bharatanatyam dance to Pakistanis. Dance, it seems, can cross cultural and religious boundaries. Teaching traditional Indian dance in Pakistan required a delicate balancing act, which she successfully performed along her dance steps. Dance was considered “haraam” –…
Source: www.scribd.com KAUAI, HAWAII, August 16, 2009: In our effort to improve the teaching of Hindu and Indian history, Hinduism Today magazine has posted on the free site, scribd.com, a series of history books used in India. Clicking on the URL above will take you to the page where each can be read, or downloaded as a PDF file. They…