Re-Redefining Hinduism

Ram Puniyani While defining religion is a theological exercise, many a times the tribunals and judges are pontificating on the nature of Hindusim on the basis of common sense and their own perceptions of it. Many of these perceptions are dictated by the contemporary politics, which wants to present Hinduism in a different light. It was a great surprise that a recent Income Tax Tribunal held that Hinduism is not a religion and stated that Shiva, Hanuman or Goddess Durga are  "superpowers...

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Pak Zoo and Malsi, the Elephant

Pak Zoo was carved out of Hind Zoo in 1947, when the imperialistic British zoo-owners got bored of toying with the inhabiting animals, and decided to abscond from animal parks all over the world. For the decade or so leading up to the British selling Hind Zoo, it was clear that the zoo’s ownership would be returned to the locals, but the dynamics of the final deal weren’t quite as unambiguous. After much deliberation and debate, the future of Hind Zoo hinged over the fate of one animal, an elephant named...

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Pakistan: Sectarian Divides

Ram Puniyani South Asia has been in the grip of sectarian violence since fairly long. During last three decades and more particularly during the last decade this violence has been intensifying in degree and spread. It was sad news to hear that the Christian Community of Joseph Colony, Badami Bagh Lahore was the victim of one such violence recently (March 2013). In this violence 178 houses of the low-income community, as well as shops and three churches were looted and burnt to ashes. The local...

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Book Review: “Studies on the Carvaka/Lokayata”

Krishna Del Toso Studies on the Carvaka/Lokayata (hereafter S-C/L) is a collection of 23 articles on various aspects of Carvaka/Lokayata (hereafter C/L) philosophy, written and published in several journals, mostly Indian, by Ramkrishna Bhattacharya during the last 15 years. This book not only represents the philosophical and cultural heritage received from Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya’s and Mrinal Kanti Gangopadhyaya’s works on Indian materialism – the scholars with whom Bhattacharya studied the...

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Science Versus Miracles: Predicting the Words in a Newspaper Column Where It is Cut.

B Premanand A Christian priest in the United States claimed he had psychic powers to know the past and future of an individual. He could also control the mind of any person. To prove his powers he would cut a newspaper column from a news paper. Then he would throw a paper ball among the audience. Whoever caught it was called on to the stage. The priest would hold the newspaper cutting in his left hand vertically with his thumb and index finger on the head lines, and scissors in his right hand, in between the newspaper cutting. He then claimed...

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Mr. Modi, You Are Not Welcome: Wharton Debate

Ram Puniyani The withdrawal of invitation for Narendra Modi to speak at Wharton Business School of Pennsylvania (March 2013) has been looked at in different ways by different commentators. Those who are opposing the invitation withdrawal, point out that it is a violation of the norms of freedom of speech. They say that Modi is an elected person in Indian system and his views on development of Gujarat under his leadership need to be heard by the people from business circles.  Those opposing...

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Science versus Miracles: Uri Geller – The Psychic

B Premanand Parapsychologists believed that Uri Geller was the ultimate proof of the existence of psychic powers. Much research and many books came out, explaining the investigations conducted on Uri Geller as evidence that he really did his feats using psychic powers. Uri Geller became an international hero and he was invited to every country to demonstrate his powers. He soon became a multi-billionaire. In 1974, he landed in the United States at the invitation of Stanford Research Institute....

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Lokāyata and Its Derivatives in the Sad-dharma-puṇḍarīka-sūtra

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya If one sets upon oneself the task of translating the Sad-dharma-puṇḍarīka-sūtra (SDPS), a first-century CE Sanskrit Mahāyānī Buddhist text, into a modern Indian language, one will face no problem with the word lokāyata. It is current in all and can be retained in translation without bothering to explain what lokāyata means.[1] But translating it into a European language would prove to be difficult, for the reader would not know the word and so some equivalent would...

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