:::The Desi Flavor:::

Linguist Nicholas Ostler on Sanskrit

A recent interview of Nicholas Ostler, the author of Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. A native of England, he received his Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT. Ten years ago he created the Foundation for Endangered Languages, an organization that works to document and revitalize languages that are on the verge of extinction.

His take on Sanskrit:

Your affection for Sanskrit comes through in your book. What is it about Sanskrit that appeals to you?

Well, the Indian background helps: my parents would never have met if they had not both been sent out to India owing to the Second World War. But Sanskrit has many virtues that attract. Its grammar has been rigorously analyzed, but not in a doctrinaire way – there is room for intellectual debate. The classical Indian culture in which Sanskrit first flourished offers an immense variety of material, from romantic comedy and sensual poetry to epic, massive-word play, political science and philosophy. It embodies a contradiction, that a language, whose literature is so lithe, should be indigenously analyzed as a sort of architectural structure. And I suppose I like the fact that it is so difficult (coming from English, certainly), yet so familiar in another way (coming at it from Latin, Greek and Russian).

She is a Muslim and a Feminist

Yes folks, thats Asma Gull Hasan for you, author of her new book - Why I am a Muslim. Rediff recently interviewed her. Here are a few paragraphs on dating:

You have also talked and written about halal dating. What is it?

Young American Muslims have come up with creative solutions to dating -- they fall into roughly three categories.

The first group is Strict Muslims who date halal (in an Islamically permissible style).

The second group I call Eid Muslims, because many are not strict in practice and attend mosques only on holidays. While technically they date haram (unlawfully in Islam), without chaperones, they keep physical intimacy to a minimum and parental involvement at a maximum.

The third group dates Sex and the City-style (definitely haram), openly and freely leading a non-Islamic lifestyle, having premarital sex sometimes in a series of monogamous relationships. Halal dating is a practice gaining much popularity in the American Muslim community among Strict Muslims and Eid Muslims.

The book talks about Sufism:

What does Sufism mean to you? Sufism focuses on inner divinity that is in all of us. When Sufis sing and chant, it is electrifying. Sufis believe that one should keep an open heart to welcome the divinity.

Spinning Wheel Festival

The Spinning Wheel Film Festival: A Celebration of Sikh Films is an attempt to showcase films about Sikh history, beliefs, issues, and perspectives. One of the aims of the festival which is now in it's 2nd year, is to provide a forum for the community (Sikh and non-Sikh) to preview Sikh films, engage in discussions and inspire the next generation of Sikhs to pursue careers in the arts. This years event will be held at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto from November 5 - 7, 2004.

Buddhist Art and the Trade Routes

Buddhist Art and the Trade Routes - Interesting website that takes a look at the spread of Buddhist artistic influences from various areas of India to the Himalayas, Southeast Asia and East Asia.

Trade routes, both maritime and overland, were the primary means by which Buddhist thought and imagery were conveyed from India, the birthplace of Buddhism, to other Asian countries. These ancient connecting routes provided an avenue for the religious, cultural, and artistic influences of Buddhism to reach the distant corners of the continent and beyond. This essay, illustrated by objects from the Asia Society Museum's permanent collection, the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd collection, provides a base for exploring the development of Indian Buddhist imagery and its interpretation and adaptation by other cultures along the trade routes. An examination of the works illustrated here will reveal some connections as well as distinctions between Indian Buddhist sculptures and their counterparts across Asia.

Outsourcing Priests

Outsourcing has crossed one more frontier - religion. Now Christian priests in India are conducting ceremonies for the West.

Faced with a shortage of priests in the West, European and American clergy are outsourcing "mass intentions" - requests for services, such as thanksgiving and memorial masses for the dead - to priests and congregations with time on their hands.

Each mass is said in front of a public congregation in Malayalam, the local language. Rates vary from country to country: a request from North America or Europe can net a priest three pounds or four pounds; poorer countries pay less.

Torah goes to India

Sam Pfeffer - a retired Chicago lawyer seeks to bring Judaism to the Bnei Menashe, who believe their ancestors were driven from Israel some 2700 years ago.

They don't have a Torah, which is the most important thing to have in Judaism," said Pfeffer, 78. "That's why I am bringing them one."

The Torah Pfeffer chose is not just any holy book; he has even reserved a separate seat for it on the plane. Believed to be crafted in the 1950s by a Jewish scribe, the Torah was recently restored, and Pfeffer was especially drawn to it because an image of the Western Wall is embroidered on the front.

"Now the Torah goes on its long journey to the Bnei Menashe, and with God's help, once they are absorbed into Israel, the Torah will go back to Israel, where I think it belongs," said Avrom Fox, owner of Rosenblum's World of Judaica bookshop, who sold the Torah to Pfeffer.

The Bnei Menashe claim a connection to Judaism from the time of King Solomon, though these ties are disputed. At that time, the tribes of Israel split into two kingdoms.

In 723 B.C. the Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Israel and took 10 tribes into exile, and they roamed across the world. Some say they escaped to China.

The Indian tribe believes that Christian missionaries in the 19th Century forced them to abandon their Jewish identity and convert to Christianity.

Buddhists in India today

Buddhists in India Today - German sociologist's innovative study on Buddhism in contemporary India. Kantowsky's opinions on conversions and the Ambedkar movement along with photos and documents he came across on his journey among Buddhists. Click here for the review of the book from the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.

Andrew Sullivan reviews Trouble with Islam

Jay Gohil

Andrew Sullivan's insights are worth reading and recently he reviewed Irshad Manji's book - The Trouble with Islam. Here are some interesting paragraphs:

Her basic argument is that the Koran is a complex, contradictory, human book. Its proscriptions are many and conflicting. Abandoning the role of a thinking person is not something that should be required of any religious individual. Reason and faith, Manji wants to believe, are not in conflict. And yet, as Islam is frequently practiced, reason is deplored as something that should defer in every instance not simply to the Koran but to the political authoritarians who reserve to themselves the sole right to interpret it.

What Manji discovered in the madrasa was a symptom of what she sees as a broader and deeper problem: that Muslims have stopped thinking, that their faith has been hijacked by tyrants and bullies, and that it has become infested with all kinds of hatred -- of Jews, of women, of gays, of the West. And instead of confronting these issues directly and openly, most Western Muslims -- perhaps the only group of Muslims with the actual freedom to question, criticize and debate -- have decided to retreat into victimology and appeasement. Aided and abetted by the moral nihilism of academic postmodernism, these people have surrendered to the new fascists of the Arab world.

....

Her answer to her own question is guilelessly to challenge certain givens. The Koran mandates the veiling of the wives of the Prophet. So why are all women now required to be covered from head to foot? In the distant past, Islam integrated and celebrated human diversity, and honored Christian and Jewish culture. So why has Islam degenerated into a maelstrom of the most virulent anti-Semitism? ''Let there be no compulsion in religion,'' says Chapter 2 of the Koran. So why do many Arab Muslim states persecute or ostracize nonbelievers?

Irshad Manji's - Trouble with Islam

Jay Gohil

Source: Muslim Refusenik

Irshad Manji's thoughts are interesting. But can she really create reform in Islam? She is a Canadian Muslim lesbian who has written a book entitled "The Trouble with Islam," which is her attempt to open an international dialogue regarding much-needed Muslim reform, especially with regard to the treatment of women, Jew bashing and the virtual imprisonment of those living under Islamic rule. From her website:

I remain a hugely ambivalent Muslim because of what's happening "on the ground" -- massive human rights violations, particularly against women and religious minorities -- in the name of Allah.

Liberal Muslims say that what I'm describing isn't "true" Islam. But these Muslims should own up to something: Prophet Muhammad himself said that religion is the way we conduct ourselves toward others. By that standard, how Muslims actually behave is Islam, and to sweep that reality under the rug of theory is to absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our fellow human beings.

...

I'm asking Muslims in the West a very basic question: Will we remain spiritually infantile, caving to cultural pressures to clam up and conform, or will we mature into full-fledged citizens, defending the very pluralism that allows us to be in this part of the world in the first place?

My question for non-Muslims is equally basic: Will you succumb to the intimidation of being called "racists," or will you finally challenge us Muslims to take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam?

For her efforts, Manji has been called "self-hating," "irrelevant," "a Muslim sellout" and a "blasphemer." She is accused of both "denigrating Islam" and dehumanizing Muslims. Manji's predicament is unfortunately all too typical of what courageous, moderate, modern Muslims face when they speak out against the scourge of militant Islam. Her experience echoes the threats against the lives of such writers as Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen.

Her website - Muslim Refusenik provides tonnes of information regarding her opinions and books.

Hindu Philosophy influence on Rastafarianism

Jay Gohil

Source: BBC

Rastafarianism began as the beliefs of four men: Leonard P. Howell, Robert Hinds, H. Archibald Dunkley and Nathanial Hibbert. All were clergymen and all claimed to have had a revelation that the coronation of Haile Selassie signaled that he was the black messiah foretold of in the scriptures who would lead Africans out of Babylon into redemption. Howell was the most outspoken of the group and proclaimed the divinity of Selassie to all that would listen (Clarke 33,1986.) Howell's main goal was the establishment of a community of followers. In 1940 he formed the Pinnacle community in St. Catherine's. This was the first Rastafarian community. One of Howell's early followers was an Indian man remembered only as Laloo. It has been suggested that has influences on Howell may account for some of the similarities between Hinduism and Rastafarianism. Howell preferred to be referred to as Gunggunguru Maragh. The name is a combination of the three Hindi words gyan, wisdom, gun, virtue, and guru, teacher ,or translated to teacher of famed wisdom. Maragh means king (Bishton 105,1986.)

An account of the possible influences of Hindu philosophy on early Rastafarianism thought has been given by Dr. Ajai Mansingh in an article in the July 18, 1982 Daily Gleamer. Dr. Mansingh states that roughly 36,400 indentured servants were brought to Jamaica from India between 1845 and 1910, bringing with them a new religious, cultural, and social outlook. He also hypothesizes that because the Indians had a similar outlook on nature and its forces in terms of faith healings, herbal medicine, and animalism as the Afro-Jamaicans that it sparked an interest in Hindu philosophy. It has also been noted that within the Afro Christian religions there is a great respect given to the"Great Book of Magical Arts, Hindu Magic and Indian Occultism (Bishton 105,1986.)