Happy Ugadi

Ugadi is New Year's Day according to the lunisolar Hindu calendar.  In 2024, it was celebrated on Tuesday, April 9, according to the Gregorian calendar.

Hindus in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Goa celebrate Ugadi. They celebrate Ugadi with colorful patterns on the floor called Muggulu/Rangoli, mango leaf decorations on doors, buying and gifts such as new clothes, charity to the poor, oil massages followed by special baths, and visits to Hindu temples. Mango leaves and coconuts are considered auspicious in the Hindu tradition.

Pachadi

A special food prepared on Ugadi called pachadi combines sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent and piquant flavors. In Telugu and Kannada Hindu traditions, it reminds one to that the upcoming year will consist of not just sweet experiences, but also unpleasant episodes. Just as the different flavors are mixed together, no event or episode is wholly good or bad.

Ugadi is celebrated on the first day of the Hindu lunisolar calendar month of Chaitra.  This typically falls in late March or early April of the Gregorian calendar. Ugadi is New Year according to the lunisolar calendar, which considers both the position of the Moon and the position of the Sun to divide the year into months and days.

The counterpart of the lunisolar calendar is the solar calendar, which considers only the position of the Sun to divide the year into months and days. Because of that, Hindu New Year is celebrated twice in the year at two different times. In 2024, Hindu New Year based on the solar calendar is April 13, according to the Gregorian calendar.

Sources:

2024 Hindu Festivals Calendar, Hindu Tyohar Calendar  for Manassas, Virginia, United States. (n.d.). Drikpanchang. Retrieved April 9, 2024, from https://www.drikpanchang.com/calendars/hindu/hinducalendar.html

Wikipedia contributors. (2024, April 10). Ugadi. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugadi

 

 

What's behind the Assam-Mizoram border dispute?

 The boundary dispute between Assam and Mizoram dates back nearly 150 years. Boundary demarcations in 1875 and 1933, particularly the latter, are at the heart of the dispute. The 1933 boundary was made without consent and approval of government  authorities and the people of Mizoram.  The boundary dispute has simmered since Mizoram became a Union Territory in 1972 and then a state in the 1980s.

The dispute between Assam and Mizoram has recently escalated, as firing on the boundary left at least six Assam police dead and over 50 others injured.While Assam claims that its boundary has been transgressed, Mizoram cites unilateral moves by Assam inside its territory.   

Following a meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah,  Mizoram wants “the inter-state border issue with Assam be resolved in an atmosphere of peace and understanding". Twenty-four hours after the meeting, however, people are unable to travel through the border areas between Assam and Mizoram by vehicle. Mizoram blames Assam for blocking the road. According to Assam, Assam withdrew its travel advisory and  nobody is being stopped from travelling to Mizoram. 

Sources:

Deb, D. (2021). Explained: Why did a 150-year-old Assam-Mizoram dispute get violent now? The Indian Express. Retrieved 7 August 2021, from https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/the-assam-mizoram-dispute-violence-policemen-dead-7425600/.

Purkayastha, B. (2021). Bonhomie after Assam-Mizoram talks yet to reflect at border points. Hindustan Times. Retrieved 7 August 2021, from https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bonhomie-after-assam-mizoram-talks-yet-to-reflect-at-border-points-101628280061118.html.

NPR: Lauren Frayer's feature on blaming Modi for the second COVID wave in India

Dear Mr. John F. Lansing, President and CEO of NPR, 

I run the The Bahu of Bengal blog at https://sanatanadharma2002.blogspot.com/. On my blog, I publish letters that I have sent to media that have displayed anti-Hindu bias. 

This letter is in reference to the article: 

Frayer, L. (2021). 'This Government Has Failed Us': Anger Rises in India Over PM Modi's COVID Response. Npr.org. Retrieved 12 May 2021, from https://www.npr.org/2021/05/11/995446333/this-government-has-failed-us-anger-rises-in-india-over-pm-modis-covid-response.

 

Lauren Frayer, NPR International Correspondent, Mumbai, India

First of all, my family and friend have been impacted by COVID: My brother-ln-law lost his uncle and the uncle’s son in quick succession. The departed were musicians (masters of the sitar) of high repute. 

A friend of mine who lives in the State of Andhra Pradesh tested positive for COVID. As an observant Hindu, he wrote, “Pls pray for me and lit a small oil lamp at your Ista Devi [personal goddess]. I am covid positive and suffering.” He was self-isolating at home, as there were no hospital beds available. This was devastating, as he is a young man with a 3-year old son. Fortunately, he began to feel better after taking Fabiflu, a pill that is an antiviral drug for treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 patients.

I will leave it to the families to determine if Modi is at fault. 

That said, I will address points in Ms. Frayer’s article: 

It is disgusting that media publishes photos of burning funeral pyres when cremation is a personal matter for families of the departed. I have seen this sort of voyeurism up close. We were carrying out rites for my father-in-law, who left the mortal plane in 2011, on the banks of the Ganges River. A tour bus stopped, and western tourists disembarked to snap pictures. 

Ms. Frayer said that “India's health system has collapsed. There are shortages of hospital beds, medical oxygen, antiviral drugs, and vaccines.” My question to Ms. Frayer is: How did this happen India was exporting vaccines to many countries? It is sad to see India dependent on foreign largesse. Ms. Frayer didn’t investigate. 

Ms. Frayer said that “Nevertheless, there were few masks and scant social distancing in Modi's crowd [in West Bengal]. At the time, West Bengal had none of the pandemic restrictions reimposed in some other Indian regions.” This is not Modi’s fault, but rather the fault of the All India Trinamool Congress Party, the ruling party in West Bengal. 

Ms. Frayer said that “For weeks, Modi's Hindu nationalist government had also refused to halt the huge Kumbh Mela pilgrimage, in which millions of people gathered to bathe in the Ganges River throughout April.” In this article Blame game at this juncture is suicidal, https://www.rediff.com/news/column/blame-game-at-this-juncture-is-suicidal/20210512.htm, Vivek Gumaste wrote that “But in terms of cause and effect the Kumbh Mela does not stand out as the putative factor: The second wave was already in progress when the Kumbh Mela began.” 

Ms. Frayer said that “NPR contacted seven spokespeople for Modi's government or party to comment on the criticism. Two were sick with COVID-19. Another said he didn't want to talk. Four others did not respond to interview requests.” This is not surprising, given media’s hostility to Modi and the BJP. They cannot expect that media will treat them fairly. 

Ms. Frayer said that “But it's unclear whether voters penalized the [BJP] party [in West Bengal] for its pandemic response because the voting was held in several stages, with some ballots cast in late March and early April before the extent of the current coronavirus wave was clear.” Here, Ms. Frayer is partly right (gasp!). Other factors might include the failure of the BJP to project a candidate for Chief Minister and its failure to understand the nuances of the Bengali language. Bengals are very possessive of their language. 

Ms. Frayer said that “On May 5, the national BJP president, J.P. Nadda, held a news conference in West Bengal to talk about post-election violence in which some of the BJP's poll workers were allegedly attacked by supporters of a rival party.” Allegedly? Really? /sarc. Photos of BJP party workers who were victims of post-election violence in West Bengal have circulated online. Even the Communist Party, which the All India Trinamool Congress Party decimated, has raised their voices against the ruling party’s violence against their party! 

Ms. Frayer said that “Video filmed at a crematorium in the city of Meerut and posted to Twitter on April 30 shows an argument between a family that had just cremated their loved one, who died of COVID-19, and another man who interrupts the family and scolds them for bemoaning the government.” Once again, this is voyeurism in what should be a private affair. Admittedly, the man who interrupts the family and scolds them for bemoaning the government, shares blame. 

Noting that bordering countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal have not been afflicted by a devastating second wave, some suspect bioterrorism. 

In 2019, Dr. Indu Viswanathan created a petition for Greater Journalistic Integrity in Reporting on Hinduism @ NPR, https://www.change.org/p/national-public-radio-journalistic-integrity-in-reporting-on-hinduism-npr. She garnered over 10,000 signatures. She succeeded in contacting Nancy Barnes, the Senior Vice President of News at NPR. Ms. Barnes said that she and her team will look closely at the petition, the demands, and all of the data that we sent their way, in addition to reviewing [Furkan] Khan's and Lauren Frayer's articles. However, NPR never got back in touch with Dr. Viswanathan. NPR owes the Hindu community a reply and continued dialogue.

Sincerely,

Letter to Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning

6:07 PM (1 minute ago)

to megha.majumdar.author@gmail.com, 

cc: TodayStories@nbcuni.com

Dear Ms. Majumdar,

I have finished reading A Burning - thanks to Knopf for making it available through NetGalley.

You have received many accolades, through the New York Times, Time, and the New Yorker.  A Burning was selected as the #ReadWithJenna pick of the month for June 2020 on the Today Show  (I have copied Today on this message).  From the web page Jenna Bush Hager announces June 2020 book club pick, https://www.today.com/shop/jenna-bush-hager-june-2020-book-club-pick-t182874:

I started writing from a place of alarm and anger," Majumdar told TODAY about her inspiration for the book. "India has been changing in frightening ways and growing more intolerant of minority communities, more extremist. I definitely hope that readers will see resonances in the U.S. as well.

Indeed, the only victims in your book were Muslim: Jivan, the girl who was falsely accused of torching the train, and the Muslim family that was slaughtered on the suspicion that they slaughtered a cow.

Your Jana Kalyan Party is plainly modeled after the BJP, yet you know that the BJP has next to no influence in Bengal - never mind that its predecessor Bharatiya Jana Sangh was founded by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, and the BJP honors Mukherjee as its founder! 

It was also strange that the Muslim girl was named Jivan.  Jivan, or Jeevan, is a boy's name and moreover, a Hindu name.

I am convinced that the train burning was inspired by the 2002 burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, in which 59 people, including 27 women and 10 children, were burnt to death, and 48 others were injured, at the rail station in Godhra, Gujarat.  Unlike poor Jivan, none of the perpetrators received a death sentence.

Do BJP rallies necessarily end with slaughter of Muslims?  I don't think so.  A friend told me that in UP, lynchings for cow slaughter might have more to do with cattle rustling, rather than Hindu-on-Muslim violence (really, the reverse doesn't happen?).

In A Burning, you said that textbooks were being rewritten to serve the Jana Kalyan Party's agenda.  Yet IRL textbooks serve other parties' agenda.  I see rewriting textbooks in India similar to rewriting textbooks in the United States to include discussion of atrocities toward blacks and Native Americans.

Lastly, I invite you to use the hashtag #HinduUnitedAgainstTerror to protest the murder of Ajay Pandita in Anantnag, J&K.  You have over 8600 followers on Twitter.  By calling for justice for Ajay Pandita and including the hashtag #HinduUnitedAgainstTerror, you can create a lot of visibility for this cause.

Yours sincerely,

Comments on Friday December 27, 2019 PBS NewsHour broadcast

To: viewermail@newshour.org
Cc: alyssa@alyssaayres.com
Bcc: thebahuofbengal@gmail.com, presswingeoi@gmail.com, info@hafsite.org

Dear PBS NewsHour, I am writing with respect to the segment on What ongoing Indian protests say about the country’s secular identity, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-ongoing-indian-protests-say-about-the-countrys-secular-identity, on your Friday, September 27, 2019 broadcast. I have copied Alyssa Ayres, whom Lisa Desjardins interviewed for this segment, on this email.

Alyssa Ayres

My comments:

• I'm embittered that the media pays so much attention to the status of Muslims in India but cares not one whit about the plight of religious minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Tell your listeners about discrimination and abuse that religious minorities face in the Islamic countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Religious minorities from Pakistan and Bangladesh are not migrants, but refugees. Tell your listeners about the precipitous drop in the number/percentage of non-Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh. These are the reasons that the Citizenship Amendment Act is needed. 

• While Ms. Ayres focused on anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests, which she called “inspiring,” she said nothing about large PRO-Citizenship Amendment Act rallies in major cities of India. Nor did she say anything about wide support for the CAA among the Indian public. 

• Concerning the “secular identity” of India, please note that "secular" was not in the preamble of the original Constitution of India. According to Wikipedia, “secularity” is the state of being separate from religion, or of not being exclusively allied with or against any particular religion: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularity. Many Hindus chafe at the clauses in the Constitution of India that omit protection of Hindu institutions from state seizure. This is not secularism. 

• A video of two hijab-clad university students who were protecting a man from police went viral. Here's Ladeeda Sakhaloon, one of the two so-called "sheroes," said about secularism: 

Clearly, Ms. Sakhaloon is a protester who is not agitating for so-called secularism.

Do better. Report news that supports the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Yours sincerely, xxxx
Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Bouma-of-Bengal-161615384026398/ 
Twitter: @TheBahuOfBengal

---

To learn more, consult:

Charter of Hindu Demands – Introduction, https://hinducharter.org/introduction/, which discusses inequities in the Constitution of India

Human Rights Report | Hindu American Foundation (HAF), https://www.hafsite.org/resources/human-rights-report, which covers human rights conditions for Hindus around the world, including Pakistan and Bangladesh. HAF has been publishing these reports since 2005.

Districts of India with Shakti Pithas

Here is a map that I created of districts of India that contain at least one shakti pitha.

Districts with Shakti Pithas

Here is the table I used to create the map:

Shakti Pithas in India

I will update blog content to tell the story behind the shakti pithas and explain how I created the map.

Places to visit in India

It's been over five years since my husband and I last visited India. I'm anxious to reconnect with family and friends.

Here's a video that I created in Google Earth Pro.



This is the list of places where I'd like to visit:

city	state
Delhi	DL
Kolkata	WB
Bankura	WB
Bardhman	WB
Bengaluru	KA
Kozhikode	KL
Aldona	GA
Mumbai	MH
Vadodara	GJ

Kaveri River - drainage areas in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu

This video shows how I computed sub-basin areas for the Kaveri river in the Indian states of Karnataka (KA) and Tamil Nadu (TN). Data for drainage areas came from AQUASTAT and was processed in QGIS open source software. I then created this video using Flashback Express 5 screen recording software.



Process:

• Intersect layers for administrative boundaries and sub-basin areas to obtain sub-basin areas by state
• Extract sub-basin areas by state layers into two separate layers (KA and TN) 
• Dissolve the two layers to get total area by state

The values I computed for drainage areas: 35462 sq km (KA) and 44422 sq km (TN) India Water Resource Information System (India-WRIS) provides these values for drainage areas: 36240 sq km (KA) and 48730 km2 (TN)

Kaveri River dispute

The recent MLA election in Karnataka obscured pressing issues such as water. I stepped in to create maps of rivers.

Rivers of India

I champion open principles: open data, open software, and open standards.

Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset that provided data layers for shaded relief, internal administrative boundaries (states),water bodies, waterways, and populated places. The datasets are available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. I chose datasets at 1:10 million, the most detailed that Natural Earth provides.

I processed the layers in QGIS, which is built on top of and is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). QGIS uses the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).The Free Software Foundation sponsors the GNU Operating System. FOSS software licenses grant the users rights to modify and re-use software product.

At the India extent, I applied labels for the states. Going on the premise that named waterways are more significant than unnamed waterways, I created separate layers for named and unnamed waterways. The named waterways were portrayed with a thicker line, while the unnamed waterways were portrayed in a lighter blue color and a thinner line. 

I also created separate layers for rivers with a specified width and rivers with an unspecified width.  Those rivers that had a specified width were deemed more important than those that didn't: likewise, they had a thicker line.

Kaveri River

I then selected administrative boundaries for Goa,Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu; saved them to a new layer; and zoomed in on the layer.In addition to labeling the states, I labeled populated places. Natural Earth favors regional significance over population census in selecting populated places. I also selected segments for the Kaveri River (waterways named Kaveri), saved them to a new layer, and styled the layer with a thick blue line.

Sources:

Front Page - Free Software Foundation - working together for free software. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from https://www.fsf.org/

GNU Operating System. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from http://www.gnu.org/

Natural Earth. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from http://www.naturalearthdata.com/

QGIS. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from https://www.qgis.org/en/site/

Daylight Savings Time begins Sunday, March 11

For the benefit of those who call from India to the U.S. and vice versa:

Daylight savings time (DST) is the practice of advancing clock by one hour so that evening daylight lasts longer.

This year (2018), DST begins on Sunday, March 11 in the U.S. The time difference between India and U.S. time zones will decrease by 1 hour. IST is UTC +0530.

Daylight Savings Time (select image to enlarge)

Even simpler is to look at the widget in the right sidebar!

Stop supporting #Rohingyas #India!

This petition will be sent to PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh. 2500 signatories sought. Sign and share.

The meaning of April 14

April 14 is not only Bengali New Year, but also New Year in other parts of India: Odisha (Pana Sankranti), Tamil Nadu (Puthandu), Kerala (Vishu), Assam (Bihu), and Vaisakhi (Punjab). In Punjab, it also commemorates the formation of the Khalsa, or Sikh community, by Guru Gobind Singh.

Formation of the Khalsa

April 14 is Mesha Sankranti, the day that the sun transits into Aries. The picture below shows a painted relief of Zodiac symbols on the terrace of a Gopuram at Kanipakam Lord Shiva temple in Andhra Pradesh. 

By Adityamadhav83 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

April 14 is also New Year in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Sri Lanka, parts of Vietnam, and Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China (borders Thailand).  These New Years are collectively referred to as Songkran (Songkran = Sankranti).

Grassroot initiatives to clean #India

The map below is my effort to support clean-up initiatives in India, albeit from afar.


I support Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Clean India campaign. While there is merit in tagging public figures to do clean-ups and photo ops to inspire others, grassroots initiatives should also be recognized.  Many, such as the idea of The Ugly Indian, predate the PM's campaign.

This map helps:

• Identify existing grassroots clean-up initiatives across India, north to south, east to west, 
• Identify gaps in coverage, and
• Provide a means to network among various initiatives and jointly plan clean up campaigns.

Users may download the map as KML, import the data into Google Maps or Google Earth, and customize the map to their needs.  I also tried importing the KML into ArcMap, but non-spatial attribute data was converted to unparsed CDATA.  This map is a gift to those involved in cleanup initiatives in India.

The Ugly Indian on Facebook provided much of the information to build this map.  Mr. Warren Doud organized the information into a table listing the names of grassroots clean-up initiatives and their respective Facebook pages.  I mapped the points, and added attribute data, including description, Facebook page, email, phone number, etc., wherever data was available.

If you zoom in on Bangalore, you will see areas representing the Bangalore North, Bangalore South and East, and Anekal taluks of the Bangalore Urban District.  These areas were derived from the GADM database of Global Administrative Areas.

BTW I informed The Ugly Indian that I created this map, and TUI said that was a "nice effort" - not necessarily a ringing endorsement.  TUI might be doing a mapping effort of its own to focus on sustainable efforts and provide quality control.  At any rate, TUI is welcome to use my data and customize to their needs.

Please email me at bahuofbengal [at] yahoo [dot] com if you have any changes to recommend.

Review of Understanding Hinduism

Namaste
Understanding Hinduism by Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book supplements the online continuing ed course Introduction to Hinduism–History, Text, Philosophy from the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies.

Virtues of this book:

It exercises caution in inferring what archaeological finds indicate about the Indus Valley Civilization.

Similarly, it is cautious about the Aryan Invasion Theory. All it says about the Aryans:

• AIT is a colonial construct (drawing upon Kim Knott's book Hinduism A Very Short Introduction)
• Vedic Sanskrit has linguistic similarities with other Indo-European languages
• We may infer that the Vedic people were agriculturists or pastoralists from their hymns

Understanding Hinduism notes that South Indian priests instructed North Indian priests in Vedic ritual after Islamic suppression of Hinduism. This is evidence of the cultural affinity between North and South (see Breaking India to see how various forces are alienating the South from the North).

I like Understanding Hinduism even better than Klaus K. Klostermaier's book A Short Introduction to Hinduism. Understanding Hinduism is the best introduction to Hinduism that I've read: therefore, I'm rating it 5 stars.

View all my reviews

Review of Breaking India

Namaste, 

Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines by Rajiv Malhotra
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The book Breaking India by Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan is about the forces that are fragmenting India. While Islamic radicalism and Maoist insurgencies are two forces that are fragmenting India, Breaking India focuses on the North-South divide, as evidenced by its subtitle Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines.

Breaking India begins with a study of the construction of Aryan and Dravidian identities through the years and how this artificial divide was promulgated and led to setting different groups in opposition to each other. The book focuses on the construction of Dravidian identity, rather than on deconstruction of the AIT - perhaps because others have done that, the authors don't say.

The most eye-opening part of Breaking India is about the roles that academia, evangelical Christian organizations, NGOs, "think tanks," and governments play in undermining India's unity. Shared interests lead to unlikely pairings such as left-wing intellectuals with evangelical Christian interests. There are also unlikely alliances between Maoists and evangelical Christian entities in India's "Red Corridor."

I recommend Breaking India to anyone concerned about India's unity, and encourage readers to go beyond the main text to read the appendices and endnotes. Appendix B highlights references to the Vedas in Tamil religious literature and Tamil familiarity with smriti such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata - a testament to the unity in Indian civilization. Appendix C presents the extreme case of what can happen when separate identities are constructed and put in opposition to each other: the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that pitted Hutus and Tutsis against each other. Parallels are drawn with the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka that pitted Tamils and Sinhalese against each other.

Breaking India has a dedicated website, www.breakingindia.com.

Other examples of north/south interactions that I'd like to bring up (although they are not mentioned in the book):

The Blood Telegram: India's Secret War in Pakistan by Gary J Bass

Namaste

The Blood Telegram : India's Secret War in East Pakistan by Gary J. Bass
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was released in the U.S. as The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. This version was released in South Asia as The Blood Telegram: India's Secret War in Pakistan.

The U.S. title is more accurate. Nixon and Kissinger claim the opening to China as their greatest foreign policy success. In actuality, Pakistan was the conduit to the U.S. opening to China. To reward Pakistan, Nixon and Kissinger shipped arms, which Pakistan in turn used to brutally crack down on the Bengalis in East Pakistan, resulting in a near-genocide of Bengali Hindus. In The Blood Telegram, Garry Bass seeks to correct Nixon and Kissinger's foreign policy record.


View all my reviews

Review of Tales from India by Jamila Gavin

Namaste,

Tales from India by Jamila Gavin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a really beautiful picture book. The illustrations are enchanting.

View all my reviews

Review of Klaus K. Klostermaier's A Short Introduction to #Hinduism

Namaste,

A Short Introduction To Hinduism by Klaus K. Klostermaier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read Klaus K. Klostermaier's A Short Introduction to Hinduism after reading Kim Knott's Hinduism A Very Short Introduction. Klostermaier's book is far superior to Knott's book.

The book introduces the main topics about Hinduism and is dense in content. It provides the most sympathetic treatment of Hindutva and the aspirations of Hindu nationalists that I've read.

The book introduces many Sanskrit terms that I didn't know. A glossary (complete with Devanagari and transliteration) would have been helpful. I take exception to Klostermaier's definition of samadhi as "trance." This definition is too simplistic for a state that's properly reached through discipline. "Trance" is often something a person stumbles upon.

Despite these quibbles, Klostermaier's A Short Introduction to Hinduism is a great survey of topics related to Hinduism. I want to buy this book for my collection.

Both Knott's and Klostermaier's books are listed as "for further reading" for the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies's online course Introduction to Hinduism: History, Text, Philosophy.




View all my reviews

Review of Kim Knott's Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction

Namaste, 

Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction by Kim Knott
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

After reading Klaus K. Klostermaier's book A Short Introduction to Hinduism, I downgraded my rating of Kim Knott's Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction from 3 stars to 2 stars.

I was wary about the chapter on women and dalits, as the treatment of women and dalits has been a cudgel to beat Hindu society. The chapter also plays into the Western stereotype of India as "caste, curry, and cows." I think that Knott included the chapter as her Western audiences associate Hinduism and caste.

I want to point out that the Indian Constitution bans untouchability. Subsequent laws criminalize violence against dalits. A contentious issue now is reservations, akin to affirmative action. Thus, discrimination against dalits is social, not legal.

The chapter cites Manusmriti as the source for the attitudes toward women and dalits. While the chapter outlines the responses of women and dalits toward their marginalization, it does not cover modern critical examination by Hindu leaders of the place of Manusmriti in the body of Hindu texts.

Knott lost me on the comparison between the cow and Hinduism at the end of the book. I thought that her likening Hinduism to a family, often with contentious relations among members, was useful.

View all my reviews

Simon Winchester's Calcutta

Simon Winchester's Calcutta by Simon Winchester
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first part of Simon Winchester's Calcutta includes a history of Calcutta (Kolkata) written by Simon Winchester. Some readers might be turned off by Winchester's characterization of freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as "buffoonish" and "one of the great villains." However, his assessment of Mother Theresa, which draws upon the work of Aroup Chatterjee and the late Christopher Hitchens, is spot on.

The second part of the book features excerpts about Calcutta from the works of a diverse group of writers that include N.C. Chaudhuri, William Dalrymple, Gunther Grass, V.S. Naipaul, Paul Theroux, Vikram Seth, Tagore, and Mark Twain. The different perspectives from these writers make this book worth reading.

View all my reviews