As Manish recently noted, three Indian-Americans were awarded the Rhodes Scholarship this year. One of them is Ian Desai of the University of Chicago. Ian plans to use his time to make a comparison of the Iliad and the Mahabharata. From The Tribune of India:

A New Yorker, Desai graduated this year with a degree in ancient studies. In 2001, he tried to retrace the mythic journey of Jason and the Argonauts through Greece, Turkey and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

He traveled by bus, motor cycle, car and on foot. To get around, he used a little Greek, broken Turkish and the kindness of strangers. He even negotiated with Turkish fishermen to spend 10 days on their trawler.

At one point he and Michael Newton, a photographer who chronicled the trip, were warned by a Georgian train conductor that they were in bandit country.

“WeÂ’re very proud of him,” said Susan Art, Dean of Students of the University of ChicagoÂ’s undergraduate college. “Ian is a remarkable individual who has contributed so much to the university. I think his success does justice to the quality of the education we offer,” Art added. Desai hopes to build upon his undergraduate research that has explored a rarely undertaken subject: a comparison of the Iliad and the Mahabharata.

Now to me, mythology-geek that I am, this sounds like a fascinating study. I Googled the terms “Mahabharata and Illiad” to see what came up and this review of the Mahabharata which draws parallels to the Illiad was one of the first. I suppose all Myth is to a great deal interrelated. Joesph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces does a good job of exploring that hypothesis. In any case I hope to hear more about this in a few years when he finishes.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently released a pair of posters aimed at assisting authorities with properly identifying and searching Muslims and Sikhs.

The posters come from the DOJ’s Initiative to Combat Post-9/11 Discriminatory Backlash, and offer detailed explanations of each religion’s different head coverings. The posters also include seemingly obvious instructions such as “show respect,” and “searches should be done by members of the same sex.” (Can one request searches from the opposite sex, or does that cost extra?)

For the most part, the photos on the Sikh poster are effective in demonstrating a pagri, patka and chunni. But on the Muslim poster, one of the images is sure to generate confusion in the field (photo on the right). We can only pray that former Attorney General John Ashcroft doesn’t completely lose it when graduation ceremonies commence in May.

Common Muslim American Head Coverings (PDF, 1.5 MB)
Common Sikh American Head Coverings (PDF, 1 MB)

My good friend Super Jagjit was so impressed by the posters that he created one for the DOJ to offer South Asian shopkeepers in rural areas:

Common Redneck Head Coverings (PDF, 255 KB)

Hindustan Times: U.S. Justice Department issues poster on Sikhism

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Madhoo posts w/ images of the long rumored, ancient, Indo-Sri Lanka land bridge (mentioned in the Ramayana) – Dancing with Dogs: NASA images of the bridge between India and Sri Lanka –

NASA images of the bridge between India and Sri Lanka We blogged about this a long time ago, but couldn’t find the images – these are the actual images here –

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Who made the following remarks?

“I believe that caste has saved Hinduism from disintegration. But like every other institution it has suffered from excrescences. I consider the four divisions alone to be fundamental, natural and essential.”

“I am inclined to think that the law of heredity is an eternal law and any attempt to alter that law must lead us, as it has before led [others], to utter confusion…. If Hindus believe, as they must believe, in reincarnation [and] transmigration, they must know that Nature will, without any possibility of mistake, adjust the balance by degrading a Brahmin, if he misbehaves himself, by reincarnating him in a lower division, and translating one who lives the life of a Brahmin in his present incarnation to Brahminhood in his next. ”

“Caste is but an extension of the principle of the family. Both are governed by blood and heredity ”

“I believe that if Hindu society has been able to stand, it is because it is founded on the caste system…. A community which can create the caste system must be said to possess unique power of organization….”

“[The] hereditary principle is an eternal principle. To change it is to create disorder…. It will be a chaos if every day a Brahmin is to be changed into a Shudra and a Shudra is to be changed into a Brahmin. The caste system is a natural order of society…. I am opposed to all those who are out to destroy the caste system.”

It’s M.K. (he’s no Mahatma to me) Gandhi, that’s who. In the US, Gandhi is seen by Hindus as both a saint and a patriotic symbol, a 2-for-1 way to show Americans why Hindu Indian culture is morally superior. But this is a blind embrace of Gandhi, without much understanding of what he actually stood for. (“Many a colleague of Gandhi’s observed that he was greater than his writings would suggest. He himself said that they should be cremated with his body“) Continue reading →

Even the Catholic Church has gotten into the act:

With Roman Catholic clergy in short supply in the United States, Indian priests are picking up some of their work, saying Mass for special intentions, in a sacred if unusual version of outsourcing.

American, as well as Canadian and European churches, are sending Mass intentions, or requests for services like those to remember deceased relatives and thanksgiving prayers, to clergy in India.

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Every little girl is a goddess. Especially, if she’s Preeti Shakya, of Kathmandu.

“Preeti Shakya … [is] revered as the Kumari and incarnation of the Hindu mother goddess Durga. Each Kumari is chosen aged only three or four, always from the same Buddhist clan, and has to have 32 attributes, including thighs like those of a deer and a neck like a conch shell.”
“She lives a confined life, only coming out of her palace three or four times a year until she reaches puberty when another Kumari must be found.
This main outing coincides with a festival of thanks to the local rain god and as always, her feet must never touch the ground unless there is a red carpet beneath them. ”

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Happy New Years, I’m glad to see that even the Times of India is writing a story on Rosh Hashanah. How’s the new year look? Well, shofar sho good … Continue reading →

A Sikh truck driver from Yuba City was cited for carrying a concealed weapon while on a produce delivery haul in Oregon. His kirpan is a ceremonial dagger common to Sikhism (via Ennis).

The officer allegedly dragged Gill to the ground, shoved a knee into his back and shoved his head into the ground as he handcuffed him, he said. The officer then told him that the police look to pull over people who look as though they are from India, Pakistan and or of the Sikh faith, which Gill and Sraon said is racial profiling and illegal… Gill was cited for carrying a concealed weapon and told to appear in Douglas County Court… Sraon said the kirpan is not a weapon but a religious symbol and therefore protected by law under the first amendment of the Constitution.

Kirpan case law is an example of a very interesting body of law dealing with the conflict of religious beliefs and the public interest (e.g. peyote in Native American rituals, sharia vs. common law, religions which ban modern medical treatment). Since Sikhs are in the minority in most places, they’re often afterthoughts when laws affecting them are enacted. For example, the new hijab ban in France, ostensibly aimed at undermining militant Islam, also inadvertently bans turbans. Nobody thought to ask the small French Sikh community for input, it was a boundary case. And in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, wearing a kirpan provided an easy pretext for cops to detain Sikhs without suspicion of wrongdoing. Continue reading →

On Sep. 1, Sikhs will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the day their holy book was first brought to their most sacred site. In 1604, Guru Arjan Dev carried the Guru Granth Sahib into the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab. The book is accorded such respect that a prayer is spoken before the book is closed, and it’s swaddled in fine cloth and carried on the head.

India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh to hold that post, will preside over the 4 million-strong celebration. In a nod to modernity, Amritsar will host a laser show, very apropos since the inventor of fiber optics is a Sikh.

Every celebration has its inevitable drama. Due to tensions dating back to Indira Gandhi’s reign, Gandhi’s daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi was not invited to the celebration. And a family which holds an even older copy of the holy book has yet to agree to put its copy on display:

The precious manuscript is kept in a 900-kg iron vault built by a German engineer. Though the family claims that the National Archives has preserved the pages, scholars are sceptic. Says Dhillon, “The preservation was done sometime in the 1960s by an outdated method. Nowadays the accepted practice to preserve such manuscripts is to get them microfilmed and as far as I know this has not been done.”

Nonetheless, Amritsar is being newly repainted, the temple walkways are getting new carpeting, and pilgrims are arriving by the trainload in anticipation of celebration.