Awake India, awake to his vision. Leave those caste barriers, acquire knowledge, be strong in body and be a Khalsa in spirit. Your religion doesn’t matter. Khalsa is a state of mind, not just a religion.   by Frank Hazur While Sikhs celebrate Vaisakhi across India; rest of India wonders if it is about doing…

by Promod Puri From Mohammad to Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. to Nelson Mandela and Dr. Ambedkar all had religious commitments grounded in humanism, love, compassion, and kindness to wage their political and social campaigns against slavery, apartheid, discrimination, inequality, and un-touchability based on color, class, and caste. Gandhi’s crusade against evils in…

By Promod Puri What is the difference between you, me and a spoon, a table, a stone, or any object or a thing? Both are physical matters. But we have consciousness others don’t. Or maybe they have it which we don’t sense. Anyway, that is what distinguishes you and me, and the “non-consciousness” objects. How…

Richard Gunderman, Indiana University This year, one of the most essential holy days in the Christian calendar, Easter, coincides with perhaps the silliest of annual secular celebrations, April Fools’ Day. Easter commemorates a miraculous event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. April Fools’ Day is marked by practical jokes and hoaxes. The conjunction…

Precious woods for a mega-Havan are being burnt in Uttar Pradesh, India, when the poor are desperately looking for some fuel for cooking. In this ritual protein-rich ghee is also used in very large quantities, rather it can be given to malnourished poor children for their growth. All the Havan stunts are being performed in…

By Promod Puri In his mind, physically-challenged Stephen Hawking explored the cosmos, and he got a much clearer picture of how the universe came into existence. In the quest, he could not find the god commonly believed to be up there and responsible for this creation. However, as a physicist, he found his god in…

KOLKATA: Nandini Bhowmik dons several hats – a mother, a professor and a drama artist. But the most important hat which she wears in the patriarchal societal order is that of a priest. She is the first woman Hindu priest in West Bengal. A Sanskrit professor at the Jadavpur University, Bhowmik has undertaken a unique…

By Promod Puri “Temple-Hinduism” is an expression introduced by Vasudha Narayanan, Professor of Religion, University of Florida. The terminology is not an academic phrasing, nor does it reflect a new sect in Hinduism. It is an interpretation of Hinduism related to the devotional practices of rituals and prayers in temple’s iconological environment. As we know…