Source

INDIA, March 22, 2013 (The Hindu): More than 100 million people from across the world, including 10 million from India, would like to move permanently to the U.S., which remains the most popular global destination, according to a latest opinion poll. Potential migrants who would like to move to the U.S. are logically the most likely to come from some of the most populous countries in the world, the Gallup poll said. The poll said that 19 million Chinese would like to move to the U.S., followed by 13 million from Nigeria, 10 million from India and six million each from Brazil and Bangladesh.

However, other populous countries such as Iran and Pakistan do not have large groups of people who say that they would like to move to the U.S. permanently. This is not surprising, as Iranians and Pakistanis have some of the lowest U.S. leadership approval ratings in the world. Gallup said about 13 per cent of the world's adults

Source

True gurus are available in every religion. They may not be in the ordinary world of strife, for such a world does not want them, nor have they any use for it. Go, therefore, in search of a true master. He is ever available and is only waiting for a symptom of real earnestness in you. If you have true humility and earnestness to see God, he will solve all your doubts and show you God in no time at all.
-- Jagadguru Sri Chandrasekhara Bharati (1912-1954), 34th pontiff of the Sarada Peetham

Source

BANGLADESH, March 20, 2013 (The Daily Star): Yet again religious fanatics have attacked temples, houses and shops of Hindus in four districts. Since Jamaat leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee was handed down a death sentence in a war crimes case on February 28, more than 26 temples, 175 houses and dozens of shops of the minorities across the country have been vandalized, torched and looted.

Basudev Dhar, president of Greater Dhaka Puja Committee, yesterday said these communal attacks were demoralizing many Hindu families. "The leaders and members of parliament have not stood by the Hindus the way they should have," he said. "In the past," he added, "we have resisted such attacks together."

In Khulna, over 150 people equipped with iron rods and other lethal weapons attacked Banikpara Pabla Sarbojonin Kalibari Mandir around 9:00pm Monday. The rioters also attacked Gachtala temple. Over 50 Hindu homes and shops adjacent to the two temples were vandalized and torched. According to locals, law enforcers did not come on time to prevent the attacks.

Meanwhile, police have arrested two people, Humayun Kabir, 26, and Arman, 18, in this connection, said ASI Anwar Hossain of Daulatpur Police Station. The identities of the arrestees could not be known immediately.

In Netrakona, rioters vandalized Hari Mandir in Bobahala village under sadar upazila, damaging seven statues. Also on Monday night, vandals damaged four statues of Hindu goddesses at Kripamoyee Kali Mandir under Sripur upazila in Gazipur.

Source

MALAYSIA, March 18, 2013 (Khabar Southasia): Planning the first Hindu temple in Putrajaya has required patience, perseverance and faith on the part of Kanagaraja Raman, president of the Federal Territories Maha Mariamman Devasthanam Devotees Association. Submission plans alone cost the association RM 180,000 ($58,000). According to Kanagaraja, they were rejected three times due to their initial failure to meet requirements for building height, built-up area, fire safety, sewerage, facilities for the disabled, among other reasons.

Before Malaysia began developing its gleaming new administrative city in 1999, the area - about 15.5 miles south of Kuala Lumpur - was known as Prang Besar and home to vast palm oil estates. Clearing the plantations meant demolishing some 15 Hindu temples built by plantation workers, predominantly ethnic Indian Malaysians, who make up about 8% of the country's population.

It took seven years before Kanagaraja got the nod in September 2012 from Putrajaya Corporation, an agency under the Ministry of Federal Territories and Urban Wellbeing. The only hurdle remaining is funding for the temple's construction, estimated at RM 9m ($2.9m). So far, devotees have pledged RM 200,000 ($64,500). A fundraising drive, scheduled to kick off later this month, will hopefully raise more. There are hopes the federal government will also chip in.

Five of the temples pooled their compensation monies and built the new Sri Mahamariamman Temple, completed in 2011, in Taman Permata, Dengkil, located 8 miles away from Putrajaya. But according to Kanagaraja, a plot for a new Hindu house of worship was included in Putrajaya's development blueprint. And the proposed temple site sits amidst a green landscape of plots allocated for churches and Chinese temples that are still empty.

The Hindu community is confident of its right to a temple in the seat of government in Muslim Malaysia. A letter of support bearing 200 signatures from the Hindu community sits on Kanagaraja's desk, spurring him through difficult days. Meanwhile, the association committee is pondering how the new temple will serve the 10,000 Hindus in the area. Karunagaran says it will save devotees a 30 minute-drive to Dengkil.

Kanagaraja said the new temple will be built in honour of Lalithambikai, the Hindu Goddess who oversees all of life's needs, on the spot where a forest ranger once found an injured eagle and nursed it back to life. The eagle is believed to be the Goddess' mode of transportation. Kanagaraja takes it as a sign that she has chosen to reside in Putrajaya. "I have faith that Lalithambikai will pave the path for this temple. If she has chosen to make this place her home, she will provide the means," he said.

Source

At this time in the Kali Yuga, ignorance is equally distributed worldwide, and wisdom has become an endangered species.
-- Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (1927-2001), founder of Hinduism Today

Source

NEW DELHI, INDIA, March 15, 2013 (Greater Kashmir): Government today ruled out granting refugee status to Pakistani Hindu immigrants who have crossed over to India to escape persecution there. "At the moment, we cannot grant them refugee status," Minister of State for Home Mullappally Ramachandran said replying to a discussion on a private members' resolution in the Lok Sabha. He, however, said no Pakistani national, whose application for long-term visa was under consideration of government, would be deported to Pakistan.

The Minister also listed a number of steps taken by the government since 1955 to address matters related to persons displaced from Pakistan. The resolution on "Formulation of an Action Plan to Rehabilitate Persons Displaced from Pakistan," moved by Arjun Ram Meghwal (BJP), was negatived after being put to voice vote. As per convention, a member withdraws the resolution after the reply by the Minister. Meghwal insisted that his conscience did not permit him to follow the convention as he was not satisfied with the Minister's reply.

Source

PATHANAMTHITTA, INDIA, March 17, 2013 (The Hindu): A two-day intensive cleaning drive launched by the Amala Bharatam volunteers of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math at Sabarimala came to a close on Sunday afternoon.

Math sources said 1,529 Amala Bharatam volunteers were deployed for the cleaning program at the Sannidhanam, while 1,219 volunteers, a majority of them women, took part in the sanitation drive at Pampa.

The volunteers cleaned the Valiya Nadappanthal, Bhasmakkulam, Gosala and surroundings, donor houses, pilgrim shelters, toilets, bathrooms, Devaswom mess and surroundings, Aravana plant, Paandithavalom, Marakkoottom and Saramkuthi on the trekking path.

A total of 10,000 bags of waste, besides seven truckloads of other solid waste such as rags collected from the riverbed and the riverbanks, were removed from Pampa on Sunday.

The Amala Bharatam volunteer force comprises devotees of spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi and students from various educational institutions attached to the Math.

Source

Hinduism does not see sins, but only mistakes.
-- Mother Sarada Devi, as quoted by Swami Gautamananda

Source

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, March 15, 2013 (New York Times, by Amy Karafin): My two-week trip here last June was my second visit to the Jaffna Peninsula, a 400-square-mile expanse of Technicolor temples and arid, surreally beautiful landscapes in northern Sri Lanka that have only recently opened to tourists after a 26-year civil war. I had traveled there in 2011 to research a guidebook, but that trip had been packed with activity; this time I wanted to explore the area at my own pace. So, basing myself in a guesthouse in the capital of Jaffna on the peninsula's southwest coast, I returned to linger in the region's temples and visit the tiny islands offshore.

One of the first things I did was hire a car and driver and travel 10 miles to the Maviddapuram Kandaswamy Temple, where I had received a warm welcome from the priest's family on my previous visit. Reminders of the war were all around. As we drove through the village of Maviddapuram, we passed abandoned houses; vegetation grew in former living rooms and banyan trees spilled over walls.

The temple itself had been hit hard during the war and is still being reconstructed. Much of the 17th-century structure that once stood there is gone, though its ornate 108-foot gopuram (tower), covered in sculptured Gods, has been rebuilt. Over and over again I would see evidence of the civil war, which began in 1983 and continued until 2009. During that time, militants seeking a separate Tamil state in the north and east (an area including the largely Tamil Jaffna peninsula) were pitted against the government, which had, since independence from the British in 1948, become dominated by pro-Sinhalese policies.

Two miles down the road, Maviddapuram's sister temple, the ancient Naguleswaram Shiva Temple, has also been renewed: its interior now gleams with a thousand colors, and its sacred Keerimalai Spring is full of bathers seeking the mineral water's healing powers. Guidebooks from 10 years ago mention that visitors may, if they are lucky, visit the spring after military searches and with an armed escort. But now travelers can go, as I did, escort-free, and, float in the pools (there is one just for women), thinking about the Tamil princess who discovered the sacred spring in the seventh century.

Elsewhere on the peninsula, damage from the war is also obvious, including in Jaffna, the largest city in the region, with a population of around 90,000. During the war, the capital, which is the spiritual and intellectual heart of Sri Lanka's Tamil people, was caught in the cross-fire between the separatists and the government, neither of which fully represented its aspirations. Many believe that even though the fighting has ended, the disenfranchisement of Tamils from the political process continues.

Much more of this interesting travelogue at source above.

Source

BANGLADESH, March 16,2 013 (bdnews24): Miscreants vandalized a Saraswati statue at a temple beside the residence of ruling-party Member of Parliament (MP) Mohammad Atiur Rahman Atique in Sherpur city's Madhabpur. The Madhabpur Puja Temple committee informed the police about the incident that took place on Friday night. Hindus have been offering prayers at this temple for the past 77 years, said the temple committee Chief Dilip Kumar Paul. "Vandalism was conducted to dent the communal harmony."

"Whoever is responsible... they will be identified and arrested," said Sherpur Sadar Police Station Officer in-Charge Mazharul Karim. Suspected Jamaat-e-Islami activists had been carrying out vandalism and attacks on the Hindus in several areas of Bangladesh over the issue of trial of war criminals.

Source

Anger is nothing but an attachment for an object, when expressed towards an obstacle between ourselves and the object of our attachment.
-- Swami Chinmayananda (1916-1993), founder of Chinmaya Mission

Source

MUMBAI, INDIA, March 16, 2013 (Times of India): (HPI Note: We are astounded as you are by this report. Perhaps one of our readers can explain what this is about. It appears that the Shiv Mandir trust itself made the claim that Shiva worship is not a religious act in order to receive a tax exemption, and that the Tax Tribunal agreed with them.)

Lord Shiva, Hanuman and Goddess Durga do not represent any particular religion but are regarded as supernatural powers of the universe, the Nagpur income tax appellate tribunal has said. The observation came when the tribunal was hearing an appeal by Nagpur-based Shiv Mandir Devstan Panch Committee Sanstan against an income tax commissioner's order denying it tax exemption on grounds that more than 5% of its expenditure was incurred on religious activities. The I-T act stipulates that for the purpose of tax exemption, an institution or trust must not be for the benefit of any particular religious community or caste. Differing with the I-T commissioner's order, the tribunal said, "Expenses on worshipping of Lord Shiva, Hanuman, Goddess Durga and on maintenance of the temple cannot be regarded as having been incurred for religious purposes."

The tribunal went on to say that Hinduism was neither a religion nor a community. It consisted of a number of communities having different Gods worshipped in different ways. Even the worship of God wasn't not essential for a person who had adopted the Hindu way of life, it said. "Hinduism holds within its fold men of divergent views and traditions who have very little in common except a vague faith in what may be called as the fundamentals of Hinduism," the tribunal observed.

According to it, the word "community: meant people living in the same place, under the same laws and regulations and who have common rights and privileges. This may apply to Christianity or Islam but not to Hinduism. "Technically, Hinduism is neither a religion nor a community," the tribunal said.

In 2008, the sanstan had spent US$1,535 on maintenance of its building, providing free food, festival prayers, training people in tailoring and yoga, and free distribution of spectacles. The I-T commissioner had said that expenses for building maintenance, providing free food, festival prayers and daily expenses related to "religious purposes." This added up to more than 5% of the organization's expenditure. Only $124 was spent on non-religious activities, the taxman said. The sanstan had countered this, saying its temple was open to everybody, irrespective of caste and creed. "The temple does not belong to a particular religion. Installing idols is not a religious activity," the counsel for the sanstan said.

The I-T tribunal's accountant member K Bansal and judicial member D. T. Garasia agreed. They said the word "religion" meant belief in, and worship of, a "superhuman controlling power," a particular system of faith and worship.

"It means the trust should not be for the benefit of any particular group of persons having common belief in worshipping of superhuman controlling power or having common system of faith and worship. If the trust is for the benefit of any particular religious community, it would include the advancement, support or propagation of a religion," they said, adding that no evidence or material had been placed on record to prove that the sanstan was promoting a particular religion.

Source

NEW YORK, U.S., January 17, 2013 (Washington Post): When Uma Mysorekar looks at the members of the new Congress, the Indian immigrant and practicing Hindu can see that, for the first time, there's someone who shares her ethnicity and someone who shares her faith. To her surprise, they are two different people.

Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is the first practicing Hindu elected to Congress. Rep. Ami Bera of California, also a Democrat, is the third Indian American to serve in the House. Gabbard, however, isn't from India, where Hinduism originated and to which the vast majority of its adherents have ethnic ties. Bera is a Unitarian.

His two Indian American predecessors in Congress, Dalip Singh Saund and Bobby Jindal, also were not practicing Hindus. The late Saund, a California Democrat elected in 1956, was Sikh. Jindal, a Republican elected to the House in 2004 who is now Louisiana's governor, is Catholic.

Gabbard's presence in Congress creates an interesting moment for Hindus in the United States, a chance to celebrate a barrier broken but also a topic of discussion as they ponder how closely religion and nationality are entwined, or whether they even should be.

Gabbard "is a Hindu representative. It doesn't matter where she came from," said Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, a temple in the New York borough of Queens that is one of the country's oldest.

According to an analysis issued last month by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, there are about 1 billion Hindus in the world. Of those, 94 percent are in India, and 99 percent in the larger South Asia region. The analysis, based on data from 2010, the latest available, estimated the population of Hindus in the United States at 1.79 million. Most are of Indian descent.

More at source above.

Source

There is one thing God cannot do He cannot separate Himself from the soul.
-- Siva Yogaswami of Jaffna (1872-1964)

Source

KATHMANDU, NEPAL, March 10, 2013 (My Republica): Around one million Hindu pilgrims visited the Pashupatinath temple on the occasion of Mahashivaratri in the Capital on Sunday. The officials of Pashupati Area Development Trust (PADT) said that more Hindu devotees from several other Asian countries visited the temple this year as a result of the positive impression it created about the festival months in advance. Though most of the foreign Hindu devotees came from neighboring India, pilgrims from as far as Malaysia, Singapore, Maldives and Bangladesh also arrived in large numbers this time, said PADT member secretary Sushil Nahata.

However, the festival saw fewer yogis and sadhus compared to the past years. Nahata said that only around 3,000 to 5,000 sadhus and Naga babas visited the temple this year due to the ongoing Kumbha Mela in India. Some 7,000 babas had visited Pashupatinath last year. The PADT had created three entry points for the visitors from Tilganga, Gaushala and Mitrapark. The traffic police had been deployed in the area to restrict vehicles, which were diverted. The trust made special arrangements this year, adding a number of temporary toilets, health camps and tents especially for elderly and the people with disability.