In Hinduism, women creating spaces for their own leadership

By DEEPTI HAJELA

When Sushma Dwivedi started seriously thinking about performing wedding rites and other Hindu religious blessings in New York City and elsewhere, she knew who she needed to talk to - her grandmother.

Together, they went through the mantras that are recited by pandits, the priests who perform Hindu religious rituals, to find the ones that resonated with what Dwivedi was trying to do -- offer Hindu blessings and services that were welcoming of all, irrespective of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, any of it.

Her grandmother isn’t a pandit — in India, as well as in Indian diaspora communities, that’s been a domain that is largely populated by men, with cultural mores at play. But she had a wealth of religious knowledge, of ritual, of proper pronunciation, to share with her granddaughter.

And that her grandmother played an integral role in Dwivedi’s understanding and practice of Hinduism reflects a larger religious reality. Those who study the religion and its traditions say that while there aren’t a lot of women priests (although that is changing in India and in other places), women in Hinduism globally continue to take on leadership roles in other ways - building communities, taking on positions in organizations, passing on knowledge.

“We just jammed together and sort of went through scriptures. ... And in that sense, that’s the ‘old school’-est Hindu way on Earth, right? You pass it down,” Dwivedi said.

After all, it was through her grandparents, immigrants from India, that Dwivedi had been exposed to Hinduism while growing up in Canada. They helped build a Hindu mandir, or temple, in their Montreal community, and made the religion an integral part of her life from childhood.
Full Coverage: Women in religion

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This story is part of a series by The Associated Press and Religion News Service on women’s roles in male-led religions.

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Hinduism encompasses a range of practices and philosophies, and has a pantheon of divine figures encompassing both male and female. People can call themselves Hindus and yet practice in different ways from each other. There is no central authority, like an equivalent to the role the pope plays in Catholicism.

So leadership, in India as well as Indian immigrant communities, is decentralized and diverse, encompassing religious scholars, Hindu temple boards and more, said Vasudha Narayanan, a religion professor at the University of Florida who studies Hinduism in India and in the Indian diaspora.

“I would also say that women sometimes create the spaces where they can be leaders in all these other ways,” she said.

Dr. Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, sits in her office in the Flushing neighborhood of New York's Queens borough Friday, Dec. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

They’re women like Dr. Uma Mysorekar, who serves as president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America. It runs one of the oldest Hindu temples in the United States in the Flushing section of New York City’s Queens borough.

Mysorekar, trained as a physician, got involved with the temple in the mid-1980s, and has been part of its administration for years, as it expanded its facilities as well as its programming. There are programs for seniors as well as young adults; the temple kitchen is available on food delivery apps.

Being an administrator wasn’t her intention when she started, Mysorekar said.

“I didn’t get involved to become a president. But when the circumstances were forced in, I did accept that challenge.”

She’s convinced that in Hinduism, women can be leaders simply by virtue of their ability to communicate the faith to others, notably to children.

“How many women have led ... going back to times immemorial, and what they have contributed, it should give you that exemplary feeling,” she said. “It’s not that women have to be priests to be leaders, women have to be able to spread the teachings.”

And in this modern age, when so much vital activity occurs online, women are making a difference there, too, said Dheepa Sundaram, assistant professor of Hindu studies, critical theory and digital religion at the University of Denver.

“If you look at social media spaces, you see a lot of women leading different kinds of groups now,” she said.

She pointed to shubhpuja.com as an example, a site co-founded by a woman, Saumya Vardhan, that allows people all over the world to connect with pandits in India, who perform pujas, the religious rituals, that can be seen via videoconferencing.

“We’re seeing women carve out different spaces in the spirituality ecosystem to find a way to actually gain power in that ecosystem,” she said.

And there are examples of women making inroads even when it comes to being pandits, of pushing back against patriarchal restraints.

Manisha Shete, a practicing Hindu priest, smiles as she performs posthumous rituals for her client's mother at a residence in Pune, India, Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Abhijit Bhatlekar)

Manisha Shete, 51, a female priest who has been working as the coordinator at Jnana Prabodhini, a Hindu reformist school in Pune in western India that trains men and women to perform rituals, first began to officiate at religious ceremonies in 2008.

Her aspirations stemmed in part from an interest in India’s ancient scriptures; after getting married, she studied

“After my wedding, I studied Indology — the history, culture, languages and literature of India.

“During my research work at the Sanskrit language department in Jnana Prabodhini ... I felt that I can do this and I should do it. It was my favorite subject,” Shete told The Associated Press.

Shete said at her school in Pune, where the course for the priesthood can extend up to 18 months, 80% of the students were women, including many who had been housewives and many others who voluntarily their jobs to enter the school.

She said the demand for female priests is growing in urban areas, especially among young women, and she often gets requests even from Indian families overseas to conduct rituals.

“People have started accepting women priests. Every reform comes with some obstacles. But it is happening.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

S1 E4 Wendy Doniger on Hinduism – Thinking About Religion

https://www.thinkingaboutreligion.org/s1-e4-wendy-doniger-on-hinduism

Dr. Wendy Doniger’s On Hinduism is a sort of captstone on an epic career exploring Hindu literature, religion, and history. In this conversation we discuss a number of themes from the book, including her own religious background, common misconceptions about Hinduism, the caste system, orientalism, the so-called “Hindu Trinity,” Hindu nationalism, a controversy in India over the charge that she committed …

Wendy Doniger and the Hindus | by Murali Balaji | The New ...

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/07/10/wendy-doniger-and-hindus

In her essay “India: Censorship by the Batra Brigade” [NYR, May 8], Wendy Doniger touches on a number of issues when it comes to the academic study of religion and larger questions of representation. She frames the debate over her book, as well as other topics when it comes to Hinduism, as one between Hindu right-wing activists and scholars, which essentializes a complex history that involves academic …

On Hinduism - Wendy Doniger - Oxford University Press

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/on-hinduism-9780199360079

Wendy Doniger. Includes more than 60 essays and lectures spanning the decades-long career of one of Hinduism's most prominent scholars. Examines a rich array of Hindu concepts--polytheism, death, gender, art, contemporary puritanism, non-violence, and many more. On Hinduism. Wendy Doniger.

Learning to Live Diversity in India

Twenty-two-year-old Wendy Doniger of Great Neck, Long Island, NY arrived in Calcutta in August 1963, on a scholarship to study Sanskrit and Bengali.

Wendy Doniger, Githa Hariharan
26 Jun 2022

Image courtesy: Speaking Tiger

Twenty-two-year-old Wendy Doniger of Great Neck, Long Island, NY arrived in Calcutta in August 1963, on a scholarship to study Sanskrit and Bengali. It was her first visit to the country whose history and culture she was deeply interested in. Over the coming year—a lot of it spent in Tagore’s Shantiniketan—she would fall completely in love with the place she had till then known only through books.

In An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963-64 (Speaking Tiger, 2022), the country comes alive through her vivid prose, introspective yet playful, and her excitement is on full display whether she is writing of the paradoxes of Indian life, the picturesque countryside, the peculiarities of Indian languages, or simply the mechanics of a temple ritual that she doesn’t understand.

In this conversation with Githa Hariharan, Doniger talks about her letters and recollections as well as her journey, from the young girl who wrote those letters to the woman looking back and how in many ways, that journey has also been the journey of what India was and what it has become.

Wendy Doniger | UChicagoNews

Githa Hariharan (GH): Throughout the collection of letters and recollections in An American Girl in India, I had a sense of a ‘prequel’ – in terms of the work you have done, the first loves that have grown deeper, and the books; but also the kind of person you have become. In what ways did travel, specifically travel to a crazily diverse place like India, train you in crossing cultural borders? In being open-minded to ideas as well as experiences?

Wendy Doniger (WD): That first trip to India was indeed the most important educational experience in my life, so much more important than everything I ever learned in universities. The letters betray the constant tension between my passionate love of so many facets of Indian life – the ancient culture, the people I met, the architecture, the music, the food, even the extremes of the climate – and my disappointment in myself for not being able to love everything about India, the poverty, the begging; I never got used to being begged from, especially by women and children. I learned how to go on loving and appreciating all the facets of India – and by extension, eventually, all sorts of other things on the planet earth, and indeed other peoples – despite being painfully aware of many of their tragic shortcomings. In particular, I learned to appreciate all that I loved about Hinduism – its diversity, its great stories, its passions, its architecture, its music – without losing my awareness of its capacity for violence, in animal sacrifices as well as in human conflicts, perhaps, in some ways, always reflecting the violence of the climate.

Also read | An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963-64

GH: In the same vein, I think of the trope of travel to other places to understand where you come from, and meeting all kinds of ‘others’ to understand a little more of yourself. This is also underlined by the connections you make, whether it is through films, literature, songs, jokes and proverbs. Did you leave with a different sense of ‘identity’ than you came with? And now, when you read the letters, what are the selves that reveal themselves to you?

WD: I certainly learned, from living in India, how very privileged I had been growing up as I did in America. And I learned, from experiences such as passing out cold when they chopped off the head of the goat in the sacrifice, that any plans I might have had to become an anthropologist had to be abandoned for good. I learned that I really did love the Sanskrit stories best of all, better even than the Bengali stories, and that the reality of India – the fabulous temples and spectacular rivers and mountains, the way people dressed and danced and sang – was even more wonderful than the India that I thought I knew from the texts. When I read the letters now, I am embarrassed by the naivete and arrogance of my young self, particularly about politics, but I am proud of her courage and her determination and the way that she never lost her sense of humour, even in difficult situations.

GH: I was struck by your early discovery that humour is so essential to survive the cross-cultural experience. The element of play makes the weighty – whether matters of myth or language or inscrutable cultural practice – a fairly joyous process of discovery, rather than a series of obstacles to be overcome. The tenor is also brisk, almost racy. Is this optimism, or a case of writing cheerily to one’s parents, or a strategy you learnt early to grapple with ‘big’ ideas and experiences?

WD: I was raised never to lose my sense of humour even (or, in fact, especially) in difficult situations; this was my mother’s way of dealing with life, and it stood me in good stead in India. I still can’t resist the temptation to make a joke, even when I’m writing about fairly serious matters. And so the letters are inevitably light-hearted, as indeed was much of my later serious academic writing. But of course you are right about the need to stay cheerful in reassuring my parents that I was well and happy. And so I did not, for instance, tell them how ill I had become, with both amoebic and bacillary dysentery, or how frightened I was by the angry Hindu mobs attacking Muslims in Calcutta in the first skirmishes of what was to become the war between India and Pakistan in 1965, or, in another sphere, how I had, inadvertently, gotten quite stoned on bhang on the night of Durga Puja in Bengal. Often the best way I found to explain to myself, as much as to my parents, a particularly troubling or puzzling aspect of Indian life, was to find a parallel in a much-retold old family joke.

GH: This has been quite an exercise in looking back, reconstructing, but also judging and forgiving yourself. How self-conscious and deliberate were you in constructing the persona of the past, and the present older persona looking over the girl’s shoulder?

WD: My first reaction to the letters was that I would have to censor a great deal if I was going to publish them. I did, in fact, cut out a lot of boring paragraphs about asking my parents to send me stuff and telling them what I was sending them and so forth. But then I wanted to cut out the stupid things that I had said, the spoilt-brat assumptions as well as blatant errors about Indian history and contemporary Indian politics, and even mistakes in the plots of the myths I recounted. However, my Indian publisher, Ravi Singh, urged me to keep in those uncomfortable, often embarrassing bits, but to write a preface to the book as a whole, and individual prefaces to sections and sometimes to particular letters, noting that I now realize that these were, in fact, mistakes; and, in a way, to forgive my younger self for her ignorance and her naivete, but always to make it clear that I stopped holding those opinions long ago. And I returned again and again, in later years, to many of the myths that had fascinated me even then, now correcting my errors as I read the texts of the stories that I had often just heard people tell when I was in India, and I came to understand more and more of the history that had framed them. So those prefaces did in fact construct what you rightly call an ‘older persona looking over the girl’s shoulder,’ somehow forgiving her for at least being frank about her wrongheaded ideas. In a way, leaving those wrong ideas in the letters and apologizing for them is my answer to the excesses of the cancel culture: yes, we were wrong in the past, and we are not going to go on doing that now, but we need not condemn everything about the way we were then, nor deny it.

GH: You have a deep, almost poetic connection to the landscape – do you continue to have that, and revel in the sensory as you did during your early travels in India?

WD: Never again did I have the chance to immerse myself as deeply in the landscape as I did in those months when I lived in the countryside at Shantiniketan. But on later visits to India, I often spent weeks, if not months, in other parts of India, and always left the cities to travel to the countryside. I particularly recall getting to know the feel of the land when I stayed on the coast of Kerala some years ago, after watching some Koodiyattam performances, and again traveling in the desert outside of Jaipur after speaking at the Jaipur literary festival, and on another occasion traveling in a boat all around Sri Lanka, frequently going ashore for a day or two. And, of course, I never lost my pleasure in immersing myself in Indian music, and Indian art, and Indian stories most of all, even back in America.

Also read | Hindutva, Counter-Culture and Manusmriti

GH: There are so many worlds that co-exist in this slim volume, and you seem to straddle all of them. What is your description of a true cosmopolitan?

WD: I don’t think I was a true cosmopolitan when I arrived in India, though I was certainly open to new ideas and new places right from the start. I remained very much an American in my tastes and many of my habits, but I emerged from that year much more aware of the limits of the American world I had grown up in, and much more appreciative of the sensibilities of people who felt very differently from me about basic aspects of human life. Perhaps that is a working definition of a cosmopolitan.

GH: Inevitably, the India you saw up close then and the India that we are all struggling to understand now: are we in danger of eroding that gloriously multi-stranded, argumentative narrative so characteristic of Indian myth and tale as well as cultural practice?

WD: Certainly the intrusive presence of mass world culture, first in film and then in television and now in the Internet and YouTube and podcasts and all the rest, and particularly as these media are manipulated in the hands of rich, powerful people who know how to use the media to change the opinions and the lives of people at all levels of society – certainly all of this does threaten to erode the India that I saw and loved in the 1960s, a place where geographical variations and caste traditions and village traditions and just the whole polytheistic and polyphilosophical and polyritual nature of Hinduism was still alive and well and living in India, right alongside Islam as well as, to a lesser but still significant extent, Buddhism and Jainism and Christianity and even Judaism. So much of this is under serious attack in India today. But people in India are still telling their stories and publishing their poems and novels and showing their paintings and their sculptures and practicing their family rituals all over the great subcontinent, and that gives me hope.

GH: Finally, a word or two about your first love, Shiva. Did it last? Were there competitors?

WD: Ah, Shiva has always remained the god who seems to me best to express the way the universe really is, as well as being the god who is the subject of the best stories and much of the best sculpture in India. The Shiva of the Puranas, the Shiva of Kailasanatha at Ellora, Shiva with Parvati and Nandi – I still find him fascinating and, though enigmatic, the deity best able to explain to me the nature of reality.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

I FIRST CAME ACROSS WD WHEN I READ SOMA, BY WASSON, SHE WAS THE COLLABORATOR AND TRANSLATOR OF RG VEDA THE SANSKRIT REFERENCES TO THE MAGICK MUSHROOM SOMA. WE USED THIS TEXT IN MY SHAMANISM CLASS IN COMPARITIVE RELIGION AT THE UNIV OF ALBERTA

I ALSO READ HER WORK ON SHIVA, AS WELL SHE HAS WRITTEN A REVISIONIST HISTORY OF HINDUISM I CANNOT RECCOMEND ENOUGH

Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality

by R. Gordon Wasson

Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, by R. Gordon Wasson (New York, 1968), in 404 bookmarked and searchable pdf pages, with numerous color plates and illustrations.  A Wikipedia entry discusses the remarkable work of Wasson, and his identification of the Amanita muscaria (or, fly-agaric) mushroom as a psychoactive component in the mysterious Soma beverage mentioned in the Hindu Vedas. Sanskritist Wendy Doniger is the book's coauthor. Scanned by Robert Bedrosian. Internet Archive has a selection of works about ethnobotany.

Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality,: Wasson, Robert …

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• Format: Paperback

• Author: Robert Gordon Wasson

Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, Paperback – April 1 1972 by Robert Gordon Wasson (Author) 11 ratings See all formats and editions Kindle Edition $3.45 Read with Our Free App Hardcover $2,391.99 1 Used from $2,391.99 Paperback $152.65 5 Used from $124.00

https://www.amazon.ca/Soma-Immortality-Robert-Gordon-Wasson/dp/015683…

Revisiting Wasson's Soma: exploring the effects of …

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21305914

In 1968 R. Gordon Wasson first proposed his groundbreaking theory identifying Soma, the hallucinogenic sacrament of the Vedas, as the Amanita muscaria mushroom. While Wasson's theory has garnered acclaim, it is not without its faults. One omission in Wasson's theory is his failure to explain how pre …

• Author: Kevin Feeney

• Publish Year: 2010

Oppenheimer’s use of sacred text in sex scene angers Hindu right wing in India

Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 24 July 2023 

Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon/AP

Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer has prompted outrage among the Hindu right wing in India, who have alleged that a sex scene featuring a scared text has offended religious sentiments.

The blockbuster tells the story of Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb and includes a sex scene in which the tortured physicist, played by Cillian Murphy, reads
the Bhagavad Gita to his lover Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh.

The words he reads aloud, which he translates from Sanskrit, are those of the god Krishna – “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” – a quote the real Oppenheimer recalled after the first detonation of the atomic bomb he had invented. Oppenheimer taught himself Sanskrit and during his life, he spoke of drawing from the Hindu text.

The presence of the Bhagavad Gita in the middle of the sex scene prompted a member of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government to call the film an “attack on Hinduism”.

In an open letter, Uday Mahurkar, an information commissioner, said the scene was “a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus”. He alleged it amounted to “waging a war on the Hindu community” and almost appeared to be part of a “larger conspiracy by anti-Hindu forces”.

Anurag Thakur, the information and culture minister, was among those to demand that the scene be removed and called for action to be taken against India’s Central Board of Film Certification. The film was rated U/A, which recommends parental guidance for viewers aged under 12.

Oppenheimer has proved popular with Indian audiences, taking £1.2m on the first day alone, the biggest box office opening day for a Hollywood film in India this year.

The blockbuster is not the first to fall afoul of rightwing Hindu groups since the BJP government came to power. The BBC/Netflix television adaptation of A Suitable Boy was also accused of hurting religious sentiments by senior BJP ministers and subjected to police complaints for a scene of a Hindu girl and Muslim boy kissing near a temple.

Tandav, an Amazon series, was forced to delete several scenes after its creators faced charges in court and were summoned by the BJP government for allegedly insulting Hindu gods and the office of the prime minister.

‘Oppenheimer’ Sex Scene Involving Sacred Text Stirs Backlash in India: ‘It Amounts to Waging a War on the Hindu Community’

IT'S CALLED TANTRA

Ryan Lattanzio
Mon, 24 July 2023 

Updated: Variety has added to reports that a nude scene featuring Florence Pugh in “Oppenheimer” was censored with a computer-generated black dress to secure release in India and the Middle East.

Earlier: A sex scene in “Oppenheimer” is facing backlash and protests in India, where a moment involving J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and his lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) reading a sacred Hindu text in bed together has sparked outrage and reportedly censorship.

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“Oppenheimer” was passed with a U/A certificate — meaning children under 12 can see the film with parental guidance — by India’s Central Board of Film Certification. Christopher Nolan’s three-hour IMAX-shot epic also performed well at the box office in India, where Nolan has a strong contingent of fans. But now officials in India are calling for the movie to be further censored despite it now allegedly featuring a CGI-created dress superimposed over Pugh’s naked body during one post-coital moment later in the film. (IndieWire has reached out to “Oppenheimer” studio Universal about this allegation shared online and seemingly corroborated by India-residing audiences as well as those in Indonesia.)

The scene criticized by Indian officials involves Oppenheimer and Tatlock mid-intercourse when she stops to pull a copy of the “Bhagavad Gita” out of a bookshelf and asks Murphy to read a passage. He reads, “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds,” which came to mind for Oppenheimer during the detonation of the atomic bomb he developed out of Los Alamos. The “Bhagavad Gita” is featured in the “Mahabharata” and depicts dialogue between a prince and the divine Krishna mid-battle.

In a letter addressed to Christopher Nolan shared on Twitter, India’s Information Commissioner and Save Culture Save India Foundation founder and Hindu nationalist party affiliate Uday Mahurkar called the film a “scathing attack on Hinduism” over the weekend.

Mahurkar wrote: “It has come to our notice that the movie ‘Oppenheimer’ contains a scene which make a scathing attack on Hinduism. As per social media reports, a scene in the movie shows a woman makes a man read Bhagwad Geeta aloud while getting over him and doing sexual intercourse. She is holding Bhagwad Geeta in one hand, and the other hands seems to be adjusting the position of their reproductive organs. The Bhagwad Geeta is one of the most revered scriptures of Hinduism. Geeta has been the inspiration for countless sanyasis, brahmcharis and legends who live a life of self-control and perform selfless noble deeds. We do not know the motivation and logic behind this unnecessary scene on life of a scientist. But this is a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus, rather it amounts to waging a war on the Hindu community and almost appears to be part of a larger conspiracy by anti-Hindu forces.”

The letter concluded, “We urge, on behalf of billion Hindus and timeless tradition of lives being transformed by revered Geeta, to do all that is needed to uphold dignity of their revered book and remove this scene from your film across world. Should you choose to ignore this appeal it would be deemed as a deliberate assault on Indian civilisation.”

According to Variety, India’s minister for information and broadcasting Anurag Thakur requested per NDTV that the scene be deleted entirely.

THE FAUX OUTRAGE IS NOT ABOUT HINDUISM BUT HINDUIST NATIONALISM

HINDUISM IS FAR MORE VARIED THAN THAT

SEE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for WENDY DONIGER 

India’s BJP set to ‘whip up’ Hindu nationalist sentiment with Ayodhya temple campaign

The BJP has led a campaign to build a temple in Ayodhya since riots in 1992 in which a mosque there was destroyed and thousands of mostly Muslims died

Analysts says it’s ‘a matter of time’ before other mosques give way to Hindu temples, with the ruling party timing it ‘to suit them most politically’

Biman Mukherji
, 3 Jan, 2024

Braving thick fog, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Ayodhya over the weekend to launch an airport, train services and roads, giving a US$1.8 billion boost to the ancient city in northern Uttar Pradesh before the January 22 inauguration of a Ram temple at a disputed site.
Modi’s visit in the face of bad weather – which disrupted traffic across north India, with hundreds of flights and dozens of trains delayed, and several deaths in road traffic accidents – symbolised his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s determination to fulfil a key pledge to the country’s majority Hindu population ahead of crucial national elections in April and May.

The campaign to build a temple to Lord Ram, the deity also known as Rama who devotees believe was born in Ayodhya, has been at the centre of a three-decade campaign by the BJP. In 1992, Hindu mobs razed a mosque at a site in the city where they say a temple had earlier existed.

The Hindu temple in Ayodhya, believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, is due to be inaugurated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 22. Photo: EPA-EFE

Nearly 2,000 people were killed in the nationwide riots that followed, mostly Muslims. After years of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court in 2019 allowed the Hindu community to build a temple at the disputed site and allocated a separate plot for rebuilding the mosque.


“There was a time when, in this very Ayodhya, Lord Ram was kept inside a tent. Today, a permanent house has been built for not only Lord Ram but also for 40 million [shelterless] Indians,” Modi told a packed gathering at the weekend, many people waving flags emblazoned with Ram’s image.

The prime minister’s reference to permanent homes relates to concrete ones built for the poor, highlighting his government’s development work.

In Ayodhya, a religious dispute that sways elections 130 years on
31 Oct 2018

Modi urged Indians to light up their houses during the temple’s inauguration, in the same way Hindus celebrate Diwali, the annual festival of lights, which marked Ram’s return from exile to his Ayodhya home after defeating his evil adversary Ravan.

The prime minister will soon lead a consecration ceremony for a Ram sculpture at the temple, with opposition leaders invited.

Some observers believe the ceremony will strengthen Hindu nationalism. The BJP “will use the occasion to whip up religious and cultural sentiment”, said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a journalist and commentator focusing on Hindu nationalism.
The opposition has never been able to have a consistent response to the Hindu nationalist programme of the BJPNilanjan Mukhopadhyay, political commentator

Thanks to a series of BJP initiatives and online posts, Mukhopadhyay said, the religious narrative is likely to swirl until the Ram Navami festival in April, which marks Ram’s birth.

That is also likely to serve as a starting point for widening a campaign to establish temples at other disputed sites, he added.

Last month the Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh gave the go ahead for a survey of a mosque near a temple called Krishna Janmabhoomi – said to be the birthplace of the god Krishna – in the city of Mathura after petitioners claimed the Muslim place of worship showed signs of Hindu religion.

Indian Hindus arrive to take a dip in the Sarayu river in Ayodhya on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Mukhopadhyay said it was “a matter of time” before mosque sites in Varanasi and Mathura – key Hindu pilgrimage cities – give way to temples. The BJP “will time it to suit them most politically”, he said.
Opposition leaders appear divided over how to respond to the BJP’s religious slant, especially following its recent wins in three state elections – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan – which account for most voters in the party’s heartland northern and central areas.

West Bengal state chief minister Mamata Banerjee, leader of regional party the Trinamool Congress, indicated she will skip this month’s Ram ceremony, while Samajwadi party leader Akhilesh Yadav, influential in Uttar Pradesh, responded vaguely, saying he will visit the temple “whenever god wants him to”.
Calls grow for Nepal to ditch secularism as India’s BJP pushes Hindu agenda
19 Jun 2023

India’s main opposition Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi, whose months-long Unite India march from September 2022 helped his party win a state election in southern Karnataka in May, is planning a similar march called Bharat Nyay (Justice) this month.
It is set start in the northeastern state of Manipur, which was besieged by communal riots last year. According to government figures, as of September 15, 175 people are known to have died in the violence, with more than 1,100 injured.

The march is expected to go through several states, including Uttar Pradesh.
Little resistance

“The opposition has never been able to have a consistent response to the Hindu nationalist programme of the BJP,” said Mukhopadhyay, adding that “the moment you take a soft line … you are taking the position of a B-team”, which “can never win”.

The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance – commonly known as INDIA – is an opposition coalition that was strung together last year in an attempt to halt the BJP juggernaut. However, it has not arrived at a seat-sharing arrangement to field a common candidate against the BJP that avoids undercutting each constituent party’s votes.

Nor has the group been able to decide on who would be able take on the hugely popular Modi, amid infighting and a lack of ideas, Mukhopadhyay said.

Modi, right, with Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath before the inauguration of a new airport and railway station in Ayodhya on Saturday. 

Photo: AP

Meanwhile, enthusiasm for the temple and its associated projects seems strong in Ayodhya.

“The roads were so bad that it would take us six hours to reach Lucknow [the state capital], but now we are able to do the same distance in a couple of hours because of a new road,” said Prabhakar Pandey, a 64-year-old lawyer in Ayodhya.

The city’s youth hope an influx of visitors will bring employment.

“I am a college graduate and have completed a postgraduate vocational programme, but jobs are few and far between. But now I think there will be new jobs,” said 23-year-old Dharmendra Kumar, who wants to be a train driver.

More big fat Indian weddings are heading abroad – and Modi’s not happy about it
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Modi has also called for a cleanliness drive at pilgrimage centres across India from mid-January to coincide with the spiritual festival Makar Sankranti.

Praveen Rai, a political analyst at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, said most ancient temples in India “have been in bad shape. The BJP has played on this smartly by appealing to people’s pride”.

The temple movement will push local development and highlight Hinduism ahead of elections, he said.

Rai added that religious fervour was unlikely to overshadow the BJP’s governance ahead of this year’s elections, as voters are often swayed by good leadership.

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On Vivekananda’s 160th birthday, female monastics venerate the ‘mother’ of his movement

The female monks at Sri Sarada Math in Pune, India, celebrated Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, in accordance with the Hindu auspicious calendar.

Hindu devotees, primarily women, celebrate Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, 2024, with a special ceremony at Sri Sarada Math, or ashram, in Pune, India. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

January 12, 2024

By 

Richa Karmarkar

PUNE, India (RNS) — The revered guru Swami Vivekananda, whose spiritual writings have inspired Hindus and non-Hindus of all ages from the East to the West, would have turned 160 years old on Friday (Jan. 12).

But while many celebrate him on his birth anniversary, also called National Youth Day in India, some fervent believers pay homage to the woman behind his movement, a wife, mother and teacher named Sarada Devi.

Vivekananda, born in Kolkata, India, in 1863, is often credited with raising Hinduism to the status of a major world religion with his address to the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, in which he talked about his Vedanta tradition. An instant celebrity, he went on to deliver hundreds more talks across the United States and Europe.

Returning to India, he opened a Vedanta institute named for his guru, Ramakrishna, and the Ramakrishna Mission, delivering spiritual training, charity and social welfare services to generations of devotees. His speeches and writings are still widely read throughout the world.

Sarada Devi, circa 1890. (Photo courtesy Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

Sarada Devi, whom devotees call Holy Mother, was the wife of Vivekananda’s own guru, Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Her life, simplistic and uneventful compared to Vivekananda’s, has a powerful message for the women who follow her, highlighting the transformative power of inner character.

“She was so simple, there’s no glamour around her,” said Sandhya “didi,” or sister, a monk at Sri Sarada Math, the monastery devoted to Sarada. “One of the greatest blessings we had was to come to know her.”

Born to a poor village family in West Bengal in 1853, Saradamani Devi was betrothed to 23-year-old Ramakrishna when she was just six. She had no formal education but developed a powerful inner spirituality. It is said that she offered “japa,” a form of sacred chanting, 1,000 times per day. 

This is one of the great lessons her followers take from her life. “Whatever the circumstance, you cannot change anything around you, but you can change yourself,” said Sandhya didi. “By changing yourself only can you see things change.”

And despite her lack of schooling, she became a champion of education for other women, inspiring numerous schools and study centers in her name across the country.

The female monastics at Sri Sarada Math celebrated Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, in accordance with the Hindu auspicious calendar. A group of devotees, mostly women dressed in plain saris, came to meditate and chant her name. They bowed their heads as the monastics, wearing orange robes and shaved heads, lit a fire “havan” ritual in Sarada Devi’s honor on the math’s “biggest day of the year.”

Female Hindu monastics celebrate Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, 2024, with a ceremonial fire at Sri Sarada Math in Pune, India. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

Sandhya didi felt called to live under one of the many monastic sects based on Vivekananda’s teachings. It was a “revelation,” she said, for her to learn about this type of life, where one forgoes a marriage and family to further their spiritual discipline.

Yet Sandhya didi admits she did not think much about Sarada Devi until she read that Vivekananda had called Sarada Devi the “mother of the universe.” Then she began to feel an unbreakable bond. 

“What she is still, we can’t fathom,” she said. “She’s so deep. But still, she is Ma. If your Ma is a princess, if your Ma is a doctor, for a child it doesn’t matter. She’s mother, and that’s all.”

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Some 15 women stay in the ashram, starting their days at 4 a.m., raising and cooking homegrown vegetables and fruit, studying Hindu Scriptures, learning Sanskrit and performing rituals, all in service to their central figure. Some even read the Quran, considering Ramakrishna’s teaching that “each religion is true,” said Sandhya didi. 

The color of their robes is determined by the stage of their ascetic journey. The newer they are, the less likely they speak to outsiders, lest their concentration falter. Some women come in their early 20s, after studying fields like dentistry or commerce. But here they are equals, working in whichever job suits the community. 

The Sri Sarada Math, or ashram, in Pune, India. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

“The old monasticism, with its severity, is not there. We function like any middle-class family,” said Sandhya didi, adding that personality clashes between women with different upbringings are inevitable. 

But the monk credits the math’s volunteers with being more blessed. Despite family obligations, they devote their time, some walking a kilometer in each direction to work at the center. “For us, it is our duty,” Sandya didi said. “They are coming for the love of it.”

Shreeda Bhagwat, a longtime volunteer, sells biographies of Sarada Devi, Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda outside the math’s main temple. It is through tears only, she says, that she can talk about the role the holy mother plays in her life.

“I live alone, because all of my relatives live in the United States,” she said, “and now my parents have also expired. So, who will I speak to? Everything I tell to Holy Mother. She is my mother, that’s it.”

And though women run the ashram, Sagar Dhanurkar, a male software engineer, often frequents the Sri Sarada Math. His own mother, a teacher at the adjacent Swami Vivekananda School, taught him the value of recognizing the Holy Mother’s importance. 

Hindus, primarily women, celebrate Sarada Devi’s birth anniversary on Jan. 3, 2024, with a special ceremony at Sri Sarada Math in Pune, India. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

“She is the mother of not only the pious, but also the wicked,” said Dhanurkar. “That draws me over here. I say ‘Ma, I have committed some sins,’ or ‘Ma, I have done this good thing.’ Whatever we do in our life, we commit that to her.”

As the sun sets on Holy Mother’s birthday, Sandhya didi reflects on the lasting power of Swami Vivekananda, whose books she has read countless times.

“Those books are published everywhere,” she said. “They are meant for all. This sangha (community) is meant for laypeople and monastics. What is true for us is true for you also.”

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RELATED: The ‘India problem’ under the surface at the Parliament of the World’s Religions

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