Christianity
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What Creates Culture Also Creates Cult
Published on 5th November, 2021, in The Hindu. Cult refers to religious groups, or brainwashed communities, who believe in the occult, the mystical, the spiritual, the paranormal or the supernatural. Culture refers to a community’s aesthetic expression: food, fashion, customs,…
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What Is God’s Pronoun?
Published on 22nd October, 2021, in Times of India. Currently, across US college campuses, there is a strong movement to popularize the idea of gender fluidity. People are specifying their preferred pronoun. If you identify yourself as male, you choose…
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Activism, Monotheism and Intolerance
Published on 17th October, 2021, in Mid-day. Have you noticed that academicians who say Hinduism is casteist, and promotes inequality, rarely talk about intolerance of monotheistic faiths like Christianity and Islam which dominate the world? Monotheist religions endorse the worship…
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Is Hinduism Answerable to Western Gaze?
Published on 10th September, 2021, in Times of India. The word religion initially applied to only Christianity. Everyone else was either heretic or pagan. But in the 19th Century, Europeans were forced to acknowledge the validity of Japanese faith if…
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Privileging Political Independence
Published on 15th August, 2021, in The Hindu. The story of the eagle Garuda stealing the nectar of immortality from Indra’s paradise to liberate his mother from slavery reminds us of Greek heroes who go on quests to fight monsters…
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A Brahmin in Kerala
Published on 21st August, 2021, in Economic Times. The Puranas tell the story of an asura king called Mahabali who gave people whatever they desired. Mahabali had thrown out Indra, king of devas, who ruled the skies, and now controlled…
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Tamed by Buddhism
Published on 18th April, 2021, in Mid-day. Buddha taught the sacred lore (dhamma) that would end all suffering. Many of his students renounced society and became monks (bhikku) and nuns (bhikkuni) of his sacred order (sangha). They travelled everywhere spreading…
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The Hamsa Hand
Published on 14th March, 2021, in Mid-day. The hamsa is a common symbol used across the Middle East as a good luck sign. Originating in Ancient Egypt probably, it is used to bring in prosperity and to ward off evil.…
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View: The Beginning and End of Using Religion
Published on 6th February, 2021, in The Economic Times. When the Romans went about conquering, they did not destroy local temples or reject local gods. They simply demanded that those conquered owed libations to the Roman emperor, while carrying on…
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Pagans In Christmas
Published on 20th December, 2020, in Mid-day. The word “pagan” was used derisively by colonial powers to refer to non-Christian faiths, especially polytheistic ones that celebrated divinity through nature-plants, animals, rivers, mountains, stars. Yet, paganism contributed greatly to what we…
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Hindu Parliament and Churning the Ocean of Milk
Published on 6th December, 2020, in Mumbai Mirror. The design of the Parliament building in Delhi was based on yogini shrines of North India that were built over 1,000 years ago. They are circular without a central roof, very different…
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View: Can America Be Hindu Holy Land?
Published on 28th November, 2020, in Economic Times. In the 19th-century, Joseph Smith argued that he had found gold plates buried in the Americas. These gold plates, he said, told the secret history of the Christians. That during the Babylonian…
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The Origins of Bharat Mata
Published on 22nd November, 2020, in Mumbai Mirror. Every Indian village is personified as a grama-devi. So, we have Chandigarh associated with the goddess Chandi. Calcutta is associated with the goddess, Kali. Mumbai is associated with the goddess, Mumba Devi.…
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What They Don’t Tell You About Advaita
Who is a Hindu? What they don’t tell you about Advaita Published on 30th August, 2020, in Mumbai Mirror. Advaita Vedanta is the de facto philosophy followed by Hindutva. The reason for this is not spiritual. It is political. Advaita…
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Human Sacrifice to Riots: Political Tools of Control
Published on 22nd August, 2020, in Economic Times. In Meso-America, the Aztecs sacrificed humans to their gods. This was deemed barbaric by Spanish conquistadors who arrived there in the 16th Century. It became the reason to label them savages, justify…
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The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita
The essence of the Bhagavad Gita: Understanding the significance of sattva-guna, rajo-guna and tamo-guna Published on 22nd August, 2020, in Economic Times. The Bhagavad Gita informs us that the world is made of two intertwined entities: the material (prakriti) and…