Indian Hindu Research Articles

Kipling's Encounters with Buddhism and the Buddhist Orient: ‘The Twain Shall Meet’?

If one concern of cultural history is to reconstruct the ‘mental maps’ through which people under study orientated themselves in their specific worlds, then Kipling’s attitude towards Buddhism and the Buddhist Orient may be said to have served as such a mental map, and deserves the attention of cultural historians. 1 If international relations is seen as ‘intercultural relations’ and reflecting ‘culture and power’, the argument of Akira Iriye, 2 then Kipling’s views on Buddhism and the Buddhist Orient illustrate a facet of the international relations of his day, and deserve the attention of cultural historians. Rudyard Kipling’s famous refrain ‘East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’ from The Ballad of East and West (1889) subsequently became common shorthand for signifying cross-cultural divide. Kipling is also well known for his political advocacy of Western imperialism: in 1900 he was already dubbed the ‘Poet of the Empire’ by Walter Besant. 3 In terms of Asia this imperial advocacy applies for his treatment of India; including the Bengali babu, the Indian Congress Party, Hindus and Hinduism, which Kipling dismissed in no uncertain terms. However, in terms of Asia outside India, this type of Western supremacism breaks down in the face of Kipling’s varied unexpectedly positive encounters with Buddhism. This is the focus of this article, Kipling’s encounters with Buddhism. It does this through close scrutiny of the appearance of Buddhism in Kipling’s stories, letters, travel accounts and reminiscences. Such a range of material involves problematic questions of text and context, use and misuse of sources, construction-deconstruction-reconstruction of ideas, colonial and post-colonial interpretation.

Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations

Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations

Spondyloepiphyseal Dysplasia Tarda with Progressive Arthropathy': In 3 siblings with unusual Association

We report a case series of Spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia tarda with progressive arthropathy SEDT-PA in three siblings. SPEDT-PAis a rare autosomal recessive skeletal dysplasia affecting primarily the articular cartilage with characteristic skeletal abnormalities notably in the spine. First reported by Wynne-Davies et al. who estimated its prevalence to be about 3.4 per million population and an incidence of 1 per 100000 1. live births Because of its striking resemblance to juvenile rheumatoid arthritis it has various synonyms like progressive pseudorheumatoid 2. arthropathy of childhood PPAC and progressive pseudorheumatoid dysplasia PPDA MIM No. 208230 In the present context we present three affected siblings of an inbred south Indian Hindu family with one of them having an unique association of Pierre Robin sequence PRS.

Book Review: Pyong Gap Min: Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America

This important book is animated by the author’s suspicion that Protestant religion may not function for Korean Americans the way the literature claims Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism did for past waves of immigrants from Europe, namely to preserve their ethnicity. The chief reason is that Protestantism is alien, not indigenous, to Korean culture. Min resourcefully puts this intuition to empirical test by contrasting the ethnic consciousness of Korean Protestant and Indian Hindu immigrants in New York across both the first and second generations, under the very reasonable premise that Hinduism is thoroughly indigenous to India. This ambitious research plan entailed questionnaire surveys, personal interviews and site visits enlisting the talents of many Korean and Indian students at Queens College and the City University of New York. The methods and findings are documented in sufficient detail that the book should be considered required reading for researchers in religion race, ethnicity and immigration in the U.S. But first it is necessary to dispose of the issue of what the literature claims. As indicated by his title, Min is under the impression that religion in the U.S. has been supposed to preserve ethnicity. That is not what I interpret one of Min’s touchstone texts, namely Herberg’s Protestant, Catholic, Jew, to say, nor, as a contributor to the literature, what I have myself proposed. As implied by his ‘‘triple melting pot’’ thesis, Herberg claimed that ethnicity over time ‘‘transmuted’’ into religion, so that by the third European American generation, the primary residue of immigrants’ culture that would be available to their grandchildren to embrace would, in fact, be their religion. In my own work, I have proposed that religion in the U.S. is uniquely situated for the expression of post-1965 immigrants’ home country culture but that their children typically have much less interest in home country ways and often more interest in religion, which they may perceive as a less parochial, more universalistic identity. So, if it turns out that second generation Korean Protestants

Interpersonal attraction and religious identification: a comparative analysis of Muslims and Hindus in India

This study compared whether an individual is more likely to perceive interpersonal attraction toward a member of his/her own or a different religious group. Self-identified Hindus (N=526) and self-identified Muslims (N=301) in India participated in the study. Results indicate members of a religious group (Hindus and Muslims) are significantly more likely to perceive physical, social, and task attraction for members of their own religious group than for individuals from another religious group. These results support an ethnic group vitality and in-group/out-group dichotomy.

Mantras and Mūrtis

This article examines the contemporary relationship between the Ārya Samāj and Sanātan Dharm movements among Hindus in India and abroad. Since their beginnings in the nineteenth century, the two loosely organized groups have disagreed about correct ritual practice, with the Arya Samaj promoting a simple “Vedic” fire sacrifice, and those identifying as Sanātan Dharm accepting image worship as an integral aspect of Hindu practice. While Hindus whose families come from northwest India identify themselves, their families, and their practices as either Arya Samaji or Sanatani, fieldwork conducted in India and the United States from 1999 to 2009 suggests that the relationships between these two movements are more flexible than this discourse indicates. This article argues that the Arya Samaj and Sanātan Dharm positions have been combined within extended families, individual ritual practices, and transnational communities in more fluid ways than previously understood.

Preserving Ethnicity Through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations (review)

Reviewed by: Preserving Ethnicity Through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations Rhys H. Williams (bio) Preserving Ethnicity Through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations, by Pyong Gap Min. New York: New York University Press, 2010. X + 264 pp. $25.00 paper. ISBN-10: 0-8147-9586-4. The central empirical finding in Pyong Gap Min's carefully researched book is illustrated with two illustrative vignettes in the opening chapter. First, he introduces us to "Peter Park," a second-generation Korean American (technically a 1.5 generation as he was born in Korea but was brought to the United States as a child). Park is active in an English language Korean evangelical church. When asked, he clearly makes a distinction between his Korean cultural identity and his evangelical religious identity. Further, he does not believe that his church should necessarily have much to do with preserving ethnic culture. Its purpose is religious and spiritual, not "cultural." His priority is his religious life, and he is very active in his church. We then meet Rani Ambany, also a 1.5-generation immigrant, from India. Nominally Hindu growing up, the family did have a home altar and participated in major religious holidays. She continues to practice Hindu rites, but for her this is important as an integral part of her Indian identity, and meaningful largely for that reason. Min sums these opposing tendencies as "Koreans' very strong commitment to Christian values weakens their ethnic identity, and Indian Hindus' generally moderate embrace of their Hinduism tends to enhance their Indian identity and ethnic heritage" (2). Min notes that the primary function attributed to immigrant religion in the sociological literature is that it allows immigrant communities to maintain cultural connections to their home societies, while simultaneously providing resources for adaptation to a new setting. Religion is, among other things, a vehicle for subcultural reproduction. And Min's title, Preserving Ethnicity Through Religion, makes it clear that this observation continues to ring true. But as the opening vignette demonstrates, this clearly does not work the same way for all groups, and particularly not the second generation. As he shows with Korean Protestants, religion can even undermine ethnic identity preservation. [End Page 451] Min postulates a complex relationship between religion, ethnic heritage, and immigrant adaptation, and investigates it with a solid research plan. He examines both first- and second-generation Korean Protestants and first- and second-generation Indian Hindus. That way he can compare across ethno-religious groups and within religious groups across generation. Thus, even if religion does have a similar outcome as is postulated in the academic literature, Min can examine whether that is true for both the immigrant generation and their children, and if so what processes help that to happen. He conducted surveys and personal interviews, complemented by ethnographic observations at both a Korean Protestant church and a Hindu temple, both in the New York City area. Min finds that religion preserves ethnicity in different ways for the two groups, and with different effects on the second generation. Korean Protestants are devoted Christians, and deeply involved in their local congregations. Since most Korean Protestants attend ethnic Korean churches in order to enjoy the comforts being around coethnics, this intense institutional involvement leads to dense social networks and reinforces ethnic identity. However, Christianity is not "indigenous" to Korea, and there is not a strong tie between Christianity, particularly evangelical Protestant Christianity, and Korean folk culture. Indeed, while many Korean Buddhists attend evangelical churches in the United States in order to be around fellow Koreans, over time evangelical religion weakens their connections to Korean folk culture. By the time second-generation Koreans are starting to choose their own churches, they are beginning to distance themselves from Korean ethnicity. In part, they become "racialized" and often attend pan-Asian, English-language evangelical churches. Evangelical religious identity becomes separated from Korean ethnic identity. Indian Hindus, on the other hand, have the advantage of a very strong relationship between religious practices and identity, and ethnic folk culture. It is not hard for them to believe that to be Indian is to be Hindu, and vice versa. The practice of Hinduism...

Preserving Ethnicity Through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus Across Generations

Preserving Ethnicity Through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus Across Generations

Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations. By Pyong Gap Min. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Pp. v+264. $25.00 (paper).

<i>Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations</i>. By Pyong Gap Min. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Pp. v+264. $25.00 (paper).

Indian Muslims in Malaysia: A Sociological Analysis of a Minority Ethnic Group

This article analyses the status of Indian Muslims in Malaysia from a historical perspective and its definition as a minority ethnic group. It also highlights the political reality of the Indian Muslims, particularly as a smaller and relatively insignificant minority group in comparison with the numerically larger Malays as well as the non-Muslim Chinese and Hindu Indians. It describes the social interactions of the various ethnic groups in Malaysia and the Indian Muslims as a minority fighting for their identity and survival. It discusses the “position” of the Indian Muslims with particular reference to Article 152 of the Malaysian Constitution which states that a Malay person is defined as one speaking the Malay language, practicing Malay customs, and following the religion of Islam. The great contributions of Indian Muslims are also elaborated. This inquiry highlights the reality facing the Indian Muslims in Malaysia today: they have no political power but remain a marginalized minority in the midst of Malay political domination and Chinese economic hegemony. Indeed they are facing the grim prospect of permanent bifurcation of their identity—some are slowly but surely being assimilated into the Malay cultural milieu, mainly through marriage and for political expediency, on the one hand and others stubbornly resist this cultural absorption, and resiliently retain and preserve their ethnic traditions and purity.

Whose Decision is it? Organ Donation Attitudes Among Young UK South Asians

A questionnaire study examined organ donor card holding rates and attitudes to organ donation among young adult British South Asians and Whites attending institutions of higher education in the UK. There were 382 respondents (166 male, 216 female, average age 21.8 years): 107 Indian (Hindu or Sikh), 104 Pakistani/Bangladeshi (Muslim) and 171 White (Christian or of no religion). Overall, 33% of White but only 9% of South Asian respondents had a donor card. Among Whites, only 6% thought their parents would find it emotionally very upsetting to discuss organ donation, and of the White card holders 70% had told their parents that they had a card. In contrast 18% of Indians and 52% of Pakistanis/Bangladeshis thought that their parents would find it emotionally very upsetting to discuss organ donation, and only 39% of South Asian card holders had told their parents that they had a card. Finally, 41% of White, 54% of Indian and 91% of Pakistanis/Bangladeshi respondents doubted that they would take steps to obtain an organ donor card. White respondents proffered inertia as the main explanation for their not being likely to get a card. The factors underlying South Asian respondents not planning to obtain a card were more varied and included disinterest, emotional distaste, family opposition and religion. These reasons can be interpreted as relating to an interdependent conception of self and donor decisions being a family as well as an individual matter.

An examination of conflict style preferences in India

PurposeThis study sets out to examine conflict style preferences in India and the predictive effects of various demographic variables on conflict style preference.Design/methodology/approachData were gathered in India (n=827) among Muslims and Hindus. Conflict was measured using Oetzel's Conflict Style Measure. To answer the research questions, repeated measures ANOVA and multiple regressions were conducted.FindingsThe findings reveal that conflict style preference among Hindus in India differs significantly and that Hindus prefer the integrating and dominating styles, whilst showing the least inclination towards the avoiding and obliging styles. Muslims prefer the integrating and compromising styles and least prefer the dominating and avoiding styles. Analyses of the demographic variables' predictive influence reveal that age and sex are significant predictors for all five conflict styles for both Muslims and Hindus. Education has a mixed predictive influence on conflict style among Hindus and Muslims.Research limitations/implicationsUse of self‐report instruments and the majority of the participants coming from middle‐class backgrounds could limit the generalizability of the study.Practical implicationsThe study calls for conflict mediators to consider the influence of group membership and educational level on conflict management/resolution. The research also discusses national/international conflict intervention.Social implicationsThis paper informs individuals regarding the way in which two large religious and cultural groups differ in their approaches to conflict. For a nation that has experienced a history of conflict between these two cultural/religious groups, this paper can help shed light on how to bridge the conflict between them.Originality/valueThere are no studies directly comparing the conflict styles of Muslims and Hindus.

Religion in entrepreneurship: how international and indigenous Indian entrepreneurs differ

Historically, generating empirical data to understand the effects of religion in entrepreneurship has been challenging. The challenges are exacerbated in a culture such as India, which is both high-context and infused with spirituality. Using a context-dependent framework, such as that for international versus indigenous entrepreneurship, controls for context and reveals entrepreneurial motivations and end-goals that appear to be influenced by personal religious values. Qualitative data was generated using semi-structured interviews to explore the cognitions – namely, personal motivations and end-goals – of Hindu and Christian Indian entrepreneurs in India. The data was analysed using the framework for international versus indigenous entrepreneurs, which differentiates individuals based on the context and scope of their business. The findings corroborate that Indian entrepreneurs are very adaptable in their cognitions, with their motivations and end-goals being context-dependent. Personal religious values appear to take priority over cultural and business norms in influencing the end-goals of Indian entrepreneurs, particularly in the international business context.

Globalization and the Production of Difference: A Case Study of the Neoliberal Production of Hindu Nationalism in India

The dominant discourse on neoliberal globalization emphasizes a shrinking of physical distance, barriers, and time lag through greater interactions, flows, and communications working toward an integrated global economy. The restructuring of global space through neoliberal economic policies, however, has not resulted in such integration. The nation and region have been reformulated around fragmented ideologies of religion and ethnicity, often conforming to their respective political boundaries or claiming newer boundaries. The local has stubbornly refused erasure by resisting secular waves of economic integration. This fragmentation is popularly ascribed to be the result of an ontologically inward-looking nature of retrogressive local spaces such as the nations, regions, and communities. It is not coincidental that the sudden rejuvenation of difference on various local scales is occurring at the very moment when neoliberal regime of production has acquired global acceptance. Through a case study of Hindu nationalism, this article indicates how the neoliberal regime formulated at the global scale actually produces India materially and symbolically. The local is materially produced through biased neoliberal economic policies, which create certain patterns of development, quality of life, and prosperity. This material production is not separate from the symbolic production of Hindu fundamentalist national popular discourse. The “Hindu India” of the global village is not in antagonistic confrontation with the secular global regime of production but is created by it.

The point of death

David Pocock’s previously unpublished Inaugural Lecture on ‘The point of death’ marked his promotion to a Personal Chair at the University of Sussex and was delivered on 3rd May 1977. Pocock generously gave Parry a copy of his text while the latter was writing up material on death in Banares, and as far as we know, this is the only hard copy that has survived (though an audio recording of the lecture itself is listed in the Sussex University Library catalogue). It was written for verbal presentation and, at points, has a somewhat elliptical quality (though that is also true of much that Pocock published). The main text has been edited as lightly as possible and only with a view to occasionally clarifying its meaning. The comments and references in the footnotes have all been added by us. We are grateful to David Pocock’s executors, Paul and Susan Yates, for permission to include his lecture alongside our own appreciation of him. The justification for doing so is its enduring interest—both as a still highly suggestive contribution to the comparative study of mortuary practices and of ideas about death, and as an historical document that evokes a number of Pocock’s intellectual preoccupations and something of his intellectual style. As our own contribution to this issue of the journal has suggested, death was a topic on which he had long reflected; and here, he addresses it with characteristic erudition and an impressively catholic range of reference to literary and historical sources. But the resonances with his other writings go much further than that. These include: his continuing concern with the way in which uncontrollable biological occurrences and the effects of duration are subordinated to society (showing here that ‘the point of death is not the point of death’); and his related concern with the way in which unrepeatable historical events that unfold in linear time are accommodated to a theory of endlessly repeated cyclical time. Thus, the classical Hindu theory of the kaliyug is invoked to argue that the ‘good death’ of the householder is not really so ‘good’ after all. It is merely a kind of ersatz kaliyug version of the ideal, which supposes that by the time of his death, the householder will have taken sanyas. This fudge, Pocock intriguingly suggests, is associated with the fuzziness and contradictoriness of the eschatology. And that’s another of his recurring themes—the vague and tentative nature of religious belief. But perhaps, the most important message of his lecture has to do with the contrast it sets up between the ‘traditional complex’, with which the first part of the article is concerned and for which Hindu India stands, and the ‘modern complex’ exemplified by the contemporary and significantly secularised West, where the values of individualism are associated with ‘a maximal denial of death’—and indeed, of society itself. The contrast looks, on the face of it, highly Dumontian; but on closer reading, it is distinctly ambiguous. Though the ‘imperative insistence’ of Christian doctrine on the survival of the individual soul precludes the assimilation of the individual personality into a general category in a way that no other culture has done, and though the individual’s death is represented as being as unique as his birth and subsequent life, elements of the ‘traditional complex’ nevertheless persist. Rumours about mixing up bones and ashes in the crematorium recur, the standardised depersonalised coffin comes to stand for the deceased and Lily Pincus’s advocacy of a renewed intimacy with death and the dying is welcomed as a modern transformation of the older complex. It is the open-endedness and his sense of the complex ambiguity of social and intellectual life that makes Pocock both so frustratingly elusive and so attractive as a thinker. Editorial note by Jonathan Parry and Edward Simpson

The value of nature in Indian (Hindu) traditions

AbstractMany authors claim that certain Indian (Hindu) texts and traditions deny that nature has intrinsic value. If nature has value at all, it has value only as a means tomokṣa(liberation). This view is implausible as an interpretation of any Indian tradition that accepts the doctrines ofahiṃsā(non-harm) andkarma. The proponent must explain the connection betweenahiṃsāand merit by citing the connection betweenahiṃsāandmokṣa:ahiṃsāis valuable, and therefore produces merit, becauseahiṃsāis instrumentally valuable as a means tomokṣa. Ahiṃsāis a means tomokṣa, however, because it produces merit. Hence the explanation is circular. Additionally, this view entails that morality is strictly arbitrary – it might just as well be thathiṃsā(harm) produces merit, andahiṃsāproduces demerit. An alternative interpretation that avoids these problems states that the value ofahiṃsāderives from the intrinsic value of the unharmed entities.

Guest Editor's Introduction

This special issue takes a new approach to the study of religion and nature in Indian Hinduism by drawing on recent ethnography to examine the meanings that priests, pilgrims and ordinary devotees attribute to forests and trees today. Attentive to the rapidly changing social and ecological environment of contemporary India, these studies investigate how people relate to forests and trees that are in various ways set apart, whether as a natural park, a verdant temple, or a deity’s embodied form. In these articles, trees and forests emerge not as peaceful retreats from the hurly-burly profane world, but rather as zones of contestation between competing definitions of ritual authority, progress, and authenticity. Hindus also appear here less as purely religious people, whose cosmologies predispose them to approach trees with reverence and restraint, and more as multi-dimensional people who are as enmeshed as the rest of us in worlds increasingly penetrated by mass media, mass transportation and mass consumption.

RETHINKING KNOWLEDGE WITH ACTION: V. D. SAVARKAR, THE BHAGAVAD GITA, AND HISTORIES OF WARFARE

This essay examines the significance of the Bhagavad Gita for V. D. Savarkar's interpretations of religion, nationalism, and the idea of Hindu India. As one of the intellectual founders of Hindu nationalism, Savarkar has emerged as the most controversial Indian political thinker of the last century, gaining notoriety for his program to ‘Hinduize Politics and Militarize Hindudom’, for his anti-Muslim and anti-Christian politics, and for his advocacy of violence in everyday life. By bringing together key selections from Savarkar's seminal historical writings, the essay also traces how Savarkar developed the concept of ethical warfare from the Gita for his political purposes of contesting colonial power and creating a Hindu nation. It also shows that Savarkar adopted history writing as his main literary form for his engagement with the Gita and its principles, thereby departing from the existing hermeneutical traditions of studying the Gita. For Savarkar, the creation of historical knowledge that embodied key ideas from the Gita was necessary for transforming the individual and the nation. He claimed that it ultimately motivated individuals to adopt violence for the creation of Hindu India.

The Meaning of Widowhood and Health to Older Middle-Class Hindu Widows Living in a South Indian Community

Indian widowhood has long been associated with victimization and vulnerability, but traditional attitudes toward widowhood are changing and reflect the rapid changes occurring in India. Using Caring Inquiry, a phenomenological-hermeneutic methodology that places caring at its center, this article presents a study that explores the meaning of health and widowhood to 14 older middle-class Hindu widows living in urban South India. From the data emerge six metathemes that are pertinent to nursing praxis and the delivery of health care to widows in South India: (a) Drawing From Within, (b) Seeking Help and Guidance, (c) Accepting the Role, (d) Challenging Tradition, (e) Serving Others, and (f) Finding Companionship. The findings reveal that all the widows share a common desire to move on with life, articulated by one widow as "The Show Must Go On," which serves as a foundation for a theory and model of the meaning of widowhood and health to older middle-class South Indian Hindu widows. This study advances the limited body of knowledge on the lives and health of these widows.

Telling Stories: Hindu-Muslim Worship in South India

This essay explores a strikingly-different local sainthood practice in a South Indian village called Gūgūḍu in Andhra Pradesh. Focusing on specifically local story-telling practices about a pīr who represents a liminal space between Islam and Hinduism, this essay tries to capture the implications of various narrative strategies that these local devotees use to tell the hagiography of this local martyr-saint called Kuḷḷāyappa. The story of Kuḷḷāyappa is pivotal in Gūgūḍu's local religious culture, effectively displacing the better-known story of the Imam Hussain from Shi'a Islam. The ten-day rituals of Muharram in Gūgūḍu function like a stage on which various global Islamic practices and South Indian Hindu temple practices come to frame a local pīr tradition surrounding the life story of Kuḷḷāyappa - a story that is neglected in more formal texts. -Tirupatayya in Gūgūḍu village For every devotee, whether Muslim or not, a visit to Gūgūḍu means visiting the local pīr, Kuḷḷāyappa, and for all devotees, Muharram is primarily a public ritual in memory of Kuḷḷāyappa. Devotees tell Kuḷḷāyappa's stories, remember his martyr- dom for the community, and invoke his name during their everyday conversations as a way of invoking and honouring his memory. This paper examines the place of the local pī ri n Gūgūḍu's religious life, to understand how a complex tradition around a pīr is perceived and interpreted by members of diverse caste groups who practise their own rituals centred on Kuḷḷāyappa. To this end, this paper describes the origins and the arrival of the pī rK uḷḷāyappa in Gūgūḍu using stories drawn from various sources: family stories, caste narratives, informal conversa- tions with various villagers, and narratives told by pilgrims coming from various South Indian states. The paper has three sections: (1) a survey of the persona and ritual status of Kuḷḷāyappa as depicted in family, caste, and local place histories as well as pilgrims' stories; (2) an account of how the Kuḷḷāyappa cult in a general