India/western Sociology

[dhu]

China Burma India Theater of World War II (wiki)

I don't think Americans could have just disappeared from the Chinese theatre after WW2. They must have installed their sepoys, just as British did in India. MAo was a pupil of the Christian Sun Yatsen. Yatsen had a visceral hatred for Boxers who had allegiance for traditional China. It must have been part of de-indiginization process.

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Jul 30 2009, 05:06 AM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Jul 30 2009, 05:06 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->China Burma India Theater of World War II (wiki)

I don't think Americans could have just disappeared from the Chinese theatre after WW2.  They must have installed their sepoys, just as in India after the British.  MAo was a pupil of the Christian Sun Yatsen. Yatsen had a visceral hatred for Boxers who had allegiance for traditional China.  It must have been part of de-indiginization process.
[right][snapback]100035[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Wherever US troops goes they have an evangelization program.

[dhu]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dixie Mission

The United States Army Observation Group, commonly known as the Dixie Mission, was the first U.S. effort to establish official relations with the People's Liberation Army. This mission was launched on 22 July 1944 during World War II, and lasted until 11 March 1947.

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[dhu]

United States Relations with China Timeline: Boxer Uprising to Cold War (1900-1949)

Chronology
Office of the Historian
Washington, DC

1900-1910
1911-1919
1920-1929
1930-1939
1940-1949

1900-1910

# 1900: The Boxer Uprising
# 1901: The Boxer Protocol Signed
# 1902, 1904: Provisions of the Geary Act Extended and Expanded
# 1905-06: Anti-American Boycotts in China
# 1908: Remittance of the Boxer Indemnity
# 1908: Root-Takahira Agreement

1911-1919

# 1911: The Fall of the Qing Dynasty
# 1912: Founding of the Republic of China
# 1915: Japan's 21 Demands
# 1917: Lansing-Ishii Agreement
# 1917: China Entered the Warlord Period
# 1919: Treaty of Versailles and May Fourth Incident

1920-1929

# 1921: Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) Opened
<b># 1921: Chinese Communist Party Founded</b>
# 1922: Washington Conference Agreements
# 1922: Anti-missionary Movement
# 1924: Immigration Act Extended Exclusion
<b># 1925: United States Established China Foundation</b>
# 1925: May 30th Incident
# 1925: Death of Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen)
# 1927: Nationalist Capital Established
# 1927: End of the United Front
# 1928: United States Formally Recognized Nationalist Government

1930-1939

# 1931: Manchurian Incident
# 1933: China Requested American Aid in Rural Reconstruction
# 1934: The Long March
# 1936: The Second United Front Formed
# 1937: Second Sino-Japanese War
<b># 1938: United States Extended Credits to Nationalists</b>
# 1938: Indusco Founded

1940-1949

# 1941: Aid to China Expanded
# 1942: United States and China Formed Wartime Alliance
# 1943: Madame Jiang Jieshi Visited United States
# 1943: The End of Extraterritoriality and Exclusion
<b># 1944: The Dixie Mission</b>
# 1944: Vice President Visited Chongqing
# 1945: Japan Surrendered, United States Attempted to Negotiate China's Civil War
# 1947: Wedemeyer Mission to China
# 1948: China Aid Act Passed
<b># 1949: People's Republic of China (PRC) Founded </b>

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/90687.htm

[ramana]

One more landmark is the openingof the Yale School of Divinity in China. It tutored a large number of Communist leaders.

[dhu]

I looked for references for this. All I get is Illuminati stuff. It makes you think the truth is given a conspiracy veneer to discredit the search. Research into colonilaism and neocolonialism is discredited as conspiracy theory.

[dhu]

http://repository.tufs.ac.jp/bitstream/101...jaas072005.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Ku-t'ien incident (1895), occurred August 1 in Fujien (福建) province in China, caused a great loss of life. Including missionaries and sisters, eleven foreigners were killed. As the number of the death, it is the large incident next to the Tienjin Massacre (1870). The members of the attacking group had belonged to the sect said Tsai Hui (菜会, 斎教 vegetarians), one of the popular religious sects which had been called White Lotus Sect during the Ming and Qing periods. Although the former studies have pointed some causes of this incident, yet could not explain the true origin except its antiforeigner feelings. This vegetarian group was a blanch of Yao-Men Sect (姚門教). The head of this sect called Yao Fu-jing (姚普慶) is said to be in Jiu Jiang (九江) in Jiang Xi (江西) province. This Yao-Men Sect had a long tradition from the late Ming dynasty to now. It is said that the founder was Lao zi (羅祖), and its successor, the second head was Yin Ji-nan (応継南), the third head was Yao Wen-yu (姚文宇). But eventually Yao himself was the founder of this sect, its teachings had belonged the tradition of the Huang Tien Dao (黄天道). In 1880's this sect had spread its influence in Ku-t'ien district, because it prohibited the opium and placed themselves against the regional practice of polvandry or "the farming out" of wives. Tsai-Hui's influence begun to spread more widely, as the Sino-Japanese War brought Fujien society the disorder and the unrest, At the same time it begun to function as the police and the trial judge to mediate the troubles in the country yard, because the local office increasingly had lost the powers of the government. So the troubles between Tsai-Hui and the Chinese peoples in Chinese Missionary Society (CMS) also began to occur. But the incident was not a religious struggle between the two. The officials of Ku-t'ien county would like to control their activities, but they are not strong enough to do so. Tsai Hui members resisted the orders of the county government. This conflict and disturbances enrolled the missionaries in Ku-T'ien district. At last the provincial officials at Foochow made a mind up their mind to suppress these rebellious activities, and sent a troop. In this critical situation the leaders of Tsai Hui gathered their followers at the fort in the mountains and decided to act rebelliously toward the officials. At first they would attack the summer house of CMS in Hua Shan (華山) in the south east of the city, because they thought the troop were dispatched to here by the direction of foreign missionary. After the massacre the local officials caught more than two hundreds criminals with all their energies. In the attendance of the British and American consuls, the trials were held at Ku-T'ien and Foochow. These consuls required an indemnity and submitted many demands to the officials. In accordance with the resolution of the Chen-tu riots (成都教案) which occurred in May, British and American ministers in Peking sent several warships to Foochow and gave a pressure to the viceroy. Seventeen persons of the Tsai Hui were immediately executed. Through the Chen-tu riots and Ku-T'ien incident, Britain and the USA's missionary diplomacy had changed to protecting her native protestant missionaries by using the military powers. In historical retrospect the incidents in 1895 are much significant to indicate the starting of American jingoism, and as the first incidents in series of antiforeigner breaks before the Boxer uprising. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?...aRKMg&user=&pw=
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->H-ASIA
December 7, 2004

Acknowledging assistance in query on Ko Lao Hui (Gelaohui)
***********************************************************************
From Ian Welch ian.welch@anu.edu.au

My thanks to Kristin Stapleton, J Boltz, Raymond Lum, Shih-Chieh Lo and
Ming-te Pan for their responses. I would value any other suggestions.

The name of the particular society I am chasing up was written at the time
of a massacre of missionaries in Fujian Province in 1895. The British
Consul in Fuzhou, R W Mansfield, gave it as either the Ts'ai Hui or Shih
Ts'ai Jen (or Yen). In English, it is always referred to as the 'Vegetarian
Society' which is why I linked it back to the Buddhist tradition and White
Lotus. The influence of White Lotus or its ideology seems to have been
widespread among secret societies in 19C China. I am not suggesting a
literal connection.

The Veg Socy was widespread in Fujian although its headquarters are
described as being in Kiukiang (??), Chekiang Province.  It certainly had a
temple headquarters in the Min River at Fuzhou and had a proclamation of
its merit from an earlier Viceroy pasted on the wall even after the
massacre at Huashan.

As specialist contributors will know 19th century China was awash in secret
societies. Being illiterate in Chinese, I rely on English-language
renderings and variant romanisations such as the above and, of course,
often work with archival mss in which handwriting can add to my normal
confusion.

Even if I was fluent in Chinese, a reality of secret societies is their
secrecy so it is unlikely that anything survives from the particular subset
I am pursuing. The archival sources indicate that no written records were
kept by the Gutian Vegetarians.

I have dug around the journal sites such as JSTOR etc and have downloaded
everything remotely relevant on the issue of 19th C Chinese secret
societies. Just as I despatched my Ko Lao Hui enquiry, I came across the
new Google academic engine - (a real plus) - and found three new items
using Dr Dunch's helpful modernisation - Gelaohui.

Reports from missionaries and diplomats (US as well as British), and from
various strands from time to time in JAS etc, indicate a substantial ethnic
Chinese anti-Manchu resistance movement in 19C China.

There are references to the Gutian subset having links with the Vegetarian
Society in Fuzhou, including requests for arms, etc. The leader used the
usual language of 'emperor' etc in a way reminiscent of other similar
movements, not least the Taiping. Diplomats were convinced, although their
knowledge of internal Chinese movements is very shaky, that there were many
senior officials in the Vegetarian Society.

One theory surrounding the Vegetarian Society in Fujian was that it was
planning a seizure of power using Gutian as a military base from which to
expand against the Manchu administration and its cooperators in the Province.

I tried attaching the character format but the message bounced so I hope
this gives enough information to prompt someone's knowledge.

[Ed. note: The H-Net listserver will not accept posts with attachments,
regardless of their language or script.   FFC]

Cheers

Ian
--
Dr Ian Welch, Departmental Visitor
Division of Pacific and Asian History
Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Email: ian.welch@anu.edu.au
Postal Address: Dr Ian Welch, PO Box 7034, Farrer ACT 2607, Australia.
******************************************************************

[Ed. note: I'll add that Mary Backus Rankin wrote an article on this
particular event early in her career, in the Harvard graduate student
journal _Papers on China_.  The citation is <b>Mary Backus Rankin, "The
Ku-t'ien Incident (1895): Christians Versus the T'sai-hui,"</b> in Papers on
China 15 (December 1961), pp. 30-61.  RD]

******************************************************************<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[dhu]

Origins of the American Empire: Revolution, World Wars and World Order
Andrew Gavin Marshall
Russia, Oil and Revolution

[dhu]

Academe as Battleground – 3
Radha Rajan

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->- Harvard is not saying the Rg. Veda has several layers of meaning; <b>Harvard is saying it has an ancient meaning, a medieval meaning and contemporary meaning; </b>the meaning of the Rg. Veda for horse-riding Central Asian invaders/composers (because Rg. Veda is religious ritual in poetry format) is different from the meaning that our Bhashyakaras put on it and the meaning that modern western scholars like Max Mueller, Geldner and Witzel put on it.
........

“<i>At this juncture, <b>the whole planet is locked, figuratively, in a room with the socio-cultural (I would add western academic) equivalent of Hannibal Lecter. </b>An individual of consummate taste and refinement, imbued with indelible grace and charm, he distracts his victims with the brilliance of his intellect, even while honing his blade. He is thus able to dine alone upon their livers, his feast invariably candlelit, accompanied by lofty music and a fine wine. Over and over the ritual is repeated, always hidden, always denied in order that it may be continued. <b>So perfect is Lecter’s pathology that, from the depths of his scorn for the inferiors upon whom he feeds, he advances himself as their sage and therapist, he who is incomparably endowed with the ability to explain their innermost meanings, he professes to be their saviour. </b>His success depends upon being embraced and exalted by those upon whom he preys. Ultimately, so long as Lecter is able to retain<b> his mask of omnipotent gentility,</b> he can never be stopped. <b>The spirit of Hannibal Lecter is thus at the core of an expansionist European “civilization” which has reached out to engulf the planet.</b></i>”  (Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, p 93)

The only way to halt the march of European Civilization is for the natives of every nation to start the process of re-claiming their nations from the Abrahamic religions. <b>In India, Hindus must begin to not only question motivated west-driven scholarship, but also expose the geo-politics behind such scholarship. </b>Iravatham Mahadevan, Pollachi Mahalingam, the University of Madras Departments of Sanskrit and Vaishnavism, Sri Vaishnava scholars, our epigraphists, historians, and linguists, and <b>the small idiots who think the likes of Witzel and Clooney, Doniger and Nussbaum must be defeated in polite academic exchange, must see themselves described by Ward Churchill.</b>

Churchill calls these <b>willing and unwitting allies and useful idiots, the “sympathetic biographer” who attempts to explain Lecter in academic and sublime literary terms. “</b><i>The biographer thus reveals not only a willing complicity in the subject’s crimes, but a virulent pathology of his or her own. Such is and has always been the relationship of “responsible scholarship” to expansionist Europe and its derivative societies.</i>” (Ward Churchill)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[acharya]

Humility- A disposition to be humble; a “lack of false pride”, auther Rick Warren said “it’s NOT thinking less of yourself but THINKING of yourself LESS”

Hubris-(Greek) According to its modern usage, is exaggerated self pride, arrogance or self-confidence (overbearing pride), thereby making oneself seem superior, or as we would say it in the Bronx, “actually believing all the hype”.

We ALL have Ego’s, but not all of us realize when our Ego’s grow out of control. Ego’s CAN be useful, it’s the “persona” thing that makes us all so colorful, that one thing that makes us all such characters. However, do we want people around us to remember us for “being a character” or being people OF character.

[acharya]

Disagree with the red bit, but rest of it is about right.
http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/08/san...s-in-india.html
<b>Sanskrit cadre of scholars in India reaching extinction</b>
aug 15th, 2009

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rajiv Malhotra
Subject: Re: Sanskrit cadre of scholars in India reaching extinction
To:


I wish to make a few comments to Tavleen Singh's article quoted below.
I am glad that she has raised awareness of the decline of sanskrit
studies in India. But we have said this for years, so why does it
become a crisis only when a white american scholars says it? Read my
Sulekha article, "Geopolitics and Sanskrit Phobia at:
http://rajivmalhotra.sulekha.com/blog/post...krit-phobia.htm
It also explains why this decline matters at all. Neither Tavleen nor
Pollock explain why it matters beyond apparant nostalgia.

<b>Sheldon Pollock has teamed up with the Indian Left to show Sanskrit as
an elite language of brahmins, brought to India by foreign aryans. He
loves the language but hates hinduism or at least likes to twist the
knife once in a while. The same is true of many Indological aryan
theorists since Max Mueller -- they love sanskrit as something
belonging to THEIR ANCESTORS. In front of their western academic peers
from other disciplines, Sanskrit is presented as something superior
and deserving funds for their department and programs. In front of
South Asian scholars, the discourse becomes the oppression of the
masses by Sanskrit hegemony. In front of Indian philanthropists the
goal is how to get money for books, foreign trips, academic programs
of the western scholars.</b>
(Very important. Very true.)

Also the Clay Sanskrit Library is filled with works by biased scholars
as well as good ones. aryan invasion, "caste, cows, dowry" mindset
permeates some of these translations. So blindly distributing all
works is a bad idea.

Finally, deep change is not a matter of giving copies away. Tavleen is
proposing as though it were some tabloid to be handed out at the
railway stations. Who will read them? where will the sanskrit teachers
in india come from?

What Kapil Sibal should be asked to do is not spend money on the US
publisher of those books. He should fund high quality Sanskrit
learning, INCLUDING teaching them purva-paksha of Western thought to
be able to respond to the global discourse in sanskrit categories.
They should not be trained as irrelevant pandits (exotic pets) staring
at their own navels out of touch with global reality today.
(Disagree. Most vehemently.)
This is another divergence I have with Pollock (who btw is a very fine
Sanskrit scholar in terms of his competence).
They want to limit
Sanskrit to its old texts and not as a relevant way of thinking for
today's issues. This prevents the "Sanskrit threat" of challenging
ways of thinking. It gives Sanskrit a place of respect in a museum,
and not as a living language. When people have made feeble attempts to
bring Sanskrit based ideas into today's discourse, the same Pollock
types attack them as chauvinists. Well, how does one instill pride and
thereby boost a language, if anything positive is to be denied as
chauvinism? Why would anyone want to study a language deemed to be
filled with horrible things with nothing worthwhile for today's
predicaments? Pollock's own monograph titled, "The Death of Sanskrit"
many years ago played a role in perpetuating this idea of a dead
language.

Specifically, Sanskrit based science, mathematics, astronomy,
computational linguistics -- these are some of the examples of what
can be encouraged for today. But Western Sanskritists are not well
versed here, and feel threatened that indian technocrats will run
circles around them, so they dont encourage this kind of modernized
approach to sanskrit. <b>They like it as the romantic past of white
europeans,</b> now preserved in safe museums for posterity, but feel
threatened when it comes out alive and competes with Western epistemic
categories.

Pollock is not the issue here, and i use his name only because Tavleen
uses him. The problem is the entire establishment that controls the
demonology against Sanskrit which I explained in my article referenced
above.

regards,
rajiv

[acharya]

http://unjobs.org/authors/heinrich-von-stietencron

Authors ► Heinrich Von Stietencron
Heinrich Von Stietencron, in THE PREHISTORY OF ORIENTALISM: COLONIALISM AND THE TEXTUAL BASIS FOR ...
THE PREHISTORY OF ORIENTALISM: COLONIALISM AND THE TEXTUAL BASIS FOR ...
New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 6, 2 (December, 2004): 12-38. THE PREHISTORY OF ORIENTALISM: COLONIALISM AND THE TEXTUAL BASIS FOR BARTHOLOMÄUS ZIEGENBALG'S ACCOUNT OF HINDUISM WILL SWEETMAN1 University of Otago In the last years of the twentieth century, few topics were more widely discussed a... In the last years of the twentieth century, few topics were more widely ... Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, as well as S.N. Balagangadhara's The ...
http://www.otago.ac.nz/religiousstudies/wi...etman/nzjas/n...

Who Invented Hinduism?
Smith, and Heinrich von Stietencron. 3. W. C. Smith is sometimes identified, ... Take, for example, the comments of Heinrich von Stietencron: 12 ...
http://sahoo.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/w...vented-hindui...

Dileep Karanth - The Unity of India
You're visitor no.per Web-counter. HOME (svAbhinava) - send feedback (FAQ) ... Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1995). 20 ...
http://www.svabhinava.org/HinduCivilizatio...eepKaranth/Un...

The Divine Play on Earth
Dr. Heinrich von Stietencron, Department of Indolo ... Cornelia Mallebrein, Heinrich von Stietencron. The Divine Play on Earth ...
http://dig.imia.de/cms3_cust/fckeditor_fil...le/Aktuelle%2...

THE CHICAGO FORUM on PEDAGOGY and THE STUDY of RELIGION
A P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e M a r t i n M a r t y C e n t e r a t t h e U ... O V E R V I E W "Religion in the Liberal Arts: Reflections. on Teaching" ...
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/f...ships/chicago...

Theoretical Issues
To scholars like Heinrich von Stietencron, the earlier anthropologi ... and Its Wider Implications," in Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, eds. ...
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content...Images/Conten...

Introduction
... 1996), p. 6. See also Heinrich von Stietencron, Religious ... Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, eds., Representing Hinduism: The Construction of ...
http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/30614...rpt/978052183...

Exploring the Possibility of Hindu-Muslim Dialogue
Islam and Hinduism have been present in the Indian sub-continent for over ... and more recently as expressed in his response to Heinrich von Stietencron in his ...
http://www.interfaithdialog.org/old/Articles/Mitra.pdf

Are there "Human Rights" in Buddhism?
This article was first published in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics vol.2 1995 pp. ... Kueng, Hans, Josef Van Ess, Heinrich Von Stietencron, and ...
http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/jbe/acrobat/keown.pdf

[acharya]

The first such area is the concern of early European Orientalists, many
of them shaped by a Protestant culture, to establish a textual basis for
Hinduism. Many of the first direct translations from Sanskrit to modern
European languages were published by those connected with the British East
India Company’s establishment in Bengal.

Among these are Charles
Wilkins’s translation of the Bhagavad-Gītā (1785), William Jones’s
translations of the Gītagovinda, the Īśa Upaniṣad, some works of Kālidasā
and, most pertinently for Jones’s role as a judge, his translation of the
Manusmṛti under the title Institutes of Hindu Law: or, the Ordinances of
Menu (1794). While philological scholarship on Hinduism quickly
transcended its origins in British Orientalism in Bengal, the Company
continued, directly or indirectly, to support the publication of much of this
scholarship, including the Max Müller’s iconic critical edition of the Ṛg Veda
Saṃhitā.

While the concern to establish a textual basis for Hinduism is
attributable in part to the classical education and Protestant formation of most
of the Company’s servants, it seems clear that this was also driven by the
colonial state’s preference for written rather than oral authority.


Closely connected with this ‘textualization of Indian tradition’ was the
predominance in European constructions of Hinduism of the perspectives of
those who preserved and provided access to the texts whose authority was
both drawn upon and enhanced in this process. 2 At some significant points
the interests and the perspectives of the literate brāhmaṇa castes coincided
with those of European Orientalists, perhaps most obviously in the perception
of a general decline from an originally pure religion to which both the deist
inclinations of several early Orientalists and the purāṇic yuga theory
contributed. While the privileging of brahmanic perspectives is by no means
only a feature of the colonial era, recent scholarship has identified
colonialism as a significant factor in the reinforcement of their position and
the acceleration of the ‘brahmanization’ of Hindu society.


A third area in which European constructions of Hinduism have been
seen to be influenced by colonialism is in the identification of Vedānta, more
specifically Advaita Vedānta, as ‘the paradigmatic example of the mystical
nature of the Hindu religion’.3 Richard King reports the argument of
Niranjan Dhar that the reason for the choice of Vedānta as the ‘central
philosophy of the Hindus’ is to be found in fears of the spread of French
influence in British India and hopes that the supposed quietist and
conservative nature of Vedāntic thought would prevent the development of
revolutionary sentiment in the newly-established College of Fort William.

[acharya]

http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/24_2_PDFs/...tersen.pdf

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-"Sanku"+-->QUOTE("Sanku")<!--QuoteEBegin-->
<b>We are a country of sub-cultures that are inter-twined.</b>
Nice phrasing, and of course I concur.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The sub cultures were deepened by social engineering and ruling regimes used it for ruling the people. Historically the entire social interaction is horizontal. The entire social interaction and information about society was within the people and social leaders but was gradually taken over by the British(over 100 years).

This information flow was used for sociology studies and social changes without the Indians being aware of it. Sociology as a pseudo science is actually a news/information gather enterprise to control Indian society and Indian nation.

After independence the Indian govt continued the practice for social engineering and allowed media and foreign entities to manipulate and change the perception of one community vs the other community.

The Indian media is a product of this sociology studies and is being manipulated by foriegn entities and EJs groups.
Most of the Indian elite are unaware of this manipulation when they read the news and discuss the Indian society.

[acharya]

* JULY 31, 2009<b>

Hindu Headache</b>

By SALIL TRIPATHI THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA

Earlier this month, Burger King in Spain used an image of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, in promotional posters inside three restaurants. Few Hindus were likely to see those posters -- most of the world's Hindus live in India, where they form 81% of its population of one billion people. But several Hindu groups in the United States protested by writing to Burger King and publicizing their protest on the Internet, stressing, among other things, that Lakshmi's image should not be used to sell hamburgers because most Hindus are vegetarians.

Welcome to the new world of Hindu grievance politics. Some Hindus -- emphasis on "some" -- increasingly are voicing their displeasure with what they view as unfavorable or offensive depictions of their religion in business and popular culture. Targets have included rock star Madonna for sporting a bindi, a decorative dot, on her forehead -- which married Hindu women traditionally wear. Rock group Aerosmith came in for criticism over a 1997 CD cover for its album "Nine Lives," in which the Hindu god Krishna's face was replaced with that of a cat. So too an episode in the TV series "Xena: The Warrior Princess" where the princess seeks Krishna's help to fight rivals.

Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, is behind many of these efforts. Since being invited to offer a Hindu prayer at the U.S. Senate in 2007 -- the first Hindu priest to do so -- he has used his nationwide prominence in the U.S. to become the spokesman for the aggrieved Hindu and a guardian of the faith. Nor is Mr. Zed alone. Over the past decade, many Hindus outside India have actively campaigned against representations of their faith they don't like. In the U.S., these include the Forum for Hindu Reawakening, the Texas-based Vedic Foundation, the Hindu Anti-Defamation Coalition and the Hindu Education Foundation. In Britain, the Hindu Human Rights Forum has campaigned against art works that the organization claims depict Hinduism in a poor light. These and other such groups are informally associated with the World Hindu Council, based in India.

The trend is even touching the academy. The Vedic Foundation and the Hindu American Foundation have been quarreling with California's state education board over a curriculum they say portrays Hinduism "negatively" and "inaccurately" over the position of women in the faith and treatment of different castes. Meanwhile, more than 2,000 Hindus petitioned the Library of Congress to oppose the nomination of Romila Thapar, a distinguished Indian historian, to the Kluge Chair for the Countries and Cultures of the South. Her intellectual "crime" is to have conducted research that challenges Hindu nationalist views about the relationship between Hindus, Christians and Muslims.

The Library ignored Ms. Thapar's opponents, showing such protests don't always bear fruit. But other times they do -- and inside India itself, Hindu protests can turn violent. Consider the case of Macalester College religious studies professor James W. Laine, who wrote a book in 2003, challenging traditional views about the family life of Shivaji, the 16th-century Maratha warrior king. The Sambhaji Brigade (named after Shivaji's son) in India in 2004 assaulted Mr. Laine's research associate Shrikant Bahulkar and destroyed rare manuscripts at the institute in India where Mr. Laine had conducted his primary research.

The politics of nationalism also play a part. While Hindus abroad generally have avoided debates about identity politics, some activists have started noticing the attention other faiths are demanding -- and receiving. If newspapers outside India pay heed to Muslim concerns and avoid republishing the Danish cartoons; if governments ban Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" and publishers drop plans to distribute Sherry Jones's "The Jewel of Medina;" if Jewish groups vigilantly pursue Holocaust deniers; and if Christian groups can challenge films like "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons," why can't Hindus assert themselves too?

The image of Hindus abroad is hardly going to improve if they take offense at every hamburger ad or movie poster, or whenever a rock star adopts Hindu or Indian cultural practices. It only makes them appear hypersensitive, hurting the image of Hindus far more than a Burger King poster does. Hindus would do better by developing the kind of self confidence that will allow them to take in stride any slights the world wants to throw their way.

Mr. Tripathi, a writer based in London, is the author of "Taking Offense: The Hindu Case" (Seagull Books/University of Chicago Press, 2009).

[dhu]

Response to the Salil Tripathi article

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Salil Tripathi argues in the "Hindu Headache" (Taste, July 31) that the Hindu American Foundation and other groups that promote religious understanding and pluralism "appear hypersensitive" because they speak out against misportrayal of Hindu beliefs and practices.

The Hindu American Foundation prevailed on Sept. 1, 2006, in its lawsuit against the California State Board of Education, where the court ruled the state had singled out Hindus in its social studies textbooks. The Southern Poverty Law Center bankrupted the Ku Klux Klan through such litigation through the 1970s, '80s and early '90s.

Danish cartoons led to killings, mass riots and chaos in some Muslim countries. Given that, it is incredible to see Mr. Tripathi demean the legal and advocacy work of the Hindu American Foundation and other such groups as hurting the "image of Hindus abroad" and advise Hindus to "take in stride any slights the world wants to throw their way."

Sheetal Shah

Director of Development
Hindu American Foundation
New York <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[ramana]

Sheetal Shah was the one Obama wanted to appoint to his Admin till she got sabotaged by secular groups on East Coast.

[dhu]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->*  Religion is an account of the Cosmos that claims to be handed over to mankind by the Creator of the Cosmos. It is an explanatory account of the Cosmos in the sense that it claims that the universe is caused by God. But religion is more than a causal explanation of the universe. It is an account that makes the universe intelligible, that is, religion makes the universe into the embodiment of Gods Will. The universe (including all events) is not only caused by God, it is also the purpose of God: things do not only happen because God caused them, but because Gods wants them to happen. Or, in other words, things do not just happen, they happen because they were intended to happen.
   
* Hence, to be religious requires more than the belief in God as the Creator of the universe, it requires faith in Gods Will as embodying the purpose of the universe.

* As an an explanatorily intelligible account of the universe religion turns the universe into such an entity. It inculcates the experience of the universe as embodying a particular kind of order. This order is hidden and consists of the fact that phenomena express a deep underlying constancy. This constancy is the Will of the Creator.
   
* When religion states that everything in the universe is the expression of Gods purpose, this also holds for itself. In other words, religion is what it says about the universe and about itself. For humans this poses the problem of circularity - what someone says about himself is not necessarily what he is - but not for religion. Indeed, religion is not part of human reasoning, but an expression of the Will of the Creator. Hence, when studying religion human beings can not accept religion's self-description, or they will be engaging in theology. This is precisely what has happened in the study of religion untill now: the study of religion(s) has been fundamentally shaped by the Christian religion's self-description. The language of religion - Christian theology - has become the language in which is spoken of all cultures, and their "religions": religion has become its own meta-language.
   
* As fundamentally requiring belief and faith, religion shapes our goings about in the world: it makes us see actions as expressions of belief. In this way, religion creates a specific way of going about in the world, and of learning to go about: religion generates a configuration of learning. It teaches (the need) to know before one acts: as creatures (of God) one can not just act, one needs to know about the world (or about Gods intentions with His Creation) before one can act. The underlying idea is that acts have to be coherent with what there is in the world - one has to be true to his faith, one has to enact the Word.
   
* As embodying the Will of the Creator religion must become universal. Hence, religion is destined to proselytize. However, religion must also secularize. To accomplish its mission for mankind religion must not only spread horizontally, but also 'vertically'. Religion needs to acquire a less abstract form, it has to secularize its religious way of going about in the world. In short, the univerzalisation of religion is propelled by both proselytization and secularization. Balagangadhara calls this the double dynamic of religion.
   
* Secularism is a typically Western, religious entity: it arose in the West in the context of rejection of the religious command that mortals should submit to Gods Wil. Moreover, secularism built extensively on the critiques of Catholic practice by the Protestant Reformation, and on the latter Protestant work ethic. True to the religious way of going about, Protestantism(s) accused Catholicism of having a false religious practice, that is, they were accused of having a practice that is not in accordance with true faith, i.e. with Gods Will as revealed in His Word. Protestantism(s) proceeded then to reform this false practice and proclaimed its/their own practice as the true Christian faith. Secularization then further de-Christianized Protestant faith and enabled religion to take another step towards universalization.
   
* Not having received the explanatorily intelligible account of the Cosmos from the Creator, whatever there exist in the east are not religions. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, though it is said they are religions, don't exist in India. They are products of Western academics and missionaries who took the religious account of the Cosmos for universal truth: as religion states that the whole universe is created by God, this implies that religion is a cultural universal. Yet, this reasoning is part of the account that is religion, and belongs exclusively to Abrahamic entities.
   
* Religion is an entity that is not proper to Asia. The Hindu, Buddhist and Jain way of going about in the world was not shaped by an explanatorily intelligible account of the Cosmos or by a religious configuration of learning, but by the description of the Cosmos as ritual, offers Balagangadhara.
   
* (Comparative) Religious studies can only have Abrahamic religions as their object of study: religious studies dealing with non-Abrahamic cultures are de facto theological. To break out of this theological trap, the study of different societies will have to be pursued from the viewpoint of culture, taking into account that some peoples' culture is shaped by the dynamic of religion, and other peoples' culture is not.
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[dhu]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Christian socialists draw parallels between what some have characterized as the egalitarian and anti-establishment message of Jesus, who–according to the Gospel–spoke against the religious authorities of his time, and the egalitarian, anti-establishment, and sometimes anti-clerical message of most contemporary socialisms. <b>Some Christian Socialists have gone as far as to become active Communists. This phenomenon was most common among missionaries in China, the most notable being James Gareth Endicott, who became supportive of the struggle of the Communist Party of China in the 1930s and 1940s.</b>

Wiki<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->