Indian Hindu Research Articles

Transmission of infectious viruses in the natural setting at human-animal interface

Most viral pathogens causing epidemics and pandemics are zoonotic, emerging from wildlife reservoirs like SARS CoV2 causing the global Covid-19 pandemic, although animal origin of this virus remains a mystery. Cross-species transmission of pathogens from animals to humans is known as zoonosis. However, pathogens are also transmitted from humans to animals in regions where there is a close interaction between animals and humans by ‘reverse transmission’ (anthroponosis).Molecular evidence for the transmission of two zoonotic RNA viruses at the human-monkey interface in Rajasthan forests is presented here: a) the apathogenic Simian Foamy Viruses (SFV), and b): Influenza A viruses (IAV)-like virus, etiologic agent for human flu infecting wild Indian rhesus monkeys inhabiting Rajasthan forests.The data provide critical information on ecology and evolution of viruses of Public Health relevance. During replication, viral genomes mutate along the transmission route to adapt to the new hosts, generating new variants that are likely to have properties different from the founder viruses.Wild Indian monkeys are under-sampled for monitoring infectious diseases mainly because of the difficulties with sample collection. Monkeys are perceived as religious icons by the Hindus in India. It is extremely difficult to obtain permission from the Forest and Wildlife Department government authorities to collect wild simian blood samples for surveillance of infectious diseases caused by viral pathogens.Reducing animal-human contact and affordable vaccination are two relevant anti-viral strategies to counteract the spread of infectious zoonotic pathogens.Genbank Accession numbers: Indian SFVmac: ADN94420, IAV like virus: MZ298601.

Cognitive Pathways to Belief in Karma and Belief in God.

Supernatural beliefs are ubiquitous around the world, and mounting evidence indicates that these beliefs partly rely on intuitive, cross-culturally recurrent cognitive processes. Specifically, past research has focused on humans' intuitive tendency to perceive minds as part of the cognitive foundations of belief in a personified God-an agentic, morally concerned supernatural entity. However, much less is known about belief in karma-another culturally widespread but ostensibly non-agentic supernatural entity reflecting ethical causation across reincarnations. In two studies and four high-powered samples, including mostly Christian Canadians and mostly Hindu Indians (Study 1, N=2,006) and mostly Christian Americans and Singaporean Buddhists (Study 2, N=1,752), we provide the first systematic empirical investigation of the cognitive intuitions underlying various forms of belief in karma. We used path analyses to (a) replicate tests of the previously documented cognitive predictors of belief in God, (b) test whether this same network of variables predicts belief in karma, and (c) examine the relative contributions of cognitive and cultural variables to both sets of beliefs. We found that cognitive tendencies toward intuitive thinking, mentalizing, dualism, and teleological thinking predicted a variety of beliefs about karma-including morally laden, non-agentic, and agentic conceptualizations-above and beyond the variability explained by cultural learning about karma across cultures. These results provide further evidence for an independent role for both culture and cognition in supporting diverse types of supernatural beliefs in distinct cultural contexts.

The Xenophilia of a Japanese Ethnomusicologist

This autobiographical, sociological, and musicological essay, written for a symposium on xenophilia, concerns how the love of a foreign culture can lead to a better understanding and renewed love of one’s own. The author, a Japanese musicologist, studied Hindustani music with North Indian masters, both Hindu and Muslim, and concluded that it is the shared concept of a “sound-god” that brings them together on stage in peaceful celebration with audiences from religious communities often at odds. The author’s training in ethnomusicology began in India in 1992, immediately after the violent demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya by militant Hindus, but even at that time she found no trace of such belligerence in the Hindustani musical world. Years later, while conducting research on the Shinto music rituals of her own culture, she discovered a little-known imperial and aristocratic cult of Myō’onten, a Japanese form of the Hindu goddess of music, Saraswati, who is presently an object of devotion for both Hindu and Muslim musicians in North India. This essay, based on nearly three decades of research in India and Japan, offers some answers to a question raised repeatedly in the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia: What is the source of the xenophilic impulse and the power that sustains it?

Understanding the Cozy Relationship between Pakistan ISI and Lashkar-e-Taiba

This article evaluates to what degree the relationship between Pakistan and militant groups, primarily Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operating within its border, has influenced Islamabad’s counterinsurgency approach. The article succinctly describes the process that led to the formation of Pakistan and its ongoing fight with India since then over Jammu and Kashmir. It further discusses India’s overall strategic recourses in the Disputed Territory that have driven it to interpose in the internal affairs of its neighbors, principally Pakistan and Afghanistan. The interventionist behavior of India in the region generates strong anti-India sentiment among Pakistanis and Afghans. And in turn, the Pakistan militant groups cunningly use this anti sentiment as red meat to feed and reinforce the mindset of their followers and Kashmir nationals. Also, it addresses the developmental impact these militant groups have on Pakistan’s strategy to counter India’s dominance over the Disputed Territory of Kashmir. Additionally, this research highlights that while LeT has been previously a vibrant element of Pakistan’s regional stratagem, the group capability has morphed beyond Pakistan’s ISI’s control. It operates independently of the political development, and its organizational structure has extended beyond Jammu and Kashmir. The seeming threat poses by Indians over the Disputed Territory of Kashmir indeed creates a security quandary for the Pakistani army and security establishments. For over seven decades, India and Pakistan have clashed over the Kashmir-Occupied Territory, critical to both countries’ economies and prosperity. Islamabad has used LeT as its proxy primarily to keep India entangled in the economic drain in the Kashmir area while Pakistan continues to influence Afghanistan. This study is interested in understanding past events in an attempt to interpret the facts and explain the cause of occurrences, and their impact on the present events; thus, it is historical research. Both primary and secondary sources have been consulted to conduct this inquiry. Grasping the changing regional aspects of terrorism may be significantly advantageous in policymaking and intervention strategy. The research results highlight the significance of the entrenched geopolitical conflict and interests of the two nations and the order in comprehending terrorism. And the religious hatred of the Indian Hindus is not the principal driving force of militant groups of Pakistan attacks against India; instead, it is used as a vehicle by jihadists to make a point. The driving factor behind their attacks toward New Delhi is against its hegemonic desires of territorial control. Psychologically, the issue has been the building and making of the separate and unique identity of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The research contributes to a clear understanding of the past and provides some possible ways forward. The study concludes that Islamabad and New Delhi need new strategies to mend their relationship and develop a plan to restore their security and stability. Lastly, it suggests some pragmatic recommendation steps India and Pakistan might take to overcome their differences and co-exist peacefully as neighbors.

The application of the fourth-dimension technology and its impact on Indian art in designing the printed women's fabrics

The use of the fourth dimension technique is one of the important and achieved techniques in Hindu art, time and space, and this is evident through the repetition and expansion of sizes, especially in drawing and glorifying the gods to indicate their strength and speed as one. Among the means to express religious beliefs and customs from acts of worship with reincarnation and sanctification of God, which is evident in Hindu customs and ethics in their daily lives are among the first arts that use the fourth dimension. Hence the idea of the research came to benefit from the application of the fourth dimension technology and its impact on Indian art in designing the printing of women's fabrics. Research Problem: -What is the benefit of applying the fourth dimension technology to create designs suitable for printing on women's fabrics? -What is the benefit of the future school in implementing the concept of the fourth dimension with their designs? -What is the benefit of applying Indian Hindu art by emphasizing movement and speed in design? Significance: Shed light on the concept of the fourth dimension in the field of textile printing by presenting insights from Futurist school philosophy and Indo-Hindu art. Objectives: -Study of the fourth dimension technique and its relationship with Indian Hindu art and the creation of printed designs for women’s fabrics - Creating garment designs with the concept of the fourth dimension inspired by Indian art. Rresearch results: -The designer's use of modern technology represented in the Photoshop program enables him to create configurations and designs suitable for use in the design of printed fabrics for women in the age group 30-40 years. -Digital technology has an impact on design thought and causes an intellectual change in the design content of the designer to achieve the idea of the fourth dimension and simulate future art using the colors of Indian arts and show innovative designs that contain the intellectual content of the designer. -The study observed that although future art combined space and time simultaneously with artistic and aesthetic analysis also, Indian Hindu art was characterized by repetition, plurality and linking time and space simultaneously, and that art does not govern specific criteria and is a treasure of plastic art treasures and a source of inspiration for many Innovative and contemporary design ideas that combine originality and contemporary in the field of women's fabrics. -Tracking the movement of technical changes over the course of history and up to the contemporary time that will help to reach contemporary design innovations that increase the capacity of the local and global market in the field of printed women's fabrics to attract the largest number of consumers.

On the Indian tradition of mathematical names: A scientific analysis

The current paper explores the potential interlink between names of individuals in a society and its collective social consciousness, particularly with reference to the pervasive occurrence of the ‘mathematical names’ in the current Hindu society spanning the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Initially, an attempt is made to put things into mathematical perspective by drawing a quick sketch of some of the stellar achievements of the Indian mathematicians. Under the six broad categories of geometry, trigonometry, numeration, arithmetic, algebra, and mathematics in the Vedic tradition, a concise simple description of these subdivisions is presented, underlining selected mathematical concepts and terms, sometimes by producing the textual references. We hypothesize that such terms permeate as names in the current Hindu society, reflecting the impressions of the tremendously rich mathematical heritage left by the stalwart Hindu mathematicians. Accordingly, an attempt is made to juxtapose these terms with the names current in the Indian Hindu society. By employing an extensive dataset of university student names in India and the directories of Facebook and LinkedIn, we produce both qualitative and quantitative evidence of the presence of such names in the Indian subcontinent. Our hypothesis has also been examined by taking surveys of people bearing these mathematical names, as well as by documenting the ‘conscious procedures’ that go behind the naming of a Hindu Indian child. In trying to investigate if such a phenomenon is unique to the Indian tradition, a stark contrast with the ‘names in mathematics’ as prevalent in the post-renaissance Europe is presented, as cultural roots of mathematics are explored. Evidently, the large magnitude and the span of such names substantiates the presence of these names as the extant remains of the colossal impact of multifarious mathematical traditions existing in India. Interestingly, the present research also brings to the fore, certain unseen facets of the Indian Hindu society as regards the education of mathematics to women – through an indirect exploration of their names. We also show that the pervasive occurrence of these names is not merely the result of semantic chance events, but must denote the richness of the Indian mathematical legacy. By presenting some cross-cultural comparisons, we bring about the specific uniqueness of Indian mathematical and scientific traditions that led to the pervasiveness of ‘mathematical names’ in India vis-a-vis other cultures. Finally, an attempt is made to clarify some subtle points on the associations between mathematics and religion in India and other cultures of the world. It is sincerely hoped that the present study may shed light on the cultural roots of mathematics and may furnish a new dimension in the study of mathematics, culture, and civilizations across the world.

The (un)Changing Karma: Pollution Beliefs, Social Stratification and Reincarnisation in Bhutan

Since the abolition of slavery and serfdom in 1958, Bhutanese society has been characterised by three social strata: big, medium and small people. Purity beliefs and practices are one of the crucial factors in this reconfigured stratification, which is entwined with the hierarchy of the well-ordered pantheon in relation to vulnerability to uncleanness. The big people feel threatened by the wrath of the gods/spirits of the low-level pantheon who are more vulnerable to pollution than their high-level counterparts. Indeed, the purity/impurity beliefs are only relevant because of their roles in offending these beings, thereby revealing two types of defilement: direct and indirect pollution. The effects of pollution beliefs in class-based Buddhist Bhutan are indirect, while they are direct in caste-based Hindu India. The big status is perpetuated by purity beliefs which are, in turn, embedded in ‘reincarnisation’—a process of upward social mobility.

Relations of religious beliefs with distress and well-being among Hindu college students

ABSTRACT Religious beliefs are generally linked with less distress and higher psychological well-being, but few studies have been conducted with non-Christian samples or outside the United States. We examined how religious beliefs relate to distress and psychological well-being in a sample of Hindu students in India. 178 students (36% women, 64% men, mean age of 22.7 years) completed questionnaires regarding religious beliefs, distress (depression, anxiety, stress) and positive well-being (happiness, life satisfaction, meaning in life). Religious beliefs were unrelated to frequency of service attendance, importance of prayer, or influence of religion on one's life and related positively to depression and anxiety as well as meaning in life. Associations of religious beliefs and wellbeing were modest and did not strongly support general theoretical notions that religious beliefs are a source of comfort. Indian Hindus constitute a large portion of the world population and the impact of their religious beliefs warrants additional attention.

Hinduizing Nepal’s Hindus: Making Modern Hinduism in Medieval Nepal

Abstract This article examines Nepal’s Svasthānīvratakathā (SVK) text as a lens to explore the shift from the heterogeneity of Newar and Parbatiyā Hindu ideology and identity in premodern Nepal toward a singular, hegemonic form of Hinduism in modern Nepal. The SVK originated in the sixteenth century as a Newar folk legend and is today the most often read and heard Hindu devotional text in Nepal. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the text began to incorporate normative Sanskritic narratives and gradually transformed into an expansive Purāṇa text. These narratives expanded the SVK’s geographical, temporal, and ideological parameters in a manner that articulated, promulgated, and reinforced the emergence of a broader—but simultaneously narrower, Brahmanical—‘Hindu’ identity that became increasingly important in modern Nepal as its rulers cast Nepal as the ‘pure Hindu land.’ The SVK’s Puranicization demonstrates the ways in which the tradition privileged Nepali Hindu-ness over sectarian or ethnic affiliations to create a shared Nepali tradition among Newar and Parbatiyā Hindus and broadcast an emergent Nepali Hindu identity vis-à-vis Indian Hindu identity.

THE PEACOCK IN SUFI COSMOLOGY AND POPULAR RELIGION

In various cultural and religious contexts, from West Asia to Southeast Asia, we come across a number of quite similar creation myths in which a peacock, seated on a cosmic tree, plays a central part. For the Yezidis, a sect of Sufi origins that has moved away from Islam, the Peacock Angel, who is the most glorious of the angels, is the master of the created world. This belief may be related to early Muslim cosmologies involving the Muhammadan Light (Nur Muhammad), which in some narratives had the shape of a peacock and participated in creation. In a different set of myths, the peacock and the Tree of Certainty (shajarat al-yaqīn) play a role in Adam and Eve’s fall and expulsion from Paradise. The central myth of the South Indian Hindu cult of the god Murugan also involves a tree and a peacock. The myth is enacted in the annual ritual of Thaipusam, like the Nur Muhammad myth is still enacted annually in the Maulid festival of Cikoang in South Sulawesi. Images of the peacock, originating from South India, have moved across cultural and religious boundaries and have been adopted as representing the different communities’ peacock myths.

Entre tropicalité et Anthropocène : « nature » et « culture » dans l’Inde hindoue

Une explication aux difficultes des parcs nationaux en Inde ne serait-elle pas culturelle ? Ce modele ne correspond-il pas a une vision du monde importee opposant humains et nature, differente des representations dominantes en Inde ? Ce texte commence par evoquer l’impossibilite d’une veritable dichotomie entre nature et culture au pays de Hanuman et Ganesh, les dieux-singe et elephant, dans une culture dominee selon Descola (2005) par un « analogisme » tres eloigne du « naturalisme » de l’Occident contemporain. Mais nous faisons ensuite plus que nuancer cet etat de fait, en montrant combien les valeurs religieuses sont ambigues en termes de « protection de l’environnement ». D’une adaptation au milieu, qui correspondait a un rapport specifique a la « tropicalite », on est passe a une tentative de maitrise de celui-ci, occasionnant les ravages que souligne la notion d’Anthropocene. La troisieme partie du texte replace donc l’Anthropocene vu de l’Inde en le « situant » historiquement, socialement et spatialement.

‘Buddhism Has Been Insulted. Take Immediate Steps’: Burmese fascism and the origins of Burmese Islamophobia, 1936–38

AbstractIn light of the current Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, this article investigates the emergence of Islamophobia in colonial Burma. Focusing on the under-examined Islamophobic riots that broke out countrywide in 1938, my research reveals that a nascent fascist movement used Muslims as a scapegoat for political and economic crisis. The colonial agribusiness economy had collapsed during the Great Depression, while the vast contract labour system of the Indian Ocean had brought millions of low-wage Indian migrants to Burma, causing a glut in the labour market. Burmese socialism provided a popular response to these issues. To compete, Burmese fascism emerged to appeal to a rising sense of nationalism, racially scapegoating Indians and the religion of Islam as the exploiters, colonizers, and invaders behind Burma's problems. Using the racialized termkalato conflate the ideas of colonizer, Indian, and Muslim, Burmese fascists inflamed hatred against Indian Muslims, Indian Hindus, and even indigenous Muslims, such as the Rohingya. By revealing the origins of this racialization, this article both deconstructs the lasting Burmese perception of the Rohingya as ‘Bengali immigrants’ and provides a generalizable case study into how races and racisms develop from specific historical factors and political movements. It also argues that the British amplified fascist ideas in Burma by focusing repression on movements that directly challenged their material control, such as socialism and communism. Therefore, it highlights how ruling classes often prefer nationalistic movements because they redirect popular unrest from the project of overthrowing structural factors to that of eliminating scapegoated minorities.

Mind your meat: Religious differences in the social perception of animals.

While previous work demonstrated that animals are categorised based on their edibility, little research has systematically evaluated the role of religion in the perception of animal edibility, particularly when specific animals are deemed sacred in a religion. In two studies, we explored a key psychological mechanism through which sacred animals are deemed inedible by members of a faith: mind attribution. In Study 1, non-vegetarian Hindus in Singapore (N=70) evaluated 19 animals that differed in terms of their sacredness and edibility. Results showed that participants categorised animals into three groups: holy animals (high sacredness but low edibility), food animals (low sacredness but high edibility) and neutral animals (low sacredness and low edibility). Holy animals were deemed to possess greater mental life compared to other animal categories. In Study 2, we replicated this key finding with Hindus in India (N=100), and further demonstrated that the observed pattern of results was specific to Hindus but not Muslims (N=90). In both studies, mind attribution mediated the negative association between sacredness and edibility. Our findings illustrate how religious groups diverge in animal perception, thereby highlighting the role of mind attribution as a crucial link between sacredness and edibility.

Conversion from British Hinduism to Christianity: an anthropological study

ABSTRACT This paper examines conversion from “Hinduism” to Christianity in India and in the UK. To date work in this area has focused upon Hindu–Christian conversion among Hindus in India largely focusing upon Dalits. It explores the experience of Hindu Christian conversion through five case studies and focuses upon antecedents and consequences of conversion. It stresses the central role of profound religious experiences in those converting and the resultant disharmony among families and the wider Hindu community. While structural factors may be important for some of these individuals, all have undergone a form of metaphysical and intellectual conversion. The conversion narratives cited suggest that conversion experiences are beneficial psychologically in terms of providing a new sense of meaning, facilitating coping and increasing contentment.

The Ambivalence of Aryanism: A Genealogical Reading of India-Europe Connection

How do historical ideas of global, supremacist connection exist alongside ideas of civilisational and racial difference? And what enables certain reactionary, political alliances to traverse colonial hierarchies of power? With an onset in contemporary, transnational connections between a Hindu and a Western Right, this article offers a critical genealogical reading of the concept of Aryanism. Understanding it as articulated historically through interactions between British colonialists and upper-caste Hindus in India, this reading focuses on these elites’ intersecting and contradictory ideas of hierarchy, difference, and cross-civilisational connection. Tracing the empirical, theoretical and political implications of these entanglements, the article contributes to on-going discussions on the imperial roots of conceptual formations and knowledge production in postcolonial International Relations.

A Porous Consciousness in and as Artistic Practice: Re-engaging with classical Indian philosophy and aesthetics as a living tradition

Artistic creativity is critically and painstakingly intertwined with ecological creativity in Indian aesthetics. The underlying principles of form, grammar and structure are carefully considered applications and expansions of ecological principles. But what lies at the heart of a consciousness that can enact, embody and expand this creativity principle? I argue that the consciousness principle is 'porosity', an ability to transcend self to enter a state of being where life can move through as a seamless exchange of energy in consecrated time and space. This exposition draws insights from practice based research and unravels the practitioner’s point of view into subjective, qualitative research using text, image and movement. The philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings are drawn from Hindu Indian aesthetics, philosophy and ancient notions of ecology.

Aspects of male sexuality enmeshing with rise of fascism in India: Tentative psychoanalytical explorations

AbstractThis exploration assumes the universality of certain aspects of the psyche which enmesh with an ideology like fascism, while examining the phenomenon in India. It attempts to understand the support of a sizable section of people to the discernible growth of fascism in the past three decades in Indian society. The purpose is to explore group processes and individual psyche. The article attempts to articulate the factors—pre‐dominantly unconscious—in the psyche of the Indian Hindu male which might fit into or play a role in the mobilization toward a fascist political and social agenda. The nature of marital relations in society and the close “mother–son” bond are examined in the context of the development of the personality of a growing boy. The extreme suppression of sexuality, valorization of celibacy, idealization of mother, the model of the obedient son with no room for ambivalence and the feelings of inadequacy, frustrations and rage engendered form a central focus. The processes of splitting, idealization, and projective identification which result in the demonization by the Hindu community of the “other” Muslim community leading to violence are examined in this context. Evolving collective processes of acknowledging and taking back the split “dirty” parts at a community level instead of projecting onto the “other” as a way forward toward more harmonious relations.

The Rise of Majorities and Emerging Existential Threats to India and China

Abstract China and India are comparable in size, complexity, and their relatively recent State-building histories. Commencing in 1947 and 1949 respectively, the relatively recent foundations of India and China highlighted a ‘unity in diversity’ message. The significance of this lay as much in ideology as in a pragmatism that was both central and relatively successful in bringing what could be argued as many civilizations into singular modern States. While the messages about diversity have always been contested in some quarters by rival ethno-nationalists, they remained significant in laying the foundations for a strong ‘national’ identity. To the majority populations, Hindu in India and Han in China this called for restraint to any triumphalism or chauvinism; to the minorities, they called for unshakeable loyalty in return for full citizenship rights. In both cases, these messages were backed by constructive affirmative action measures that, irrespective of their efficacy, served to emphasize the ‘unity in diversity’ message, sowing a degree of fealty towards the State over what may have been more prominent and compelling ethno-religious or ethno-linguistic cleavages. In recent years, however, this message has been significantly altered, as political majoritarianism has begun to oust legally or administratively determined minority protections. This article seeks to offer an assessment of the potential impact on this phenomenon on each country, arguing that it has contributed to instability, sowing seeds for the rise of opposing sub-national identities that the founding parents of each State actively sought to counter in their statecraft.

Ethnic, Religious and Gender Differences in Intragenerational Economic Mobility in England and Wales

This study uses data from consecutive England and Wales censuses to examine the intragenerational economic mobility of individuals with different ethnicities, religions and genders between 1971 and 2011, over time and across cohorts. The findings suggest more downward and less upward mobility among Black Caribbean, Indian Sikh and Muslim people with Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani ethnicities, relative to white British groups, and more positive relative progress among Indian Hindu people, but also some variation in the experiences of social mobility between individuals even in the same ethnic groups. For some groups, those becoming adults or migrating to the UK since 1971 occupy an improved position compared with older or longer resident people, but this is not universal. Findings suggest that these persistent inequalities will only be effectively addressed with attention to the structural factors which disadvantage particular ethnic and religious groups, and the specific ways in which these affect women.

Why Muslims join the Muslim wing of the RSS

ABSTRACT The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the paramilitary corps that animates the contemporary Indian Hindu nationalist movement – increasingly relies on its Muslim wing to bolster its denials of extremism. The RSS claims hold that crowds of Muslims join its Muslim wing, the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, through organic nationalist awakenings that imply tacit acceptance of the RSS’ Hindu nationalist agenda. Based on a year of interview-based research in North and West India with more than 80 Manch members, defectors, critics and leaders, I provide empirical evidence that challenges the claim that the RSS is winning over Muslim minds. Instead, I suggest that Muslims join for largely instrumental reasons; for material reward and security, but also to rebuke traditional Muslim centres of power and to draw close to the charismatic leadership of Manch leader Indresh Kumar. While discussions of motivations are famously fraught, I rely on interviews not to conclusively list membership motivations, but to assess the claims made by the RSS. As Hindu nationalists consolidate and intensify their activities after the 2019 general election, understanding how the RSS does or does not ‘win over’ India’s Muslim communities is necessary groundwork to address the position of minorities in a Hindu nationalist future.