Source: Stars and Stripes Magazine CAMP FOSTER, OKINAWA, JAPAN, April 13, 2002: Okinawa’s small American Hindu population meets twice a week on US military bases to get in touch with their spirituality. Chaturbhuj N. Gidwani helped establish a Hindu study group at Kadena Air Base and Camp Foster after moving to Okinawa, Japan, six months ago. “There are many people…
GO TO SOURCE SINGAPORE, April 20, 2002: L. F. Yong starts digging bodies just after dawn. On an average day, Yong and his team of 20 workers will have cracked open 40 graves and emptied them of their bones by noon. Yong is responsible for the hands-on work behind a government project to clear the Bidadari Cemetery, one of the…
GO TO SOURCE AHMADABAD, INDIA, April 22, 2002: Two people were killed Monday in religious strife between Hindus and Muslims in western India, bring to 20 the number of dead in two days of clashes. At least 105 have been injured since Sunday. Several neighborhoods in Ahmadabad, the commercial hub of the state of Gujarat, were under siege Monday as…
Source: Japan Times TOKYO, JAPAN, April 10, 2002: An exhibition called “Gods Derived From India to Japan” is showing at the Okura Shukokan Museum of Fine Arts until May 26. The story behind the showing is a fascinating one. It all started 51 years ago when Toshio Yamanouchi’s job took him to India as general manager for an iron importer…
GO TO SOURCE HALIFAX, CANADA, April 14, 2002: The Hindu Temple-Vedanta Ashram Society in Halifax is disheartened. Working in conjunction with the Interfaith Council of Halifax, the society had started a program to feed and clothe needy children in Halifax. After purchasing a van in June of 2000 and stocking it with toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap and clothes, the program called…
GO TO SOURCE PUNE, INDIA, April 5, 2002: According to this article, Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas, is being neglected in its own motherland. Hema Kshirsagar who has been studying the problems in teaching Sanskrit in schools for the last nine years says, “There is hardly any emphasis on Sanskrit, either from the state education department or the boards.”…
GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, April 19, 2002: India’s military research industry is to launch experiments with yoga to sharpen the skills of troops in modern warfare and help cope with the stress of battling domestic insurgencies. For the first time journalists were taken on a tour of one of the military’s top research facilities, the Defence Institute of…
GO TO SOURCE BANGLADESH, April 19, 2002: A gang of land-grabbers has started demolishing a 100-year-old “abandoned” Hindu temple at Rankin Street at Wari in the name of building a primary school. Walls and columns around the temple, which should otherwise be preserved as a historical relic, have already been demolished. Haji Abdur Rab, who lives next door and also…
GO TO SOURCE BANGKOK, THAILAND, April 20, 2002: Bangkok authorities will distribute 100,000 vials of 100-year-old holy water from a Hindu temple to celebrate the city’s 220th anniversary this weekend, a religious leader said Saturday. The distribution of the holy water at a ceremony Sunday is intended to recreate a ritual performed at the city’s founding, when religious figures spread…
GO TO SOURCE GUJARAT, INDIA, April 19, 2002: Thousands of Muslim students in the western Indian state of Gujarat did not attend school-leaving exams which began on Thursday, Muslim leaders said. They said parents refused to let their children travel to exam centers located in Hindu-dominated areas of the state’s largest city Ahmedabad and a number of other cities. Authorities…