Analysis/Insights

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States brought about many glowing statements from the American government, both about Modi and about India. These included productive meetings with President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State John Kerry, who were quite elated with Modi’s visit. The camaraderie extended to Bill and Hillary [...]

I would like to discuss briefly my ideas on the English terms like religion, faith and culture and Indic terms like dharma, sanatana dharma, vaidika dharma etc. and also touch upon what we should call ourselves. Different cultures have had different experiences which have conditioned them in different ways, and thus the categories they create [...]

The Hindu tradition emphasises Dharma and Rta; to live in harmony with cosmic order by being aware of one’s karma. It is ideas like this which the western mind cannot grasp, denouncing it as nebulous and illusory. One of the common criticisms is that Indian spiritual traditions denounce this world as Maya or illusion. But [...]

Numerous British and more largely Western neo-Pagans seek contact with Hinduism. They recognize a similarity, both positively and negatively, both in their own religion’s characteristics and in the misfortunes that have befallen it. The extermination in summer 2014 of all the Yezidis (Kurdish Pagans) on whom the Islamic State could lay its hands has reminded [...]

Narendra Modi’s accession to power has not entirely ended the international campaign against him, witness the petition (with most signatures found to be fraudulent) to Barack Obama to cancel Modi’s planned visit to Washington. It was floated by the Coalition Against Genocide, a platform of several dozen Muslim organizations and some Communist coattails, many of [...]

Some sixty to forty years ago, the Jan Sangh, precursor of the BJP, was 100% in favour of the replacement of English with a native language. Because the Constituent Assembly had opted (by a single vote) for Hindi rather than Sanskrit as the “link language”, it became a pro-Hindi party, but in their hearts many [...]

Some of the European women already in the ranks of the Islamic State are trying to lure their ‘sisters’ to the marriage beds of the caliphate’s holy warriors. BEIRUT, Lebanon — The self-proclaimed Islamic State, formerly known by the acronym ISIS, is actively recruiting Western women and girls. And in the process this “caliphate” that [...]

Indian born sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor was extremely vocal and vitriolic in his attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India being a threat to freedom in the world’s largest democracy. Given very generous time by the BBC to air his views he was certain that the man who won the popular vote by an [...]

The United States of America is a land of sharp contradictions when it comes to matters of faith. On the one hand, it is the land of Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, James Madison and Mark Twain who distrusted or denounced or ridiculed the Christian dogma and scripture in unmistakable words. On the other hand, it [...]

Modi Phenomenon There is a new phenomenon on the world scene: his name is Narendra Modi.  Born in a small Gujarat town in a low caste but devoted Hindu family, very poor but laborious, already as a child he helped his father in his job as tea vendor at the Vadnagar railway station. In the [...]