UNITED STATES, November 7, 2023 (BBC): For many businesses, holiday spending is a major part of Q4 revenue – think Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Kwanzaa. Now, as it gains national recognition, US merchants are increasingly embracing Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, for its commercial potential. While every region in India has traditions for commemorating this holiday, most celebrants broadly…
TIBET, November 3, 2023 (Lad Bible by Joe Harker): Mount Kailash is a couple of thousand feet shorter than Everest, but nobody’s ever made it up the mountain. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, Kailash is a pretty difficult to reach part of the world, and the physical challenge of getting there and actually climbing the mountain is seen…
INDIA, November 1, 2023 (Scroll by Minakshi Dewan): Hindus form the majority of the Indian population. According to Hindu traditions, the body is cremated using wood in an open pyre. However, some families choose incinerators that run on electricity or Compressed Natural Gas. For an open-pyre cremation, one needs large quantities of wood – close to 882 to 1323 pounds.…
NEW DELHI, INDIA, Nov 6, 2023 (India Today): The Amarnath cave shrine in Jammu and Kashmir has been made accessible by motorable road for the first time. The road expansion project (from a narrower track for traveling on foot and by horse) from Dumail to the Amarnath cave was completed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO). This move is expected…
KAUAI, HAWAII, October 26, 2023 (Press Release): Over the years we have released short videos chronicling the all-stone Iraivan Temple’s origins and progress. Forty-eight years have passed since the late Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami’s initial vision of God Siva to begin the process, and 33 years since the first granite stone block was chiseled in Bengaluru, India. After the soft-opening consecration…
ORLANDO, FLORIDA, November 1, 2023 (New India Abroad): Over 400 young dancers from all over the United States gathered at Disney Springs and Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park in October for the first-ever Youth Celebration of Diwali, presented by Jashn Productions. The three-day dance festival was directed by Jashn Productions’ Jeanie Beri and was a visual and auditory feast. “Bringing…
THAILAND, October 29, 2023 (SCMP): As visitors enter Bangkok’s Grand Palace, they pass supernatural security guards. Standing inside the main entrance of the royal complex in the Thai capital are two towering statues, each with sharp fangs protruding from their mouths and clubs in their grip. They not only embody the colorful excess which makes the site so photogenic, but…
GOA, INDIA, June 10, 2022 (Outlook): The violent colonial past of Goa has resurfaced as the present chief ministers seeks to undo the wrongs of the Portuguese military and Catholic church. in an orchestrated bid to correct past religious wrongs, the Goa government’s latest but still undefined thrust on reconstruction of temples destroyed during the early colonial Portuguese regime. In…
UNITED STATES, October 24, 2023 (RNS): The garba, a folk dance from western India once performed by women at home to celebrate the Hindu Goddess Durga, has improbably inspired Bollywood-sized performances at social gatherings and competitions in the United States. The garba originated in Gujarat, the state along India’s western coast, as part of celebrations of the holiday of Dussehra…
BANGLADESH, October 25, 2023 (Dhaka Tribune): Durga Puja, the biggest festival of Bangali Hindus, comes to an end with solemn immersion of the Goddess Durga in Dhaka and other districts in Bangladesh. Devotees are seen bidding farewell to the mother Deity and her children — Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kartik and Ganesh — through the immersion of their statues in the water…
