GO TO SOURCE JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, May 8, 2002: Deshanya Thambi has founded the first Hindu Student Society at Rand Afrikaans University, dispelling the perception that you need to be a white Afrikaner to feel at home on campus. The 22-year-old BCom student says Hindus have always wanted a society of their own, but complacently accepted that they were not…
GO TO SOURCE DELHI, INDIA, May 7, 2002: Ten years after India ratified a UN convention pledging to protect children’s rights, the country continues to be home to the world’s largest number of child laborers. It is believed there are up to 100 million children working in homes, factories, shops, fields, brothels and on the streets of rural and urban…
GO TO SOURCE KATHMANDU, NEPAL, May 8, 2002: More than 240 police, soldiers and rebels have been killed in fresh violence in Nepal, as Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba said he had secured US support for his crackdown against the Maoist insurgency. Some 140 Nepalese police and soldiers were killed when guerrillas surrounded a joint army-police security post set up…
GO TO SOURCE WASHINGTON, USA, May 8, 2002: The Bush White House fleetingly turned its attention to India’s neighbor Nepal, where a Maoist insurgency that daily kills ten times as many victims as in the Middle-East goes largely unnoticed by the outside world. But the US administration is concerned by developments in the Himalayan kingdom and President Bush invited the…
GO TO SOURCE EDISON, NEW JERSEY, April 20, 2002: Children of Edison Balagokulam were challenged to come up with a Ramayama play to be held during the second anniversary celebration of a monthly Ramayana paat held in New Jersey. The event was seen as an opportunity for the children to become familiar with characters in the Ramayana and to use…
GO TO SOURCE JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, May 8, 2002: India’s top fashion designer, Jagsharan Jit Singh Valaya, took center stage this week at an exclusive exhibition of bridal garments at the Sandton Convention Centre. Known in the industry as J J, the 35-year-old Rajasthan-born fashion guru opened the Weddings, Glamour and Beauty Expo on Friday night with a stunning collection…
GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, April 8, 2002: The Voice of India has released “Ayodhya, The Case Against the Temple,” by Belgium scholar Koenraad Elst. The book deals with the debate over whether or note a Hindu temple actually existed at the place known as Ramjanmabhoomi, or the birthplace of Lord Rama, in Ayodhya. Elst, who specializes in Hindu…
GO TO SOURCE THIRUVANTHAPURAM, KERALA, INDIA, May 6, 2002: This southern state of India is about to get a Christian and a Muslim TV channel in a few months. It could be a difficult venture, the local Marxists have lost a great deal of money on their Kairali channel. “In Gujarat we are suffering from mixing politics with religion,” a…
GO TO SOURCE GUJARAT, INDIA, May 7, 2002: A force of 1,000 specially-trained riot police is to be deployed in the troubled western Indian state of Gujarat. These men have been specifically trained to tackle the kind of situation that persists in Gujarat. A spokesman for the Gujarat Government told the BBC that 1,000 commandos from the northern state of…
GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, May 8, 2002: This front page report in the Times of India begins, “Expressing concern over the riots in Gujarat, a blue ribbon US panel that examines issues of religious freedom has urged the Bush administration to lean on the Indian government to resolve contentious domestic issues like the Ayodhya dispute. … The Commission…