MUMBAI, India — Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the spiritual leader who engineered the global expansion of a socially conservative Hindu sect that grew to be the largest in the United States, died on Aug. 13 in Sarangpur, a village in the state of Gujarat in western India. He was 94.
INDIA, June 23, 2016 (The Diplomat): On June 21, 2016, the world welcomed the second celebration of the International Day of Yoga - constituted last year by the United Nations through a resolution that won the support of 177 member states. In his message on Yoga Day, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared the importance of promoting healthier lifestyles as part of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, which all member states adopted last year.
On June 9, a law allowing patients with terminal illnesses to end their lives with help from a physician came into effect in California, opening conversations about whether human life should be prolonged against the desire to die peacefully and with dignity.
A similar yet different conversation has been taking place in India for the past several years, but in reverse.
In one of India’s religious traditions, Jainism, those at the end of life can choose to embrace a final fast transition from one body to another. However, a recent court case has challenged the constitutionality of...
Four Hindu priests sat cross-legged on the floor in front of silver trays of rice, flowers and vermillion powder, chanting in low baritones that reverberated off the bare walls of the old brick temple.An iPhone propped on a chair captured the service — known as a puja — and beamed it via Skype to a home in San Francisco, where a middle-aged woman wearing a red bindi and a head scarf watched intently.Every so often, the priests peered into the screen and instructed her to mimic a gesture or repeat an invocation.
Baba Ramdev has emerged as the leader of the “Baba Cool Movement” — a group of spiritual men who are marketing health-based products based on the ancient Indian medicinal system.
(RNS) Hinduism certainly has numerous memorable manifestations of God, from Brahma the Creator to Shiva the Destroyer.But despite the remarkable success of retail giant Amazon, its founder Jeff Bezos is not one of them.That’s why the editor of Fortune magazine is now apologizing for a colorful cover that depicts Bezos as the Hindu deity Vishnu — known as the Preserver — in a story on Amazon’s plans to “conquer” the enormous marketplace in India.“Neither the artist nor the editors of Fortune had any intention of parodying a particular deity or of offending members of the Hindu...
The Indian Museum in Kolkata has inaugurated an exhibition celebrating the worship of Hindu gods in Japan, a centuries-old tradition fueled by religious syncretism as Japanese worshippers have blended Hinduism into Buddhism and Shintoism.
The victim, Mohammad Ikhlaq, was beaten to death after residents stormed his house after a public announcement that he had killed and eaten parts of a cow, villagers said.
Across India, Christian communities make sweet homemade wines for the festive season from an array of local fruit, roots and grain. But the know-how behind this ancient tradition may be disappearing.