Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
God’s Marital Status
Is celibacy or singleness a prerequisite to seek an ideal world? It’s another matter that marital pleasures are fine for temple deities with their consorts…
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Articles
The laughter of women
The idea of a woman laughing at a man is seen as the most humiliating act, enough for justifying her abuse her in public…
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Historians too should share the blame for the rise of religious radicalism
It is easy to blame radical politicians and religious leaders for igniting the spark. But let’s not forget those who fuel the fire…
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Romeo squads? Let’s rename them after Kichaka or Dandaka
This worldview that locates the hermit over the householder, and men over women, dominates the Hindu right, though in keeping with contemporary thinking, celibacy is no longer linked to the occult. Instead it is linked to service…
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Fear of female fantasy
Let’s tell tales celebrating women’s desires, such as where Shakti demands Shiva satisfy her; and he does…
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Articles
The Excluded Ones
I heard that in the entire “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy, no two female …
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Articles
What do Manusmriti and Dharmashastra have to say about homosexuality?
Tales, of God prohibiting certain sexual acts but allowing others, are not found in Hindu mythology…
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Amritsar: The Lake of Nectar
The Golden Temple is located in the middle of a water body considered to be an elixir of eternal life…
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Articles
Passport shame: What’s really at the heart of the California textbook row on Hinduism?
It is a battle that will not die down, for it reveals a great split in the Indian American community…
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Temples of death
The city of Ujjain with 84 shrines dedicated to the destroyer, ultimately venerates the unending cycle of life and the immortality of the soul…
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Articles
A ritual cleansing
Notions of reform are often based on ‘assumptions of deformity’, which are dependent on ‘assumptions of normality’…
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Articles
Gender bias in temples as old as the walls around them
Is celibacy a sign of respect for women, or just a clever form of misogyny?…
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Articles
No fish for Gauri this year?
Myriad oral explanations indicate that the ritual is locally rooted and organic to the community; a ceremonial household expression of emotion, not based on any particular scriptural injunction…
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Articles
Children of the Great
As parents spend more and more time at work, for work, there is a price to pay back home…
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Articles
A Question of Gender
The seers did not care much for gender. What mattered to them was the formless beyond the form, the thought behind the thing, the mind behind matter…
