Celebrate Diwali with Light, Love & The Divine Protector
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The Mysterious Deaths of Bhakti Saints
The recurring motif of saints who challenge orthodoxy dying mysterious deaths, performing samadhi (voluntarily leaving their lives at a young age, as in the case of Gyandev), raises questions.
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Dravidian Iron for the Aryan Horse
Colonial historians argued the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ that light-skinned chariot-riding people destroyed Harappan cities, conquered India, enslaved local dark-skinned people and created the caste system. To counter this, there was…
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Coil of Endless Serpents
Coiled serpents and inter-twined conjugal serpent pairs appear as sacred symbols on Hindu temple walls. They reflect sacred ideas from beyond the Vedic world, where communities venerated serpent groves, filled…
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Why historians misunderstand myths — and why it matters
Most historians do not understand myths. They confuse it with fiction. Myths need to be distinguished from other kind of stories that shapes human culture
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Myth-making in History Departments
Historians who refer to myth as ‘fiction’ do a great disservice to humanity. It reveals their inability to separate faith from different types of fiction: parables, propaganda, and fantasy.
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Dalai Lama: Politics of reincarnation
The Dalai Lama plans to declare where he will be reincarnated in his next life. In other words, where his successor will be born. To the rational mind, this may…
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Cultural Significance of the Buffalo
Buffaloes are found in ponds, rivers, marshes, and wetlands meant for rice cultivation. Cows, on the other hand, prefer drier jungle areas. India has both dry jungles and wet river…
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Vegetarianism Is Not About the Environment, But About Caste
You start deluding yourself that you are a kind person because you build a zoo to house animals that have been displaced by your industries, that destroyed their natural habitat,…
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Hindu Temple in China
In the city of Quanzhou in Fujian province of China, there is a Buddhist temple, whose base and pillars are full of Hindu imagery.
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Shiva, the Teacher
Most texts describe Buddhism as a reaction to Vedic ritualism, but they fail to discuss how Shaivism was a response to Buddhism.
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Is a Dvija the Same As a Savarna?
The term ‘Savarnaʼ was coined by the Left wing to distinguish the Hindu elite from the ‘Avarnaʼ, those who are deemed outside the caste system and denied human dignity.
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Funeral practices across faiths and regions in India
Different cultures imagine the afterlife differently and so have different funeral practices.
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How Is Knowledge Transmitted?
Knowledge can be transmitted orally or in the form of texts. Hindus preferred the oral form.
