'We kept importing educational models from outside that had no connection to our cultural and intellectual strengths.'
India's Deepavali (Diwali), the festival of light, has been inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity during a meeting held at the Red Fort in Delhi.
Acharya Jonas Masetti, a Vedanta scholar from Brazil, was awarded the Padma Shri for teaching the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit, Yoga, Meditation and Indian spiritualism abroad.
In response to the recent incident in Etawah where a non-Brahmin kathavachak (religious storyteller) was allegedly assaulted and tonsured, the Kashi Vidvat Parishad, a prestigious council of Sanskrit scholars and experts on Hindu scriptures, has issued a strong statement defending the rights of all Hindus to recite and narrate the Bhagavad Katha.
'Youngsters in India look up to the West as if it is the biggest accomplishment they need in life. It breaks my heart.'
A priest at the Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in Maryland, Bhatt hails from Bengaluru. He is a Madhwa priest trained in Rig Veda and Tantrasaara (Maadhva) Agama, under his guru, Pejavar Swamiji of Udupi Ashta Matha.
A cow that speaks, a question on patriarchy and the story of a 17th-century poet - Sanskrit filmmakers are finding new ways to revive the 'dying' language.
Ishaan P Zore doesn't think Vicky Kaushal's persona quite matches Chhatrapati Sambhaji's iconic figure.
At the invitation of United States President Donald Trump, Pujari Harish Brahmbhatt from the BAPS (Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha) Swaminarayan Mandir in New Jersey joined religious leaders from other faiths offering prayers on the occasion of National Day of Prayer Service.
'It is a great misfortune that the Nehruvian Stalinists of India have colluded with the grand project of demeaning and destroying Sanskrit. Today, the number of Sanskritists in India is low, and falling,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
Secretary general of CBCI Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas on what he doesn't like about the new education policy.
'They were certainly not practising Hinduism in the Harappan culture (which includes Mohenjo Daro and other sites).' 'There was no notion of Hinduism then.'
Deciphering its secrets will unlock the early history of not only our planet, but also of the star system, explains Kumar Abishek.
The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, which governs the ancient shrine of Lord Venkateswara at Tirumala here, on Wednesday announced that Lord Hanuman's birthplace was Anjanadri, a hillock at Japali Theertham located about 5 km from north of the hill temple.
Before starting the prayer, Zed sprinkled Gangajal on the podium in keeping with Indian tradition. He also presented a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to Lieutenant Governor Diane D Denish before she introduced him to the Senate.
The exhibition of artefacts -- in physical and digital formats -- will be done on the same floor level where the leaders' meetings will take place, and they will walk through this 'cultural corridor' while moving into and out of the summit room, official sources said.
There were Vedic mantras engraved along with prayer songs for Lord Shiva, Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. Neither the government nor the people of Faisalabad demanded that the carvings be removed. I felt very happy to see Sanskrit shloka
Savarkar believed Swarajya is more than the mere geographical independence of a stretch of earth called India. There was no point in fighting and sacrificing one's life for a Swarajya (mere territorial independence) at the cost of our Svatva (self-existence) or Hindutva itself! A revealing excerpt from Uday Mahurkar and Chirayu Pandit's Veer Savarkar: The Man Who Could Have Prevented Partition.
Nondescript Bhiwani and Mahendragarh in Haryana, recently named part of the NCR, are likely to see developers queueing up soon and investors betting big on the new hubs.
'India is a strange place.' 'On the one hand we have the most advanced science working on our origins and our ancestry.' 'On the other we are at war with ourselves over a temple to a god whom our first ancestors knew nothing of,' says Aakar Patel.
Amidst opposition in some quarters to observing International Yoga Day, Vishwa Hindu Parishad International Executive President Dr Praveen Togadia on Sunday said that the discipline was never secular and was more of "Vedic and sanatan".
The relative ranking of castes can vary across regions and localities and depends on a number of factors including control over land, wealth, and political power. Castes have often tried to 'upgrade' themselves (a process sociologists refer to as Sanskritization), and sometimes get 'downgraded'. A revealing excerpt from Upinder Singh's Ancient India: Culture Of Contradictions.
As education minister Smriti Irani should be worried about the state of education nationwide rather than fuelling a German-versus-Sanskrit row, says Sunil Sethi
Stalin's personal intervention in the Adheenam row may have contained the avoidable political damage and social tensions at least for now, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Tamil Nadu will never allow the Centre's three-language policy'
'Hindus are proud of what the Dharmashastras symbolise, but they don't want to do any work to preserve it!,' Sanskrit scholar Donald Davis tells Kanika Dutta.
Devdutt Pattanaik, who has simplified the ancient Indian scriptures for millions of readers, highlights what our scriptures have to say about homosexuals and transgenders.
G Madhavan Nair also propounded the theory that some shlokas in the Vedas mentioned about the presence of water on the moon
Over a thousand widows broke the 400-year-old tradition and celebrated the festival within the precincts of the ancient Gopinath temple.
'She exists alongside Sita, the archetype of the ideal woman,' notes Arundhuti Dasgupta.
'When I applied for the job of santhi, I applied as a person who was eligible.' 'When I joined the temple at the age of 21, it was because I got the 4th rank in the list.' 'Now, everybody is talking only about my caste. I am above all that; it doesn't matter to me and to the people with whom I am associated with.'
'It's a moot point if Kailaasa will ever evolve beyond being a haven for a fugitive from justice,' notes Devangshu Datta.
Aeroplanes existed in India 7,000 years ago and they travelled from one country to another and from one planet to another, the Indian Science Congress was told on Sunday in a controversial lecture that examined ancient aviation technology in the Vedas.
The facts remain cloaked in mystery, but the legend goes that Talpade had created a flying machine powered by mercury and solar energy, and based on ideas outlined in Vedic texts.
The solution to the Kashmir problem does not lie in India speaking to Pakistan; it does not lie in the Indian government speaking to the separatists; it lies in the Kashmiris talking to their inner selves. They need to trace their history to include their rich cultural heritage of Hindu Saivism and Sufi mysticism. Only then will Kashmiris be at peace with themselves, says Vivek Gumaste.
'Such kind of mythology-based talks do not in any way contribute to science'. 'My biggest concern is these things will (eventually) become part of school curriculum (in India), and that is completely unacceptable.' Ramprasad Gandhiraman, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Centre in California, has launched a petition demanding that a lecture on Ancient Indian Aviation Technology to be delivered at the 102nd Indian Science Congress in Mumbai be scrapped. Ritu Jha/Rediff.com reports.
Archis Mohan tells us how the event came to be celebrated on June 21
'Some Indians take the extreme view that everything was known to our ancients, but others go to the opposite extreme and consider everything Indian was superstition and rubbish.' 'Indian science was perhaps more rational than the European science of the time.'
What would happen if the home minister chose to go to the movies, and watched the current science-fiction hit, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar
Ambassador Venu Rajamony, who served as press secretary to President Pranab Mukherjee during his tenure, salutes the statesman and political legend, who passed into the ages on Monday.
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