{"id":13470,"date":"2014-04-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2014\/04\/21\/india-s-women-sadhus-form-all-female-group\/"},"modified":"2014-04-21T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T12:00:00","slug":"india-s-women-sadhus-form-all-female-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2014\/04\/21\/india-s-women-sadhus-form-all-female-group\/","title":{"rendered":"India&#8217;s Women Sadhus Form All-Female Group"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalpost.com\/dispatch\/news\/regions\/asia-pacific\/india\/140301\/indias-women-sadhus-form-all-female-group\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>INDIA, March 1, 2014 (Global Post): Female sadhus, or holy Hindu women, have broken away from tradition and formed a new all-female group in India that they hope will end male domination of spiritual practices. In the northern city of Allahabad a group of women sadhus formally established their group or akhada, holding ceremonies on the banks of the River Ganges which is considered sacred by Hindus. Mahant Trikal Bhavanta, a leading woman sadhu, told AFP late Friday that the all-women akhada was believed to be the first in the history of Hinduism in India. <\/p>\n<p>An akhada is a group of sadhus &#8212; reclusive ascetics or wandering monks who renounce normal life and are often widely respected for their holiness. India has more than a dozen such groups, all male-dominated. According to some Hindu lore, it is believed the first akhada was formed by Hindu philosopher Adi Shankaracharya in the eighth century with the aim of safeguarding the religion&#8217;s interests.<\/p>\n<p>Bhavanta said the all-women group was facing criticism from male sadhus, who claim the move goes against age-old customs. &#8220;Nowhere in the Hindu scriptures is it mentioned that women cannot have an akhada of their own,&#8221; she told AFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source INDIA, March 1, 2014 (Global Post): Female sadhus, or holy Hindu women, have broken away from tradition and formed,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}